For a long while the dilemma between ‘not being’ and ‘being other’ has haunted the history of Brazil. The country's mixed-race condition lay at the heart of the dilemma which reached its apogee in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. At that point in its history, that is, its emergence as a nation-state, the construction of a national identity became an imperative for the political and intellectual elites of Brazil. In this context, a (...) European, the German naturalist, Carl von Martius, made himself particularly notable for having been one of the first, after Independence, to point out the significance of miscegenation in the composition of Brazilian identity. (shrink)

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has suggested that one of the reasons we as a society invest so little in research on combating aging is because we are in an intellectual trance. We think the effort will be futile: aging is immutable, so why try? A healthy skepticism can be a good thing but it is a major mistake to bet against the irresistible force of inexorable technological progress. Over the next few decades, nanotechnology will come to play a pivotal role (...) in the solution to the problem of human aging. Medical nanorobotics, if it can be made to work, can unquestionably offer convenient solutions to all known causes of age-related damage and most likely can also successfully address any new causes of senescence that remain undiscovered today. (shrink)

The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, by Marcel Mauss, is an important reference in Social Sciences for thinking about the theme of the gift, proposed in this congress. This brief work has as goal to present a rereading of The Gift by contemporary authors that try to think today’s society under this perspective. It’s a literature review of books and articles by Allain Caillé, Jacques Godbout and some Brazilian authors: Eric Sabourin, Marcos Lanna, Paulo Henrique Martins (...) and Jorge Luiz Villela. It is important to emphasize, according to Caillé, 1998, that “the paradigm of the gift is not a machine for blowing solutions, but for inspiring questions”. (shrink)

O percurso acadêmico da Profa. Dra. Maria das Graças de Souza é aqui apresentado sob duas formulações que se entrelaçam: uma discussão sobre seus textos teóricos e a apresentação de suas atividades, no decorrer da carreira acadêmica. A primeira parte, intitulada: “O percurso intelectual: a articulação entre História, Política e ação política”, escrita por Jacira de Freitas, discute as ideias essenciais da produção teórica da filósofa, e defende a hipótese de que nela se reflete um pensamento que articula a (...) História, a Política e a ação política, evidenciando a preocupação em conciliar a teoria e a prática, algo que reaparece em sua atuação como professora, mas se exprime sobretudo no âmbito de seus estudos. A segunda parte do texto, intitulada “A trajetória de uma professora”, escrita por Patrícia Aranovich, debruça-se sobre as atividades desenvolvidas como professora do Departamento de Filosofia da USP, e em suas interações com os Grupos de Estudo e Grupos de Pesquisa em todo o país, assim como com seus orientandos, alunos, amigos e colegas. (shrink)

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do (...) appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

RESUMO O objetivo do presente trabalho consiste em explicitar o itinerário ou linha argumentativa de Gilles Deleuze no artigo intitulado "A concepção da diferença em Bergson", de 1954. Postula-se que nesse trabalho de 1954, Deleuze exponha a noção de 'diferença', que está presente na obra de Henri Bergson, por meio da relação entre três dimensões: metodológica, cosmológica e ontológica. Para tanto, caracteriza-se o conjunto do pensamento de Deleuze em relação à História da Filosofia. Em seguida, identifica-se o percurso das pesquisas (...) de Deleuze sobre a obra de Bergson no contexto de sua versão para a História da Filosofia. Por fim, explicita-se o itinerário de Deleuze no artigo de 1954: "A concepção da diferença em Bergson". ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to explain the itinerary or argumentative line of Gilles Deleuze in the article named "The conception of difference in Bergson" of 1954. It is postulated that in this work of 1954, Deleuze exposes the notion of "difference", which is present in the work of Henri Bergson, through the relation between three dimensions: the methodological, cosmological and ontological ones. For that purpose, the whole of Deleuze's thought in relation to the History of Philosophy is characterized. Then, we identify the course of Deleuze's research on Bergson's work in the context of his version for the History of Philosophy. Finally, we explain the itinerary of Deleuze in the article of 1954: "The conception of difference in Bergson". (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo geral comentar o estatuto do conhecimento da coisa em si na metafísica de Schopenhauer. De modo mais específico, visa analisar como se inserem neste debate, tradicionalmente enfrentado por estudiosos da filosofia schopenhaueriana como Julian Young, Paul Lauxtermann e David Cartwright, duas correntes interpretativas bastante discutidas neste ciclo, principalmente na última década; ambas lidam com o problema da coisa em si a partir de uma interpretação da transição analógica que Schopenhauer empreende do mundo da representação para (...) o da Vontade. Ao disputarem que tipo de conhecimento, metafórico ou metonímico, esse autor pode almejar da coisa em si, é possível apontar como De Cian e Marco Segala, bem como Jorge Prado, por um lado, e Sandra Shapshay, de outro, se distanciam da tradição exegética que lhes antecede; e, mais ainda, em que medida eles são precursores no esforço de apontar uma espécie de “método” específico, alternativo ao método transcendental kantiano, a partir do qual Schopenhauer realizaria sua empreitada metafísica. A fim de situar nossa própria interpretação entre a desses comentadores, focaremos na análise de passagens de O mundo como vontade e como representação e da Crítica da filosofia kantiana, em que Schopenhauer especifica com mais ênfase como deve ser entendida sua abordagem metafísica. (shrink)

