Habermas desenvolveu a teoria da ação comunicativa mostrando como os problemas de comunicação entre os falantes podem ser resolvidos a partir da própria autorreferencialidade inerente à linguagem ordinária ou, em casos mais graves, mediante os discursos racionais. Contudo, ele mostrou também que existem formas de comunicação sistematicamente distorcidas como a neurose e a ideologia, nas quais, ao contrário de Wittgenstein,que considerava não existir uma linguagem privada. Tratava-se somente de um mal entendimento sobre o correto funcionamento de nossa linguagem, pois são (...) formas reais da linguagem privada porque a reconstrução linguística da Psicanálise demonstrou que o neurótico, diante de uma situação insustentável da primeira infância, substitui o símbolo reprimido por um símbolo insuspeito que passa a ocupar o seu lugar. Origina o comportamento repetitivo do enfermo, mas que pode ser recordado de maneira constante,o que desmente também o primado que Gadamer atribuiu à hermenêutica. A comunicação sistematicamente distorcida não pode ser superada simplesmente pelo adestramento da habilidade de interpretação a partir do contexto, mas requer a passagem para discursos clínicos em que o paciente deve fazer a experiência da autorreflexão. (shrink)

Habermas desenvolveu a teoria da ação comunicativa mostrando como os problemas de comunicação entre os falantes podem ser resolvidos a partir da própria autorreferencialidade inerente à linguagem ordinária ou, em casos mais graves, mediante os discursos racionais. Contudo, ele mostrou também que existem formas de comunicação sistematicamente distorcidas como a neurose e a ideologia, nas quais, ao contrário de Wittgenstein,que considerava não existir uma linguagem privada. Tratava-se somente de um mal entendimento sobre o correto funcionamento de nossa linguagem, pois são (...) formas reais da linguagem privada porque a reconstrução linguística da Psicanálise demonstrou que o neurótico, diante de uma situação insustentável da primeira infância, substitui o símbolo reprimido por um símbolo insuspeito que passa a ocupar o seu lugar. Origina o comportamento repetitivo do enfermo, mas que pode ser recordado de maneira constante,o que desmente também o primado que Gadamer atribuiu à hermenêutica. A comunicação sistematicamente distorcida não pode ser superada simplesmente pelo adestramento da habilidade de interpretação a partir do contexto, mas requer a passagem para discursos clínicos em que o paciente deve fazer a experiência da autorreflexão. (shrink)

La descomposición del ethos de las sociedades convencionales en la Modernidad escindió la moral y la ética, pero la filosofía del sujeto y la separación metafísica entre derecho natural y positivo conllevaron a una concurrencia entre el liberalismo que fundamentó los derechos humanos del individuo, como sujeto en pequeña escala, en la moral racional, mientras que el republicanismo ancló la soberanía popular en un pueblo, como sujeto en gran escala, que reconoce los valores éticos de la comunidad, incluso en el (...) debate entre liberalismo y comunitarismo en Norteamérica. Pero, la teoría de la acción comunicativa supera esta recurrente aporía porque posibilita una comprensión intersubjetiva del derecho como responsable por la integración social entre la racionalidad comunicativa del mundo de la vida y la racionalidad estratégica de los sistemas sociales, la política y la economía, pues permite simultáneamente la autonomía privada y la autonomía pública de manera que los agentes sociales actúen por la facticidad o la validez del derecho a nivel de las normas jurídicas, del sistema de derechos. (shrink)

Existe uma aparente contradição entre a negação kantiana do direito de resistência expressa na filosofia do direito e a sua apologia à Revolução Francesa abordada na história filosófica. No entanto, esta contradição se dissolve tão logo se compreende que Kant considerou que a Revolução Francesa não constitui precisamente uma revolução, uma vez que isto implicaria que o povo retornasse ao estado de natureza com relação ao soberano deposto, mas uma reforma constitucional empreendida involuntariamente pelo próprio rei Luis XVI que transferiu (...) a soberania aos representantes do povo ao convocar os Estados Gerais, os quais não tinham a obrigação de restituí-la ao soberano anterior, em lugar disso, preferiram se declarar em Assembleia Nacional e elaborar a constituição republicana, a única conforme a vontade unificada do povo. (shrink)

