If God commanded something that was obviously evil, would we have a moral obligation to do it? I critically examine three radically different approaches divine-command theorists may take to the problem posed by this question: (1) reject the possibility of such a command by appealing to God's essential goodness; (2) avoid the implication that we should obey such a command by modifying the divine-command theory; and (3) accept the implication that we should obey such a command by appealing to divine (...) transcendence and mystery. I show that each approach faces significant challenges, and that none is completely satisfying. (shrink)

Medicine is about caring for people. It is a moral enterprise, not simply a technique or a pursuit. Though modern healthcare offers an amazing array of options, it has also become a complex and sometimes utterly de-humanizing system. Now, more than ever, we need guidance to navigate through the issues surrounding our medical care. Advances in medical technology have blessed many with longer and healthier lives, but they have also provided us with interventions and procedures that call for serious ethical (...) evaluation. The BioBasics series is committed to an uncompromising respect for human life that will serve as a compass through a maze of challenging questions. (shrink)

When we say that what two people feel for each other is 'true love,' we seem to be doing more than simply clarifying that it is in fact love they feel, as opposed to something else. That is, an experience or relationship might be a genuine or actual instance of love without necessarily being an instance of true love. But what criteria do people use to determine whether something counts as true love? This chapter explores three hypotheses. The (...) first holds that the ordinary concept of true love picks out love that is highly prototypical. The second, that it picks out love that is especially good or valuable. The third, that people distinguish between psychological states that are 'real' or not, and that it picks out love that is real. Two experiments provide evidence against the first hypothesis and in favor of the second and third. Implications for real-life disagreements about love are also discussed. (shrink)

On a Molinist account of creation and providence, not only is there is a complete set of truths about what every possible person would freely do in any possible set of circumstances, but these conditional truths are part of the very explanation of our existence. Robert Adams has recently argued that the explanatory priority of these conditionals undermines libertarian freedom. In the present essay, I take at close look at Adams’ argument and at the Molinist response of Thomas Flint. (...) After showing that Flint’s response is inadequate, I develop what I believe to be a more successful Molinist response to Adams’ argument. Along the way, I seek to provide some insight into the nature of libertarian freedom and the proper interpretation of the much discussed “principle of alternate possibilities.”. (shrink)

This article aims to show the objections made by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) to Immanuel Kant’s doctrine of right (1724-1804). Based on the main Schopenhauer’s work we’ll be able to explain the five points of disagreement between Schopenhauer and Kant: (i) Kant tries to separate right sharply from ethics; (ii) the definition (Bestimmung) of the concept of right; (iii) the right to property (what is the basis of this right and if its exists outside the State); (iv) the purpose of (...) the State; and (v) the right to punish. (shrink)

A partir da temática abordada no filme Gattaca - a experiência genética , que trata de uma sociedade adepta da eugenia; mostraremos quais são as implicações morais que essa prática pode ocasionar em uma sociedade, bem como as diversas discriminações. Em contra-argumento a essa prática, abordaremos a teoria de Peter Singer em prol do princípio da igual consideração de interesses, demonstrando que dessa maneira teríamos sociedades menos discriminatórias. Enfim, queremos mostrar que caso não nos alertemos para as questões abordadas por (...) Singer, nós, agentes morais, faremos emergir uma sociedade preconceituosa, tal como vemos no filme Gattaca.: From selected themes in the movie Gattaca - A genetic experiment that describes a eugenics society, we will show what are the moral implications of the eugenic practice to the society as well as its several kinds of discrimination. We will argue against such practice by appropriating Peter Singer’s theory on behalf of the principle of equal consideration of interests by showing that societies based on it would be less discriminatory. Finally, we show that if we do not consider the issues raised by Singer we, moral agents, will make emerge a prejudiced society similar to that narrated by the movie Gattaca. Key words : Moral, Equality, Eugenie, discrimination. (shrink)

Rawls's view that the right is prior to the good has been criticized by various scholars from divergent points of view. Some contend that Rawls's teleological/deontological distinction based on the priority of the right is misleading while others claim that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right prior to the good. There is no consensus on how to interpret the priority of right to the good; nor is there an agreement on the criteria of teleological/deontological distinction. In (...) this article, I argue that the critics' interpretations of the principle of the priority of right to the good as well as their conceptions of the teleological/deontological distinction have serious shortcomings to the extent that they ignore rich theoretical resources we find in Kant's moral and political philosophy. Kant's conception of human dignity and his division of the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of right supply powerful arguments to clarify and sustain the idea of the priority of right to the good and the teleological/deontological division. (shrink)