The paper advances the hypothesis that George Berkeley's philosophy does not overcome solipsism. In order to do this, it presents four difficulties on his arguments for other existences: (I) the argument about the existence of an external cause for sensitive ideas faces the difficulty of not eliminating the possibility that the mind itself is the cause of these ideas; (II) the argument present in the Dialogues to prove the existence of God is circular: it presupposes the existence of objects distinct (...) from the mind, however, the argument for the existence of these objects presupposes the existence of God; (III) the argument in favor of the existence of those objects, besides being related to the mentioned circularity, is developed without Berkeley presenting a clear notion of what these objects are; (IV) the argument for the existence of other minds, in what appears to be their most plausible interpretation – which states that it is possible to infer the existence of other minds from the observation of irregular, inconstant, and vicious actions in subjects –, faces the difficulty that, in a scenario where such actions do not exist, Berkeley loses the evidence for the existence of other minds. (shrink)

The paper discusses the notions of ‘consciousness’ and ‘reflection’ in John Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding. It attempts to present two criteria by means of which it would be possible to distinguish between these mental activities. Firstly, consciousness is a passive, involuntary activity and does not depend on attention to be exerted, unlike reflection, which is, at least in one of its degrees – since Locke conceives the existence of two degrees of reflection –, an active, voluntary, and attentive (...) activity of mind. Second, consciousness may be distinguished from reflection in that it is a mental activity that produces judgments / beliefs, unlike reflection, whose activities only produce ideas. While consciousness allows human beings to know – to judge about and to believe the existence of their mental phenomena –, reflection is only a mental capacity to have ideas and, as such, it is not true or false. (shrink)

La autora argumenta sobre la necesidad de pensar en un desarrollo humano sostenible por las profundas transformaciones de la sociedad contemporánea a partir de la globalización de la economía, y la reestructuración productiva que ello genera. Sostiene que del presente concepto de desarrollo no podemos esperar alcanzar la calidad de vida como es concebida y esperada por cada sociedad, y presenta tres propuestas que sí reúnen las condiciones para responder de manera más adecuada a un desarrollo socialmente deseable. Ellas son (...) el Ecodesarrollo, el Desarrollo Sostenible y el Desarrollo Endógeno. Tras ello, postula la relevancia de generar investigación participativa para dirigirse al desarrollo deseado, y ejemplifica con varios proyectos de desarrollo local en el Brasil. (shrink)

The paper covers the discussion of three aspects of Thomas Reid’s political thought. Initially, it presents and discusses Reid’s understanding of Politics. Secondly, it is argued that, unlike the first principles of other branches of knowledge, such as Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind and Morals, the first principles of Politics are not the first principles of common sense. Politics is founded on a form of empirical knowledge that cannot be identified with common sense, with the judgments and beliefs due to the (...) original constitution of mind that are shared by most humans. Finally, it is argued, from a parallel with the philosophy of nature, that common sense has only a methodological role in Politics. (shrink)