Para responder às sociologias desencantadas modernas, como a teoria da decisão racional e a teoria dos sistemas, as quais recordam os inevitáveis momentos de inércia que dificultam a deliberação racional, Habermas imagina uma reconstrução sociológica da democracia deliberativa que divide a sociedade em um centro, formado pelas instituições do estado de direito, as quais tomam decisões, e uma periferia, constituída pela esfera pública, em que surge a opinião pública a partir dos problemas oriundos da esfera privada e que, em condições (...) extraordinárias, pode reverter o fluxo do poder e impor o poder comunicativo sobre as instâncias do estado de direito. (shrink)

Ao contrário da maioria dos filósofos contemporâneos que não desenvolveram uma filosofia sistemática, como almejaram os filósofos do passado, Habermas aplica a sua teoria do discurso para todo o espectro de problemas da filosofia e, embora as suas obras pareçam tratar de temas dispersos e sem unidade, este artigo visa mostrar que a teoria do discurso possibilitou a reabilitação do sistema na filosofia, na medida em que permite julgar a validade das proposições da ciência nos discursos teóricos, bem como das (...) normas morais normas jurídicas nos discursos práticos, desde que sejam feitas as devidas adaptações para cada caso, inclusive seguindo a ordem das razões e a ordem cronológica dos temas como fizeram os filósofos sistemáticos. (shrink)

Pettit developed a normative version of republicanism based on the conception of freedom as non-domination, from the separation between Berlin’s negative and positive freedom, constituting a third form of freedom different from the non-interference of liberalism and the self-control of populism. However, the reconstruction of the concept of freedom in the history of philosophy shows that the negative and positive sides form two inseparable faces of the same coin, so Hobbes conceived a concept of freedom as a movement/non-impediment to support (...) Cromwell’s republic, while Liberals, like Locke, thought of freedom as consent/non-arbitrariness and Republicans. (shrink)

O estado democrático de direito constitui-se por meio de uma tensão interna entre direito e política, pois, além de suas funções próprias, uma vez que o direito deve regular os conflitos interpessoais ou coletivos de ação, enquanto a política deve elaborar os programas coletivos de ação, cada um deve desempenhar funções recíprocas para o outro, já que a política, como polo instrumental, deve dotar as normas jurídicas de capacidade de coação, enquanto o direito, como polo normativo, deve emprestar sua própria (...) legitimidade para as decisões políticas. Para a fundamentação dos princípios do estado de direito, é necessário uma reconstrução intersubjetiva da soberania popular com base na teoria do discurso, segundo a qual a soberania não se encontra localizada em nenhum sujeito concreto, mas dispersa na ampla rede de comunicação que perpassa a esfera pública, na qual se forma o poder comunicativo, capaz de neutralizar o poder social dos grupos de pressão e formar uma opinião pública que orienta a tomada de decisões e o poder administrativo das instituições do estado de direito. (shrink)

La política deliberativa de Habermas considera que hay una tensión interna entre facticidad y validez entre política y derecho del Estado de derecho. Kant podría haberla reconocido a partir del concepto de autolegislación. Sin embargo, por causa de la filosofía de la consciencia y de la herencia metafísica del derecho natural, se quedó prisionero de la concepción de la política como potencial de violencia a disposición del legislador, por eso, la neutralizó moralmente por una teoría política sin política en que (...) la filosofía de la historia explica como la naturaleza se encarga de realizar los designios de la razón práctica. (shrink)