Rawls's view that the right is prior to the good has been criticized by various scholars from divergent points of view. Some contend that Rawls's teleological/deontological distinction based on the priority of the right is misleading while others claim that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right prior to the good. There is no consensus on how to interpret the priority of right to the good; nor is there an agreement on the criteria of teleological/deontological distinction. In (...) this article, I argue that the critics' interpretations of the principle of the priority of right to the good as well as their conceptions of the teleological/deontological distinction have serious shortcomings to the extent that they ignore rich theoretical resources we find in Kant's moral and political philosophy. Kant's conception of human dignity and his division of the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of right supply powerful arguments to clarify and sustain the idea of the priority of right to the good and the teleological/deontological division. (shrink)

My thesis focuses on the connection between conversation and virtue in Plato’s dialogues. It is often argued that conversation is an instrumental good - that it is conducted in order to obtain knowledge, and more precisely, knowledge of virtue. And once one obtains this knowledge, one can go about one’s life and act virtuously. I am proposing that conversation is a final good. My starting point is the analysis of the Apology, and by taking seriously Socrates’ claim at 38a that (...) ‘it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day’ I establish that conversation is something to be done for its own sake and I take this to mean that it is a place for interlocutors to display virtue. Moreover, I use the Apology to argue that Socrates has not always been aware of conversation being an end in itself. I then focus on three dialogues - the Laches, the Euthyphro and the Charmides to show us, both through their content and their drama, that virtues can and indeed should be exhibited in conversation. (shrink)

The paper deals with cognitive interview, a method for pre-testing survey questions that is used in pilot testing to develop new measures and/or adapt ones in foreign languages. The aim is to explore the usefulness of the method by looking at two questionnaires measuring anti-Roma prejudice. The first, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), contains questions that are dominantly used to test two dimensions of social perceptions of various groups: warmth and competence. The second, Interventions for Reducing Prejudice against Stigmatized Minorities (...) (INTERMIN) consists of the items most frequently used in contact research to measure attitudes, social distance, anxiety, trust and behavioural intentions towards outgroups. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were held on both questionnaires to verbally evaluate participants’ understanding and/or interpretation of the draft questions. The first round was attended by university students, while the second round (with improved versions of the questionnaires) was done with high school students, as they are the target group for planned interventions based on the contact paradigm. The paper explains the problems/difficulties the participants had answering some of the questions and our attempts at improving the questionnaires. The problems can be grouped around six issues: The first two deal with the strategies participants used to answer our questions – whom exactly did they have in mind when answering the questionnaires and whose viewpoint did they represent in their answers. The next four problems are around nuances in the formulations of our questions and generally have to do with how the participants interpreted our questions – they concern assumptions that distinct items were logically interconnected, the period of time and locality referred to in our questions, translation and transferability of meanings from one language to another and double negation. (shrink)

The following article aims to present and develop Martin Heidegger's criticism of Aesthetics from the essay The Origin of the Work of Art. For Heideggerian thinking, Aesthetics, as an heir to the metaphysical paradigms, kills what is essential in the art by taking it fundamentally as an object capable of provoking and impacting the sensitivity of the contemplating subject. As will be shown Heidegger traces the origin of such a conception in the first Western philosophical systems with Plato and (...) Aristotle, and its development in the initial moments of modernity with Descartes and the other heirs of his thinking. Since we are already at the heart of historical sedimentation when conceiving works of art, it is necessary to dive into such sedimentation to develop the sleeping potentialities. This is the invitation that Heidegger offers us and that we also offer the reader here. (shrink)