In this essay Elizabeth de Freitas follows Tim Ingold's groundbreaking anthropological work on lines and their cultural and material significance to argue that the line is the engine of theory, be it the drawn line of inscription or mathematical measure, the exclusionary line of delineation, or the undulating generative line of flight. De Freitas focuses on contemporary theories of perception that deploy the line — and mobilize the force of theory — so as to encode and reconfigure the (...) student's body. She draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze to develop a topological approach to the line, and argues that such an approach aligns with current philosophical approaches to social interaction that might be termed “topo-philosophy.”. (shrink)

O texto aqui apresentado se constrói na intersecção de duas vertentes de interpretação da filosofia de Rousseau: por um lado, aquelas que privilegiam o aspecto moral do pensamento do genebrino; e, por outro lado, as leituras concentradas nos aspectos autobiográficos de sua obra.

As análises de Rousseau indicam que o ingresso no universo simbólico traz consigo a possibilidade da perda da unidade do indivíduo e com ela a possibilidade de ruptura do vínculo social. Partindo da demonstração que a mediação dos signos representativos dá-se em três instâncias distintas, procurou-se detectar se a mesma lógica que comanda o sistema como um todo subjaz às suas teorias musicais. A idéia de que uma seqüência hierarquizada de valores, que vão do mínimo ao máximo de inserção de (...) signos representativos, também se exprime nas concepções musicais de Rousseau é aqui demonstrada, de modo que estas se integram perfeitamente ao conjunto da obra do autor por estarem em conformidade com os princípios que fundamentam suas doutrinas. (shrink)

O BIODIREITO E A DESILUSÃO DA BIOLOGIA DE MICHEL FOUCAULT.

Este artigo aborda criticamente alguns conceitos referentes ao vínculo entre racionalidade, abstração e poder, tomados em contraste com a noção de mímesis, tal como Adorno e Horkheimer concebem na Dialética do esclarecimento. Partindo da diferenciação de quatro conceitos de esclarecimento, procuramos demonstrar o caráter inadequado da equalização entre esclarecimento e exercício violento e ideológico do poder, mostrando como o conceito de abstração, que nos parece servir de base para o primeiro capítulo daquela obra, permite delinear melhor a cisão entre as (...) formas de conhecimento miméticas e as que lhe sucederam, tomando como ponto de partida a concepção mítica grega arcaica. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apontar a importância vital do diálogo socrático e, em especial, na figura de Sócrates na construção da tese dos exercícios espirituais de Pierre Hadot e a transformação/construção ética do sujeito ante a condição frágil e vulnerável do ser humano. Esse objetivo é aqui pensado a partir da interpretação que Hadot faz da figura de Sócrates e da filosofia antiga. Com efeito, desde o início do pensamento grego, o Sábio aparece como uma norma viva e concreta (...) como nota Hadot: “essas pesquisas, essas reflexões sobre o Sábio como norma se fixaram pouco a pouco, por muitas razões, na figura única de Sócrates”. Sócrates torna-se o mediador entre o ideal transcendente de sabedoria e a realidade ética humana concreta. (shrink)

Popper's thesis that the growth of knowledge lies in the emergence of problems out of criticism and takes place in an autonomous world of products of the human mind (his so-called world-3) raises two questions: (1) Why does criticism lead to new problems, and (2) Why can only a limited number of tentative solutions arise at a given time? I propose the following answer: Criticism entails an overlooked evolutionary world-3 mechanism, namely, the migration of piece meal conceptual schemes from one (...) research tradition to another. Popper by passed the questions above because he relied very heavily on the selective power of criticism. (shrink)