A propósito da comemoração do bicentenário da obra de Kant Rumo à paz perpétua, Habermas apresenta uma proposta de reconstrução discursiva do cosmopolitismo que contesta a renovação das objeções realistas de Carl Schmitt, segundo a qual só o retorno ao jus publicum Europaeum possibilita a limitação das guerras, enquanto o universalismo moral, conduziu a uma confusão dos valores do político com os da moral e serviu de fundamento para que a organização cosmopolita transformasse os interesses particulares de uma das partes (...) em valores universais da humanidade e os negasse a outra parte, provocando a criminalização do inimigo e originando as guerras totais. Contudo, Habermas observa que este fundamentalismo dos direitos humanos somente pode ser evitado por uma reconstrução discursiva que mostra que os direitos humanos não são direitos morais e que a formação de uma democracia cosmopolita, é a única capaz de permitir uma aplicação procedimental dos direitos humanos. (shrink)

No direito real, Kant investiga a propriedade privada de uma substância (o solo e os objetos localizados nele). No estado de natureza, somente ocorre a posse física ou empírica de um objeto externo, a partir do postulado jurídico da razão prática como uma lei permissiva, pois, do contrário, as coisas utilizáveis seriam em-si ou res nullius, mas a posse jurídica ou inteligível depende da posse comum originária do solo (que não se confunde com o comunismo primitivo), para evitar que a (...) propriedade seja uma relação entre pessoas e coisas, como acontece na teoria do trabalho, porque todo direito exige um dever correspondente. Todavia, coisas não podem ter deveres com relação a pessoas, condição seguida da vontade unilateral do primeiro ocupante de querer o objeto e do advento de uma vontade unificada a priori do provo, que só se torna efetiva no estado civil, a única capaz de gerar uma obrigação recíproca entre todos; por isso, a posse inteligível somente é possível no estado civil, embora a posse empírica do estado de natureza tenha a presunção de tornar-se jurídica, quando ocorrer a entrada no estado jurídico e vale por comparação na espera e preparação daquele estado. (shrink)

Ultimamente surgiram trabalhos que mostram que Kant fundamenta os direitos humanos a partir da liberdade inata, como único direito inato que o homem possui em virtude de sua humanidade. Contudo, a liberdade inata não permite justificar uma teoria dos direitos humanos porque constitui apenas um direito inato sobre o meu e o teu interior que possibilita a posse empírica, ademais, embora um direito humano seja inalienável, deve-se renunciar a ela para ingressar no estado civil; além disso, as quatro derivações analíticas (...) da liberdade inata geram consequências incompatíveis com uma doutrina dos direitos humanos, pois, enquanto direitos humanos se referem à todos, a igualdade inata e a independência inata se aplicam a um número restrito de pessoas; finalmente, há uma diferenciação na interpretação da fórmula da humanidade no direito e na ética, porque, subjetivamente, tratar a humanidade como um fim exige que o agente considere que o fim da humanidade seja o móbil de sua ação na ética, mas, no direito, exige-se apenas que o seu comportamento externo seja conforme o fim da humanidade, e, objetivamente, no direito, tratar a humanidade como um fim produz uma legislação penal contrária aos direitos humanos e o direito da humanidade exige que a integridade inata seja suspensa durante o período da condenação, ademais, esta diferenciação na ideia de humanidade torna-se explícita na imprejudicabilidade inata, pois, na ética, a mentira é a maior violação do dever da humanidade em sua pessoa, mas, no direito, somente viola o direito da humanidade se causar prejuízo para outros. (shrink)

One of the central methodological issues for contemporary practitioners of comparative ethics is how to conceptualize and relate to the "other" encountered in cross-cultural studies. A valuable resource for reflection on this problem is the work of the French historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau, whose diverse opus coheres around his notion of heterology--a "science of the other." In this article I explore perspectives on the cultural "other" emerging from Certeau's analyses of a series of "travel narratives" documenting the (...) European encounter with the peoples of the New World. Certeau's meditations on the metaphor of the voyage, the interplay of orality and literacy, the politics of ethnography, and the semiotics of the "return of the repressed" offer, I suggest, important insights for comparative ethicists. (shrink)

It is shown that information and meaning can be defined by operative procedures, and that we need to recognize them as new types of natural entities. They are not quantities (neither fundamental nor derived) because they cannot be measured, and they are not qualities because they are not subjective features. Here it is proposed to call them nominable entities, i.e., entities which can be specified only by naming their components in their natural order.