Iconic words are supposed to exhibit imitative relationships between their linguistic forms and their referents. Many studies have worked to pinpoint sound-to-meaning correspondences for ideophones from different languages. The correspondence patterns show similarities across languages, but what makes such language-specific correspondences universal, as iconicity claims to be, remains unclear. This could be due to a lack of consensus on how to describe and test the perceptuo-motor affordances that make an iconic word feel imitative to speakers. We created and analysed (...) a database of 1,860 ideophones across 13 languages, and found that seven articulatory features, physiologically accessible to all spoken language users, pattern according to semantic features of ideophones. Our findings pave the way for future research to utilize articulatory properties as a means to test and explain how iconicity is encoded in spoken language. The perspective taken here fits in with ongoing research of embodiment, motivation, and iconicity research, three major strands of research within Cognitive Linguistics. The results support that there is a degree of unity between the concepts of imitative communication and the spoken forms through cross-domain mappings, which involve physical articulatory movement. (shrink)

In this paper I argue on two fronts. First, I press for the view that judging is a type of mental action, as opposed to those who think that judging is involuntary and hence not an action. Second, I argue that judging is specifically a type of non-voluntary mental action. My account of the non-voluntary nature of the mental act of judging differs, however, from standard non-voluntarist views, according to which ‘non-voluntary’ just means regulated by epistemic reasons. In addition, judging (...) is non-voluntary, I contend, because it is partially constituted by the exercise of a non-reason-governed skill. This skill, which I call ‘critical pop-out’, consists of an unreflective, often unconscious, ability to detect the kind of situations in which the reflective abilities that also partially constitute our acts of judging should be deployed. We are responsible for our judgments, I conclude, because in identifying such reflection-inviting situations, we reveal the kind of epistemic agents we are. (shrink)

According to Alvin Plantinga and his followers, there is a complete set of truths about what any possible person would freely do in anypossible situation. Richard Gale offers two arguments for saying that this doctrine entails that God exercises “freedom-canceling” control over his creatures. Gale’s first argument claims that Plantinga’s God controls our behavior by determining our psychological makeup. The second claims that God causes (in the “forensic” sense) all of our behavior. The present paper critically examines and rejects (...) both of these arguments. The second of Gale’s arguments blurs the distinction between causal laws and the conditionals of freedom, whereas the first fails to appreciate the force of the libertarian claim that our psychological makeup may “incline” us in a certain direction without determining our behavior. It also fails to acknowledge the way in which a libertarian like Plantinga might think we contribute to shaping our own characters. (shrink)

Joint attention is an early-emerging and uniquely human capacity that lies at the foundation of many other capacities of humans, such as language and the understanding of other minds. In this article, I summarize what developmentalists and philosophers have come to find out about joint attention, and I end by stating that two problems or questions of joint attention require additional research: 1) the relation between joint attention and the skills for dyadic sharing or affect exchange in young infants, (...) and 2) the evolution of joint attention. (shrink)

The question concerning the meaning of life is important, but it immediately confronts the present authors with insurmountable obstacles from a philosophical standpoint, as it would require us to define not only what we hold to be life, but what we hold to be meaning in addition, requiring us to do both in a properly researched context. We unconditionally surrender to that challenge. Instead, we offer a vernacular, armchair approach to life’s origin and meaning, with some layman’s thoughts (...) on the meaning of origins as viewed from the biologist’s standpoint. One can observe that biologists generally approach the concept of biological meaning in the context of evolution. This is the basis for the broad resonance behind Dobzhansky’s appraisal that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Biologists try to understand living things in the historical context of how they arose, without giving much thought to the definition of what life or living things are, which for a biologist is usually not an interesting question in the practical context of daily dealings with organisms. Do humans generally understand life’s meaning in the context of history? If we consider the problem of life’s origin, the question of what constitutes a living thing becomes somewhat more acute for the biologist, though not more answerable, because it is inescapable that there was a time when there were no organisms on Earth, followed by a time when there were, the latter time having persisted in continuity to the present. This raises the question of where, in that transition, chemicals on Earth became alive, requiring, in turn, a set of premises for how life arose in order to conceptualize the problem in relation to organisms we know today, including ourselves, which brings us to the point of this paper: In the same way that cultural narratives for origins always start with a setting, scientific narratives for origins also always start with a setting, a place on Earth or elsewhere where we can imagine what happened for the sake of structuring both the problem and the narrative for its solution. This raises the question of whether scientific origins settings convey meaning to humans in that they suggest to us from what kind of place and what kinds of chemicals we are descended, that is, to which inanimate things we are most closely related. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend that demonstratives are expressions of joint attention. Though this idea is not exactly new in the philosophical or linguistic literature, we argue here that their proponents have not yet shown how to incorporate these observations into more traditional theories of demonstratives. Our purpose is then to attempt to fill this gap. We argue that coordinated attentional activities are better integrated into a full account of demonstratives as meta-pragmatic information. Our claim is twofold. First, we claim (...) that pragmatically presupposing salience is a fundamental aspect of using demonstratives. Secondly, we hold that the pragmatics of demonstrating can only be properly understood in relation to meta-pragmatic conditions that have to do with joint attention. We use tests of truth-value gap as evidence for our claim. Our proposal provides us with a complete view of what speakers do and presuppose when engaging in acts of demonstrative reference through language. (shrink)