As a continuation of the previous paper,Praying for a Miracle – Negative or Positive Impacts on Health Care, published in this research topic, this second paper aims at delving deeper into the same theme, but now from a simultaneously practical and conceptual approach. With that in mind, we revisit three theoretical models based on evidence, through which we can understand the role of a miracle in hospital settings and assess its impact in health contexts. For each of the models described, (...) we seek to illustrate the possible outcomes of belief in miracles as a modality of religious coping in situations of stress and suffering experienced by patients and caregivers in the face of gloomy diagnoses on coming across the limits of medicine to revert certain illnesses (e.g., child cancer) or biological conditions (e.g., fetal malformation). We posit that the judgment about how such a mechanism is healthy or not for each of the people involved (patient, caregiver, and/or health professional) depends on the modulation between the conception of the miracle adopted by the patient and/or caregiver and the concrete outcomes of the way of responding to the situations that accompany the gravity of the illness or condition. To better understand this process of psychological modulation that accompanies belief in miracles, we revisit the concepts of spirituality, religiosity, and religion, pointing out the connections and distinctions between them from a phenomenological perspective. We then present a conceptual model that takes these connections and distinctions into consideration to foster an understanding of miracles, their relations with the diversity of experiences of people who meet in hospital settings (patients, caregivers, and health professionals), and their respective impacts on healthcare. (shrink)

Resumen: En Le courage de la vérité, justo antes del análisis en torno de la filosofía cínica, se hace referencia a una serie de textos que han abordado en alguna medida la cuestión del influjo del cinismo helenístico más allá de los márgenes de la Antigüedad. El único de los textos mencionados que no es alemán y que tiene como autor a alguien que pertenece al escenario intelectual de Foucault es Cynisme et passion de André Glucksmann, trabajo que ha sido (...) obviado por las diferentes investigaciones en torno a la filosofía cínica y por los estudios sobre la “vuelta” foucaultiana a los griegos. En el presente ensayo no procuraremos apenas dejar en evidencia la originalidad y pertinencia de la concepción glucksmanniana del cinismo, sino, además, mostraremos los elementos en los que se descubre un paralelismo entre dicha concepción y lo sostenido por Foucault en el último de sus seminarios impartidos en el Collège.: In Le courage de la vérité, just prior to his analysis of Cynicism, Foucault refers to a series of texts that have addressed, to some extent, the influence of Ancient Cynicism beyond the margins of ancient times. Among the texts mentioned, there is only one that is not German, whose author belongs to Foucault’s intellectual environment: André Glucksmann’s Cynisme et passion. This work has been ignored by both different pieces of research on Cynicism, and the studies regarding Foucault’s “return” to the Greeks. The present article will not merely highlight the originality and relevance of Glucksmann’s conception of Cynicism, but it will also reveal the elements in which parallelisms can be found between such conception and what Foucault claims in his last course at the Collège de France. (shrink)

The paper states a hypothesis concerning Thomas Reid's moderation in his reply to skepticism. It is initially argued that commonsense beliefs, though due to reliable faculties, are doubtful, fallible, and correctable. They are not completely immune to skeptical attack. It is further argued that Reid intends to reply only to one form of skepticism, the partial one – the skepticism of authors who accept at least one mental faculty as a reliable source of knowledge. Reid does not intend to argue (...) with the skeptic who equally denies his assent to the reliability of all faculties – that is, the radical skeptic. This radical form of skepticism is harmless to practical life and philosophy and, for that reason, is not a threat. Finally, the hypothesis advanced is discussed considering other interpretations of Reid’s reply to skepticism. (shrink)

For a long while the dilemma between ‘not being’ and ‘being other’ has haunted the history of Brazil. The country's mixed-race condition lay at the heart of the dilemma which reached its apogee in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. At that point in its history, that is, its emergence as a nation-state, the construction of a national identity became an imperative for the political and intellectual elites of Brazil. In this context, a (...) European, the German naturalist, Carl von Martius, made himself particularly notable for having been one of the first, after Independence, to point out the significance of miscegenation in the composition of Brazilian identity. (shrink)

The notion of linguistic correction with which Augustine of Hippo introduced his Ars pro fratrum mediocritate breuiata seems central to the philosopher's grammatical discussion, not only because of the various examples that Augustine offers about the definitions of barbarism and soloecism at the end of this treatise, but also because the subject of correction and, consequently, of the deviations of language, are also presented in other non-grammatical works: The confessions, De ordine and De doctrina Christiana. In this article, we propose (...) to evaluate the conceptual outlines of the notions of barbarism and solecism in the work of Augustine, considering, on the one hand, the definitions present in the Ars breuiata, and, on the other, the way in which Augustine also presents them in his philosophical work. We propose that the normative orientation contained in the text of ars must be relativised by ethical questions that arise from the comments present in the Confessions, the De ordine and the De doctrina Christiana. (shrink)