The genetic code appeared on Earth with the first cells. The codes of cultural evolution arrived almost four billion years later. These are the only codes that are recognized by modern biology. In this book, however, Marcello Barbieri explains that there are many more organic codes in nature, and their appearance not only took place throughout the history of life but marked the major steps of that history. A code establishes a correspondence between two independent 'worlds', and the codemaker (...) is a third party between those 'worlds'. Therefore the cell can be thought of as a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype. The ancestral ribotypes were the agents which gave rise to the first cells. The book goes on to explain how organic codes and organic memories can be used to shed new light on the problems encountered in cell signalling, epigenesis, embryonic development, and the evolution of language. (shrink)

This study investigates the possible effects of pre-term births and low birth weight on infant mortality rates (IMRs) over a 15-year period in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, based on surveys carried out in 1978/79 and 1994. The 1978/79 survey included 6750 births over a 12-month period and the 1994 survey 2846 births over a 4-month period. Infant deaths were retrieved monthly from the city register. Infant mortality rate decreased from 36·6 to 16·9 deaths per 1000 over 15 years. The decrease in (...) IMR was larger in the 25000·63); it increased to 0·57 (95% CI 0·350·97) when adjusted for length of gestation and other variables. The increase in pre-term births and low birth weight may have had, at most, a marginal effect on the IMR. Progress in the care of newborns may have decreased the mortality risk, but even mild pre-term birth still has an impact on infant mortality. There is room for further improvement in IMR by tackling the high rates of pre-term birth. (shrink)

Biosemiotics is the synthesis of biology and semiotics, and its main purpose is to show that semiosis is a fundamental component of life, i.e., that signs and meaning exist in all living systems. This idea started circulating in the 1960s and was proposed independently from enquires taking place at both ends of the Scala Naturae. At the molecular end it was expressed by Howard Pattee’s analysis of the genetic code, whereas at the human end it took the form of Thomas (...) Sebeok’s investigation into the biological roots of culture. Other proposals appeared in the years that followed and gave origin to different theoretical frameworks, or different schools, of biosemiotics. They are: (1) the physical biosemiotics of Howard Pattee and its extension in Darwinian biosemiotics by Howard Pattee and by Terrence Deacon, (2) the zoosemiotics proposed by Thomas Sebeok and its extension in sign biosemiotics developed by Thomas Sebeok and by Jesper Hoffmeyer, (3) the code biosemiotics of Marcello Barbieri and (4) the hermeneutic biosemiotics of Anton Markoš. The differences that exist between the schools are a consequence of their different models of semiosis, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. In reality they go much deeper and concern the very nature of the new discipline. Is biosemiotics only a new way of looking at the known facts of biology or does it predict new facts? Does biosemiotics consist of testable hypotheses? Does it add anything to the history of life and to our understanding of evolution? These are the major issues of the young discipline, and the purpose of the present paper is to illustrate them by describing the origin and the historical development of its main schools. (shrink)

Systems Biology and the Modern Synthesis are recent versions of two classical biological paradigms that are known as structuralism and functionalism, or internalism and externalism. According to functionalism (or externalism), living matter is a fundamentally passive entity that owes its organization to external forces (functions that shape organs) or to an external organizing agent (natural selection). Structuralism (or internalism), is the view that living matter is an intrinsically active entity that is capable of organizing itself from within, with purely internal (...) processes that are based on mathematical principles and physical laws. At the molecular level, the basic mechanism of the Modern Synthesis is molecular copying, the process that leads in the short run to heredity and in the long run to natural selection. The basic mechanism of Systems Biology, instead, is self-assembly, the process by which many supramolecular structures are formed by the spontaneous aggregation of their components. In addition to molecular copying and self-assembly, however, molecular biology has uncovered also a third great mechanism at the heart of life. The existence of the genetic code and of many other organic codes in Nature tells us that molecular coding is a biological reality and we need therefore a framework that accounts for it. This framework is Code biology, the study of the codes of life, a new field of research that brings to light an entirely new dimension of the living world and gives us a completely new understanding of the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Letter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions Commenting on “Leaping into the Boundless: A Daoist Reading of Comparative Religious Ethics” by Francisca Cho, “Moral Reason, Risk, and Comparative Inquiry” by Robin W. Lovin, “Heuristic Power as the Test of Theory” by Ronald M. Green, and “The Author Replies” by Francisca Cho.

The genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost four billion years later. For a long time it has been assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if that were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions that appeared only at the beginning and at the end of the history of life. In reality, various other organic codes have been discovered in the (...) past few decades and it is likely that more will come to light in the future. The existence of many organic codes in Nature is therefore an experimental fact, but also more than that. It is one of those facts that have extraordinary implications. In this book it is shown that the genetic code was a precondition for the origin of the first cells, the signal transduction codes divided the first cells into three primary kingdoms (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya), the splicing codes were instrumental to the origin of the eukaryotic nucleus, the histone code provided a new regulation system in eukaryotic genomes, and the cytoskeleton codes allowed the Eukarya to perform internal movements, including those of mitosis and meiosis. It is shown, furthermore, that organic codes had a key role in multicellular life, in particular in the origin of animals, the origin of mind and the origin of language. The great events of macroevolution, in other words, were associated with the appearance of new organic codes, and we can easily understand why. The reason is that a new code brings into existence something that has never existed before because it creates arbitrary associations, relationships that are not determined by physical necessity. Another outstanding implication is the fact that codes involve meaning and we need therefore to introduce in biology, with the standard methods of science, not only the concept of biological information but also that of biological meaning. The research on biological codes, in conclusion, is bringing to light new mechanisms in evolution and new fundamental concepts in science. This research is the field of Code Biology, the study of all codes of life, from the genetic code to the codes of culture, from the origin of life to the origin of man. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok and Noam Chomsky are the acknowledged founding fathers of two research fields which are known respectively as Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics and which have been developed in parallel during the past 50 years. Both fields claim that language has biological roots and must be studied as a natural phenomenon, thus bringing to an end the old divide between nature and culture. In addition to this common goal, there are many other important similarities between them. Their definitions of language, for (...) example, have much in common, despite the use of different terminologies. They both regard language as a faculty, or a modelling system, that appeared rapidly in the history of life and probably evolved as an exaptation from previous animal systems. Both accept that the fundamental characteristic of language is recursion, the ability to generate an unlimited number of structures from a finite set of elements (the property of ‘discrete infinity’). Both accept that human beings are born with a predisposition to acquire language in a few years and without apparent efforts (the innate component of language). In addition to similarities, however, there are also substantial differences between the two fields, and it is an historical fact that Sebeok and Chomsky made no attempt at resolving them. Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics have become two separate disciplines, and yet in the case of language they are studying the same phenomenon, so it should be possible to bring them together. Here it is shown that this is indeed the case. A convergence of the two fields does require a few basic readjustments in each of them, but leads to a unified framework that keeps the best of both disciplines and is in agreement with the experimental evidence. What is particularly important is that such a framework suggests immediately a new approach to the origin of language. More precisely, it suggests that the brain wiring processes that take place in all phases of human ontogenesis (embryonic, foetal, infant and child development) are based on organic codes, and it is the step-by-step appearance of these brain-wiring codes, in a condition that is referred to as cerebra bifida, that holds the key to the origin of language. (shrink)