A fresh, thought-provoking and wide-ranging study of how mankind uses its hands Why do zombies walk with their arms outstretched? How can newborn babies grip an adult finger tightly enough to dangle unsupported from it? And why is everyone constantly texting, tapping and scrolling? For anyone curious about how human beings work, the answers are hidden in plain sight: in our hands. From early tools to machinery -- from fists to knives to guns -- from papyrus to QWERTY to a (...) swipeable screen -- the history of civilization is a history of what humans do with their hands. We have always kept our hands occupied, and if mankind's story is marked out by profound changes in how we use our hands, it is also marked by underlying patterns that never change. And as much as the things we do with our hands reflect our psychological state, they can also change that state profoundly... Drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, modern technology and clinical research, Darian Leader presents a unique and fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands - and why. (shrink)

But in this book, Catherine Malabou proposes a more radical meaning for plasticity, one that not only adapts itself to existing circumstances, but forms a ...

RESUMO Hans Jonas na obra O Princípio Responsabilidade: ensaio de uma ética para a civilização tecnológica (2006 [1979]) apresenta o diagnóstico de uma civilização debilitada e perecível, constantemente ameaçada pelos poderes do homem tecnológico. De posse desta análise, constrói uma proposta no sentido de novas fundações para o edifício ético a partir de uma responsabilidade. Jonas constata o caráter antropocêntrico de uma ética que não abrangia as consequências dos impactos oriundas da ação humana sobre o homem e a vida na (...) biosfera. Em seu ideário filosófico sobre a civilização tecnológica, estende as atitudes dos homens para além do agir próximo, reconhecendo um direito próprio da natureza. A recolocação conceitual da natureza, dotada de finalidade própria, expressa que o poder tecnológico promove os desafios morais da contemporaneidade, visto que há a possibilidade certa (causas) e incerta (consequências) de os efeitos acumulativos desta mesma tecnologia pôr em perigo a continuidade futura da vida sobre o planeta. O imperativo da responsabilidade resulta do poder do homem contemporâneo sobre si e sobre o planeta. Caracteriza-se por ser uma responsabilidade perante a natureza e perante o próprio homem. A concepção de responsabilidade em Jonas está em conformidade com uma nova exigência axiológica. É uma responsabilidade que se firma com a preservação da vida em um futuro distante e com a continuidade da vida tal como conhecemos. O que justifica um pretenso biocentrismo no princípio responsabilidade é o fato de que a continuidade da existência gera uma obrigação com a vida, porque dizer sim a ela é ser. O grande objetivo de uma nova abordagem biocêntrica, como o imperativo de Jonas, é de manter a existência da humanidade futura, em um futuro que existam candidatos a um universo moral em um mundo concreto – o autêntico objetivo da responsabilidade.: Hans Jonas in the book The imperative of the responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age (2006 [1979]) presents a diagnosis of a civilization weakened and perish, constantly threatened by the powers of technological man. Armed with this analysis, a proposal to build new foundations for the building from an ethical responsibility. Jonas notes the character of an anthropocentric ethic that did not cover the consequences of impacts arising from human action on man and life in the biosphere. In his philosophical ideas on the technological civilization extends men's attitudes beyond the next act, recognizing an inherent right of nature. The replacement of the conceptual nature, with its own purpose, expressed that technological power promote the moral challenges of contemporary times, since there is a certain possibility (causes) and uncertain (consequences) of the cumulative effects of this same technology to jeopardize the continued future life on the planet. The imperative of responsibility results from the power of modern man about himself and the planet. It is characterized by being a responsibility to nature and to the man himself. The conception of responsibility in Jonas is in accordance with a new demand axiological. It is a responsibility that is established with the preservation of life in the distant future and the continuity of life as we know. What justifies a purported biocentrism the principle responsibility is the fact that the continued existence creates a bond with life, because she is saying yes to be. The ultimate goal of a new approach biocentric, as the imperative of Jonas, is to maintain the existence of mankind in the future, a future in which there are candidates for a moral universe in a concrete world - the real goal of the responsibility. Keywords : the imperative of responsibility, demand axiological, nature, biocentrism. (shrink)