The present article intends to approach as its theme the encounter between the religions in the perspective of the hope in Jürgen Moltmann. In the first moment, it is noticed that, due to the serious problems that affect today’s society, there is the necessity of having a cooperation among the different religions, which will only be possible if there is a perspective of change based on hope in the transformation of the current reality Secondly, there is the discussion about the (...) need for a theology of hope that changes our thoughts and builds new perspectives from faith, and that strengthens the collaborative bonds of all those who seek the same ideal of building an alternative world, where justice and peace are its base. A third moment will be based on the following question: from the eschaton, what other world is it possible to build? As a thesis, Moltmann’s thought will be the reason to understand that in the eschaton what unites prevails over what divides, for the urgencies of transformation overcome divergences, being fundamental the perspective of hope as lens from which it is possible a collaborative encounter between religions. (shrink)

Este artigo problematiza, sob o ponto de vista teórico da Análise do Discurso francesa, por que, em algumas regiões do Nordeste brasileiro, há quem evite pronunciar a palavra macaco e opte por usar em seu lugar outras palavras, tais como dezessete. A hipótese defendida é a de que essa prática cultural-discursiva, entendida aqui como uma forma de interdição, ocorre basicamente em regiões sertanejas onde a memória do cangaço é ainda marcadamente diluída no cotidiano. A partir da análise de discursos presentes (...) no dia a dia, este artigo pretende contribuir para uma compreensão mais acurada de uma particularidade sociocultural brasileira. (shrink)

Este estudo tem como finalidade analisar a perspectiva da arte como parte do aparato de dominação social, desenvolvida na obra A ideologia da sociedade industrial, de Herbert Marcuse. Para isso, utilizaremos como referência constante as teorias propostas pelos filósofos da Escola de Frankfurt, em especial Theodor W. Adorno e Max Horkheimer no que diz respeito, sobretudo, ao termo “indústria cultural”, cujo conceito aparece no capítulo homônimo de A dialética do esclarecimento. Apoiaremo-nos também na tese de doutorado de Imaculada Kangussu, intitulada (...) Leis da liberdade: as relações entre Estética e Política na Filosofia de Herbert Marcuse, e, ainda, nas demais obras marcuseanas, com destaque para Eros e Civilização: uma interpretação filosófica do pensamento de Freud. (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

In his struggle to constitute sociology as a natural science, Durkheim fought against finalism, Gabriel Tarde’s general project, efforts at theoretical synthesis unconnected to specific empirical problems, and ideological analysis. The article dwells on these four “epistemological battles,” especially on Durkheim’s (unfortunately failed) effort toward purging the social sciences from ideological analysis.

Neste artigo discutimos como algumas questões políticas que permearam as fases da Psicologia Industrial, Psicologia Organizacional e da Psicologia do Trabalho ajudaram na construção do pluralismo teórico da subárea da Psicologia no contexto do trabalho, uma vez que essas se encontram hoje interagind..

This book expands the landscape of research in mathematics education by analyzing how the body influences mathematical thinking.

As pesquisas sobre biopoder e biopolítica, cada vez mais, emergem e sobrevoam altitudes nunca antes vistas. A ressignificação destes termos, por parte de Michel Foucault, denota campos de saberes mútuos, ou, no mínimo, se apresentam sob diversas discussões de níveis acadêmicos variados. Deste modo, o intuito deste artigo é utilizar o aparato conceitual foucaultiano a respeito do biopoder e da biopolítica para analisarmos alguns fatos que acontecem na cidade de Belém do Pará. Para isso, elucidaremos o termo da obra de (...) Foucault, respondendo a 3 questões básicas: 1ª- O que é o biopoder? 2ª- Por que pensar o biopoder hoje? 3ª- Como a reflexão teórica do biopoder pode nos proporcionar um entendimento ou análise de mundo? Esperamos que a discussão suscite novos debates a nível local, pelo Brasil. (shrink)