The existence of different types of semiosis has been recognized, so far, in two ways. It has been pointed out that different semiotic features exist in different taxa and this has led to the distinction between zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis, mycosemiosis, bacterial semiosis and the like. Another type of diversity is due to the existence of different types of signs and has led to the distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis. In all these cases, however, semiosis has been defined by the (...) Peirce model, i.e., by the idea that the basic structure is a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’, and that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis. This model is undoubtedly applicable to animals, since it was precisely the discovery that animals are capable of interpretation that allowed Thomas Sebeok to conclude that they are also capable of semiosis. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear how far the Peirce model can be extended beyond the animal kingdom, and we already know that we cannot apply it to the cell. The rules of the genetic code have been virtually the same in all living systems and in all environments ever since the origin of life, which clearly shows that they do not depend on interpretation. Luckily, it has been pointed out that semiosis is not necessarily based on interpretation and can be defined exclusively in terms of coding. According to the ‘code model’, a semiotic system is made of signs, meanings and coding rules, all produced by the same codemaker, and in this form it is immediately applicable to the cell. The code model, furthermore, allows us to recognize the existence of many organic codes in living systems, and to divide them into two main types that here are referred to as manufacturing semiosis and signalling semiosis. The genetic code and the splicing codes, for example, take part in processes that actually manufacture biological objects, whereas signal transduction codes and compartment codes organize existing objects into functioning supramolecular structures. The organic codes of single cells appeared in the first three billion years of the history of life and were involved either in manufacturing semiosis or in signalling semiosis. With the origin of animals, however, a third type of semiosis came into being, a type that can be referred to as interpretive semiosis because it became closely involved with interpretation. We realize in this way that the contribution of semiosis to life was far greater than that predicted by the Peirce model, where semiosis is always a means of interpreting the world. Life is essentially about three things: (1) it is about manufacturing objects, (2) it is about organizing objects into functioning systems, and (3) it is about interpreting the world. The idea that these are all semiotic processes, tells us that life depends on semiosis much more deeply and extensively than we thought. We realize in this way that there are three distinct types of semiosis in Nature, and that they gave very different contributions to the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Patients suffering from schizophrenia have an impaired meta-representation also known as Theory of Mind . Moreover, the presence of delusions or other positive symptoms of schizophrenia has been correlated to poor ToM performances. Lack of insight is a common symptom of schizophrenia and can be considered a critical manifestation of impaired ToM abilities. In particular, the present study addresses the role of perspective ToM ability in schizophrenic patients. Thirty severely delusional schizophrenic patients completely lack insight when interviewed about their delusions. (...) Seven subsequently gain insight about their mental state when perspective is shifted from the first person to third person. These data suggest that in some delusional schizophrenic patients, it may be possible to gain access to and modify their mental states. (shrink)

Modern biology has not yet come to terms with the presence of many organic codes in Nature, despite the fact that we can prove their existence. As a result, it has not yet accepted the idea that the great events of macroevolution were associated with the origin of new organic codes, despite the fact that this is the most parsimonious and logical explanation of those events. This is probably due to the fact that the existence of organic codes in all (...) fundamental processes of life, and in all major transitions in the history of life, has enormous theoretical implications. It requires nothing less than a new theoretical framework, and that kind of change is inevitably slow. There are too many facts to reconsider, too many bits of history to weave together in a new mosaic. But this is what science is about, and the purpose of the present paper is to show that it can be done. More precisely, it is shown that the whole natural history of the brain can be revisited in the light of the organic codes. What is described here is only a bird’s-eye view of brain macroevolution, but it is hoped that the extraordinary potential of the organic codes can nevertheless come through. The paper contains also another message. The organic codes prove that life is based on semiosis, and are in fact the components of organic semiosis, the first and the most diffused form of semiosis on Earth, but not the only one. It will be shown that the evolution of the brain was accompanied by the development of two new types of sign processes. More precisely, it gave origin first to interpretive semiosis, mostly in vertebrates, and then to cultural semiosis, in our species. (shrink)