Democracy can be regarded, following Alexis de Tocquevilles thoughts, from two complementary standpoints: the equality standpoint – where equality is understood as a social condition; and the liberty standpoint – understood as a political condition. However, he observes, democracy is not a priori what it should be, denunciating, in this way, the imbalance between equality and liberty, the greater the imbalance as poor are the public virtues. We intend to enroll in a debate involving ethics and politics, by considering (...) vices and virtues inherent to democracy, analyzing Tocqueville´s ideas. We start examining the causes of vice and the possibility of virtue, as Tocqueville sees them, in order to, next, attack the relationship of ethics and politics. (shrink)

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not only a work of economic history and theory but also a political and normative argument and a critique of ideology. It is invaluable for its magisterial documentation of increasing inequality in capitalism, and unprecedented US economic inequality in particular. I situate it within philosophical conceptions of justice. I also identify it as a non-determinist critique of the political economy of capitalism and a substantive and methodological challenge to mainstream economics. I discuss (...) not only what Piketty does not do, as some Marxists do, but what Piketty does do and summarize some of his central claims. I then discuss some problems in his work, some of which have not been addressed in the literature. In particular Piketty’s concept of labor income masks forms of capital, and given his arguments, gender and all women’s reproductive practices should have been addressed more fully. (shrink)

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not only a work of economic history and theory but also a political and normative argument and a critique of ideology. It is invaluable for its magisterial documentation of increasing inequality in capitalism, and unprecedented US economic inequality in particular. I situate it within philosophical conceptions of justice. I also identify it as a non-determinist critique of the political economy of capitalism and a substantive and methodological challenge to mainstream economics. I discuss (...) not only what Piketty does not do, as some Marxists do, but what Piketty does do and summarize some of his central claims. I then discuss some problems in his work, some of which have not been addressed in the literature. In particular Piketty’s concept of labor income masks forms of capital, and given his arguments, gender and all women’s reproductive practices should have been addressed more fully. (shrink)

Whatever our profession we are all engulfed in daily life and in the obscurity and density of the mental world. Who is this “I” that finds expression in such a wide variety of societies, in the convictions of the group and temperament of the individual self, in all that I perceive imperfectly and that makes me me? What does this sometimes slippery, sometimes thorny “I” say about the various attitudes towards knowing: the things I desperately want to know, things (...) I believe myself capable of dispensing with, those I fear knowing? (shrink)

In a series of papers, Sperber provides the following analysis of the phenomenon of ill-understood belief (or 'quasi-belief', as I call it): (i) the quasi-believer has a validating meta-belief, to the effect that a certain representation is true; yet (ii) that representation does not give rise to a plain belief, because it is 'semi-propositional'. In this paper I discuss several aspects of this treatment. In particular, I deny that the representation accepted by the quasi-believer is semantically indeterminate, and I reject (...) Sperber's claim that quasi-belief is a credal attitude distinct from plain belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Locke’s Letter on Tolerance has been a controversial issue since the seventeenth century: its defense of tolerance compromises restricting atheists and Catholics, which would attain religious freedom, one of the highest values of liberal theory. Taking this issue as its central, the purpose of this article is to think about this tension in Locke’s political thinking. In order to collaborate with this debate, the text is divided in two parts: in the first one, the various meanings of what (...) Locke understands by atheist will be presented in his different political texts; in the second, we will analyze the importance of religion in Lockean political thought. (shrink)

What are the factors that contribute to (or inhibit) diachronic sound change? While acoustically motivated sound changes are well documented, research on the articulatory and audiovisual-perceptual aspects of sound change is limited. This paper investigates the interaction of articulatory variation and audiovisual speech perception in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), a pattern of sound change observed in the Great Lakes region of the United States. We focus specifically on the maintenance of the contrast between the vowels /ɑ/ and (...) /ɔ/, both of which are fronted as a result of the NCVS. We present results from two experiments designed to test how the NCVS is produced and perceived. In the first experiment, we present data from an articulatory and acoustic analysis of the production of fronted /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. We find that some speakers distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ with a combination of both tongue position and lip rounding, while others do so using either tongue position or lip rounding alone. For speakers who distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ along only one articulatory dimension, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are acoustically more similar than for speakers who produce multiple articulatory distinctions. While all three groups of speakers maintain some degree of acoustic contrast between the vowels, the question is raised as to whether these articulatory strategies differ in their perceptibility. In the perception experiment, we test the hypothesis that visual speech cues play a role in maintaining contrast between the two sounds. The results of this experiment suggest that articulatory configurations in which /ɔ/ is produced with unround lips are perceptually weaker than those in which /ɔ/ is produced with rounding, even though these configurations result in acoustically similar output. We argue that these findings have implications for theories of sound change and variation in at least two respects: 1) visual cues can shape phonological systems through misperception-based sound change, and 2) phonological systems may be optimized not only for auditory but also for visual perceptibility. (shrink)

Wojtasiewicz (2006) raises an intriguing and concerning possibility: that end-of-life conflict resolution processes—“futility” policies—may compound discrimination against African Americans, who ha...

Regarding the famous Sea Battle Argument, which Aristotle presents in De Interpretatione 9, there has never been a general agreement not only about its correctness but also, and mainly, about what the argument really is. According to the most natural reading of the chapter, the argument appeals to a temporal concept of truth and concludes that not every statement is always either true or false. However, many of Aristotle’s followers and commentators have not adopted this reading. I believe that (...) it has faced so much resistance for reasons of hermeneutic charity: denying the law of universal bivalence seems to be overly disruptive to logical orthodoxy – the kind of logical orthodoxy represented by what we now call classical propositional logic, much of which Aristotle clearly supports in many texts. I intend to show that the logical-semantic theses that the traditional reading finds in De Interpretatione 9 are much more conservative than they may seem to be at first glance. First, I will show that they complement, and do not contradict in any way, the orthodox definitions of the concepts of truth and statement that Aristotle advances in other texts. Second, by resorting in an anachronistic vein to concepts and methods peculiar to contemporary logic, I will show that a trivalent modal semantics conforming to those theses can be built for a standard formal language of the classical propositional calculus. It is remarkable that reasonable concepts of logical truth and logical consequence that may be defined on the basis of this trivalent modal semantics are coextensive with their orthodox counterparts, the concepts of tautology and tautological consequence of classical bivalent and extensional semantics. (shrink)

The Transamazon (Br-230) Highway in the state of Pará has had its image frozen for decades: themuddy road, the cars stopped or tractors tearing down a forest, empty of people, opening the amazonianspace to a project of an authoritarian modernization. Reproduced by and reproductive of the teachingsof geography – including for children and teenagers who live on the edge of the road, in settlements andcommunities on the sideroads (vicinais) – in textbooks and discourses that frame regional scale (astotalizing and explanatory) (...) instead of scales emplaced in situ. The result of such dinamics is not restricted to a gap between what one experiences as a phenomenon and what one learns as a concept,it goes towards the reproducibility of an “unexistance of the creative potential” of the people living onthe sideroads, places of the construction of a geography, as well as mapping, that, from there, push usto rethink the unwavering foundations of such frosen images , of the generalistic maps and theirstandardizing projections, scales and simbology. To do so, we have, along with students and teachersof 2 schools on the sideroads of the municipality of Pacajá (PA), in the period of the beggining of 2016to 2019, done several geocartographic exercises: mind maps developped with students about the past,present and the future of the vicinal (sideroad). That is, an attempt to provoque the body into the mapand the map into the body in a context of a limit situation of existance, given the precarious schoolconditions as well as the diferent challenges lived by students and teachers. Such corporal engagementas an attempt to think the sideroads as a location in construction and, from there, a situated opening tothe world, is what gives meaning to geocartography. It is possible to conclude that: a) facing thesedimentary representations paralysing and overview of the Transamazon in the state of Pará , thephenomenological exercise of reactivation of geocartogrphying provoques the emergence of asubjective significance that does not separate the emotional and symbolic perspectives on creatingmaps; b) the corporal engagement and the situated perspective of students and teachers, not only hasthe value of a totalyzing exemple, but that of an opening to what is new as they bring up a simbologythat reveals the need to build a dialogical bridge between what is lived on the sideroads and the worldthat classifies it as “unexisting”. (shrink)