Today there are two major theoretical frameworks in biology. One is the ‘chemical paradigm’, the idea that life is an extremely complex form of chemistry. The other is the ‘information paradigm’, the view that life is not just ‘chemistry’ but ‘chemistry-plus-information’. This implies the existence of a fundamental difference between information and chemistry, a conclusion that is strongly supported by the fact that information and information-based-processes like heredity and natural selection simply do not exist in the world of chemistry. Against (...) this conclusion, the supporters of the chemical paradigm have pointed out that information processes are no different from chemical processes because they are both described by the same physical quantities. They may appear different, but this is only because they take place in extremely complex systems. According to the chemical paradigm, in other words, biological information is but a shortcut term that we use to avoid long descriptions of countless chemical reactions. It is intuitively appealing, but it does not represent a new ontological entity. It is merely a derived construct, a linguistic metaphor. The supporters of the information paradigm insist that information is a real and fundamental entity of Nature, but have not been able to prove this point. The result is that the chemical view has not been abandoned and the two paradigms are both coexisting today. Here it is shown that an alternative does exist and is a third theoretical framework that is referred to as the ‘code paradigm’. The key point is that we need to introduce in biology not only the concept of information but also that of meaning because any code is based on meaning and a genetic code does exist in every cell. The third paradigm is the view that organic information and organic meaning exist in every living system because they are the inevitable results of the processes of copying and coding that produce genes and proteins. Their true nature has eluded us for a long time because they are nominable entities, i.e., objective and reproducible observables that can be described only by naming their components in their natural order. They have also eluded us because nominable entities exist only in artifacts and biologists have not yet come to terms with the idea that life is artifact making. This is the idea that life arose from matter and yet it is fundamentally different from it because inanimate matter is made of spontaneous structures whereas life is made of manufactured objects. It will be shown, furthermore, that the existence of information and meaning in living systems is documented by the standard procedures of science. We do not have to abandon the scientific method in order to introduce meaning in biology. All we need is a science that becomes fully aware of the existence of organic codes in Nature. (shrink)

Who is to be included in a political community and on what terms? William A. Barbieri Jr. seeks answers to these questions in this exploration of the controversial concept of citizenship rights—a concept directly related to the nature of democracy, equality, and cultural identity. Through an examination of the case of Germany’s settled “guestworkers” and their families, _Ethics of Citizenship_ investigates the pressing problem of political membership in a world marked by increased migration, rising nationalist sentiment, and the ongoing (...) reorganization of states through both peaceful and violent means. Although some of Germany’s foreign workers have gradually attained a degree of social and economic legitimacy, Barbieri explains how they remain effectively excluded from true German citizenship. Describing how this exclusion has occurred and assessing current attitudes toward political membership in Germany, he argues for a just and democratic policy toward the tax-paying, migrant worker minority, one that would combine the extension of the individual rights of citizenship with the establishment of certain group rights. Through a dissection of ongoing public “membership debates” over issues such as suffrage, dual citizenship, and immigration and refugee policy, Barbieri identifies a range of competing responses to the question of who “belongs” in Germany. After critiquing these views, he proposes an alternative ethic of membership rooted in an account of domination and human rights that seeks to balance individual and group rights within the context of a commitment to democracy and equal citizenship. Indispensable for scholars of German studies, _Ethics of Citizenship_ also raises questions that will attract moral philosophers, constitutional scholars, and those interested in the continuing, global problems associated with migration. (shrink)

Biosemiotics asserts the idea that semiosis is fundamental to life, and that all living creatures are therefore semiotic systems. The idea itself is strongly supportedby the evidence of the genetic code — but thus far it has made little impact in the scientific world, and is largely regarded as the basis for a philosophy of meaning, rather than a basis for a science of meaning. This is regrettable, but perhaps understandable from the scientists’ point of view. Scientists know that the (...) cell is the necessary unit of all life. I will argue here, then, that Biosemiotics can become a science only if it can prove that the cell is, in fact, a semiotic system — i.e., that semiosis exists at the cellular level. To do this, we first need to define what is semiosis, so that we can be explicit about what exactly constitutes a semiotic system. So far, we have had two main answers to this question. One is the model proposed by Saussure, who defined a semiotic system as a duality of ‘signifier and signified’. The other is the model of Peirce, who pointed out that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis and defined a semiotic system as a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’. After the discovery of the genetic code, each of these two models have been applied to biology and have given rise to two distinct schools of biosemiotics. One is the school of Marcel Florkin (1974), which is based on the model of Saussure, and the other is the school of Thomas Sebeok (1972, 2001), which is based on the model of Peirce. Unfortunately, neither of them can be applied to the cell, and that is why most biologists continue to be skeptical about biosemiotics. There is however a third model of semiosis that is actually applicable to the cell. It is based on the theory that the cell is a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype (Barbieri 1981, 1985, 2003). Here, the ribotype is the ribonucleoprotein system of the cell and represents its ‘codemaker’, i.e., the seat of the genetic code. This model assumes that semiosis is defined by coding, not by interpretation, and is therefore referred to as the code model of semiosis. This paper is dedicated to illustrating this third model and, above all, to showing that the cell is a true semiotic system. (shrink)