Inspired by the Studies on authoritarian personality and based on contemporary research on authoritarianism in Brazil, we will analyze the construction of the idol aura surrounding former president Bolsonaro, which allowed the far right to be elected and remain in power until the last elections in 2022. We see his rise as mostly due to the digital violence that largely benefited his campaign and was directed against the block of left-wing candidates. So as to clarify this issue, we will revisit (...) the sociohistorical and psycho-political fundamentals of the antidemocratic and ethnocentric behaviors spurred by that leadership that became idolized. We will also outline an emancipatory, antiracist, culturally relevant and decolonial education, as a way to provide what Adorno regarded as being the antidote to the reemergence of a regressive barbarism. In the case of Brazil, barbarism refers to the remnants of the slave system implemented in the country for three and a half centuries, whose destructive potential was awakened under Bolsonaro’s government, given the latent antidemocratic and authoritarian tendencies in our society. (shrink)

Built on the dialogue between the processes of institutionalization of childhood and educational practices, this article considers data from a research project that aimed to gather knowledge of the experience of childhood in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The empirical basis of our study is a collection of observational fieldnotes gathered in 21 public ECE institutions that serve the city of Rio de Janeiro. In order to understand children’s experience in these settings, our theoretical framework is supported by a reading (...) of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of childhood, by sources in the sociology and anthropology of childhood, and through an analysis of the political contexts that influence the practices of institutionalizing young children. The quote adopted in this text represents the results of a comparison between the speech and interactions of the children in the schools participating in the research and textual fragments from Benjamin’s “Obras Escolhidas I e II.” We drew on the concept of childhood experience present in the work of this philosopher in order to explore how children experience their childhood within the context of the school environment. When thinking about childhood through the lens of children’s experience, we draw on the legacy attributed by Benjamin to Kant's work on the concept of experience itself. Here, the latter is understood, not just as an event, but as something that unites/brings us together through the intersection of generation, history, and narrative. Regardless of the format of children's institutionalization–that is, whether they attend daycare centers, exclusive early ECE settings, schools or elementary schools that have preschool classes–based on our reading the fieldnotes we conclude that the experience of childhood takes place in the context of relationships with others, with objects, with culture, with society and with nature. Our research showed that, like the child as characterized in the work of Benjamin, the children of our day care centers and schools are attracted by what he calls “debris”and what the latter present to them as possibilities for action. They do not directly reproduce the world of adults; rather, they establish a new relationship with what the world offers them, which is not exactly coherent with that world. What children produce in their interactions is the result of a refined process in which collective and individual experience intersect, with culture as a meeting point. (shrink)

The general objective of this article is to discuss the concept of genealogy created by Friedrich Nietzsche. Our hypothesis is that Nietzsche allies himself to a certain notion of history to create this concept. It is then a matter of investigating to what extent Nietzsche takes history as a hieroglyphic writing and how this conception of history cannot be thought of from his understanding of origins. Thus, the relationship that Nietzsche establishes with history is another, which does not belong (...) to the traditional register. For, if metaphysics can make history an objective science in which it is possible to define an absolute, a constant, and from there to trace a teleological movement, Nietzsche thinks of history as discontinuity, betting on the singularity of the event. Finally, we will point to the dimension of laughter inherent to this record of history, and how the genealogist's laughter would be a kind of protection against scientific seriousness for the realization of his gay science. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the processes involved in becoming a teacher in this particular historical moment of global pandemic in Brazil. What are the challenges, limitations, possibilities and opportunities that the pandemic presents to the process of teaching work and teacher formation? A review of the literature that included contributions from Caponi, Kohan, Larrosa, Neuscharank, Vaz, Arroyo and Abramowicz suggests a dialogue between pedagogic theory, philosophy of education and the contemporary experience of political and social events in the (...) pandemic period The discussions reviewed explore the profound extent to which Covid-19 has affected our way of living, working and relating to others, and the psychological effects of social isolation. The situation demands from the Brazilian teacher an attitude of openness to change, specifically in the use of new technologies, and the extent to which they are or are not able to replace face-to-face interactions. The situation also challenges us to reconstruct, beyond the logic of neoliberalism, our notions of the type of school we have and type of school we want, the type of teachers we are and the type of teacher we want to be. We conclude that this process of thinking school again depends, if it is to escape neoliberal logic, on the capacity of understanding the vocation of the teacher to be one of “becoming-child” in the sense of experiencing an openness to and a desire for the new. As such, the “becoming-teacher” is one who allows herself to be addressed by another logic, another more sensitive and more aesthetic temporality, and who finds, in encounter with others, with art, with childhood, with becoming itself, the capacity to think, to resist, to fight for the realization of that logic. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the question about how the practices of deceiving become a matter of discussion on moral philosophy and how they could be thought beyond the sieve of this conviction. As we intend to defend, an answer to this question should refer to the Greek thought, particularly, the Platonic thought in dialogues: Hippias minor and The republic, taking as horizon the problem of the disambiguation of Alêtheia, and the exclusion, by philosophical thought, of the forms of clever (...) and astute intelligence that the Greeks named in honor to the goddess Mêntis. On the other hand, should also imply a distinction of perspectives inherent to what we call by deceiving, which put on opposite sides of the deceiver and the deceived, according to the acknowledgement, or not, of the deceiving. Under this bias, we argue that, for the Greeks, the problem wouldn't be mainly the mistake itself – although platonic thought points that – but being deceived, and mainly, self-deceived. (shrink)

This article deals with Nietzsche’s ethical problem of the constitution of an exceptional character, under two fronts: first, under a negative bias, as opposed to the morality of the herd. Later, on its constructive or affirmative time, properly as creation of self . The leitmotif of this double presentation is the defense of aspects from what we associate with the concept of hypocrisy as a key to an interpretation of that constitution. First, as an art of dissimulation, in the (...) form of an individual's refuge amidst the morality of the herd. Later, as the actor's art, in the practices which Nietzsche associates to the self-constitution. (shrink)

While Garfinkel’s early work, captured in Studies in Ethnomethodology, has received a lot of attention and discussion, this has not been the case for his later work since the 1970s. In this paper, we critically examine the aims of Garfinkel’s later ethnomethodological studies of work programme and evaluate key ideas such as the ‘missing what’ in the sociology of work, ‘the unique adequacy requirements of methods’, and the notion of ‘hybrid studies’. We do so through a detailed engagement with (...) a study that has frequently been singled out as exemplary by Garfinkel for his studies of work programme, namely Livingston’s The Ethnomethodological Foundations of Mathematics. We show how Livingston uses the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a way to exhibit the work involved in understanding mathematical proofs. We then discuss how Livingston uses this example to introduce a distinction between the written ‘proof account’ and the associated ‘lived work’ of working through that proof, which we argue allows Livingston to provide a powerful critique of a formalist understanding of the objectivity of mathematics. We then discuss three aspects that we find problematic in Livingston’s and Garfinkel’s claims about Livingston’s study. Firstly, we question whether written proofs are best conceived of as descriptions or accounts. Secondly, we interrogate whether an ethnomethodological study could teach mathematicians how to make discoveries. Thirdly, we throw doubt on Garfinkel’s claim that Livingston’s results are results in mathematics. We conclude this paper with a discussion of how Livingston’s study Gödel’s proof highlights key tensions in Garfinkel’s later work. Firstly, we argue that there exists an ambiguity in Garfinkel’s treatment of texts as ‘incompetent’. Secondly, we show that Garfinkel’s attempt to extend his idea of classical studies from sociology to other professions and disciplines is problematic. Finally, we question Garfinkel’s proposals to reorient ethnomethodological studies away from sociological audiences and ask whether ethnomethodological studies promise the delivery of a ‘large prize’ or, rather, provide something like ‘helpful therapy’. (shrink)