Jeder weiß: Wenn man eine Aussage nur oft genug wiederholt, erscheint sie einem irgendwann wahr. Fast könnte man sagen, diese Feststellung sei selbst schon eine Binsenweisheit; eben etwas, das fortwährend wiederholt wird. Jüngste Entwicklungen dieser iterativen Praxis und ihres Gegenteils erlauben es, eine alte These der Kritischen Theorie zu aktualisieren, die heute gerne als übertrieben gilt: Totalitäre Regime und freiheitliche Demokratie, Nazipropaganda und zeitgenössische „postfaktische“ Ereignisse sind nicht getrennt voneinander zu betrachten.

Frantz Fanon atuou no contexto argelino como escritor revolucionário, tendo contribuído igualmente para as reflexões no campo cultural. Sua trajetória foi rica na medida em que, além de sua participação na Segunda Guerra Mundial e na luta pela independência da Argélia, posicionou-se em relação às produções culturais de seu tempo. A obra de Fanon abordou parte do pensamento anticolonial e revolucionário e sob esse aspecto, ela não foi completamente considerada pela historiografia da África contemporânea. Seus biógrafos e pesquisadores sugerem que (...) ele operou com maior profundidade as questões de identidade e representatividade para o negro-africano. Através da interpretação de algumas críticas busca-se compreender como Fanon foi invisibilizado no que diz respeito aos movimentos de contestação ao colonialismo e, ainda, como o extremo apego às análises raciais ou étnicas engessaram interpretações variadas sobre esse autor. Ele foi escritor de características múltiplas para quem o caminho percorrido envolveu a crítica ao campo cultural e uma militância política contundente deixando em aberto ainda muitas chaves de leitura sobre esse pensador-ator fundamental para os estudos africanos. Palavras-Chave: Frantz Fanon, revolução, Négritude, cultura, colonial. (shrink)

O presente texto investiga recentes modificações na prática da crítica filosófica. Em sua parte inicial, delineia rapidamente as principais determinações do conceito de crítica, bem como estabelece a ligação entre crítica e crise. Isto é seguido por uma descrição da prática crítica de T.W. Adorno, na qual são apontadas: a) a valorização da leitura micrológica em um contexto de precarização do conceito de totalidade; b) a problematização de uma linearidade temporal por meio da imbricação entre história e natureza; c) a (...) crescente opacidade da linguagem filosófica diante da proximidade de seu objeto. A última parte do texto volta-se para desenvolvimentos recentes da crítica que acentuam as transformações introduzidas por Adorno. Em Derrida, há autonomização do detalhe; em Slavoj Zizek perde-se a diferenciação entre objeto e instrumento de análise; em Deleuze e Guattari, ocorre a dissipação da distância hermenêutica. (shrink)

The discovery of the genetic code has shown that the origin of life has also been the origin of semiosis, and the discovery of many other organic codes has indicated that organic semiosis has been the sole form of semiosis present on Earth in the first three thousand million years of evolution. With the origin of animals and the evolution of the brain, however, a new type of semiosis came into existence, a semiosis that is based on interpretation and is (...) commonly referred to as interpretive, or Peircean semiosis. This suggests that there are two distinct types of semiosis in Nature, one based on coding and one based on interpretation, and all the experimental evidence that we have does support this conclusion. Both in principle and in practice, therefore, there is no conflict between organic semiosis and Peircean semiosis, and yet they have been the object of a fierce controversy because it has been claimed that semiosis is always based on interpretation, even at the cellular level. Such a claim has recently been reproposed in a number of papers and it has become necessary therefore to reexamine it in the light of the proposed arguments. (shrink)