The aim of the paper is to discuss Lacan’s phrase in the title so as to show not only that the reality of the unconscious is problematic and requires an ethical approach but also that such an approach is recommended to psychoanalytical practice in general. Psychoanalysis would then be conceived as an ethics of the real – of the encounter with the traumatic, the critical or or the unassimilable.

While it is generally accepted that texts concerning navigation written by the Portuguese mathematician and cosmographer Pedro Nunes (1502–1578) were influential in erudite circles of Europe, less is known about the real impact and diffusion of his work among the less educated, such as professionals associated with sea voyages. Did Nunes' theoretical contributions reach the relevant artisans and practitioners? If so, how did this come about?This paper uses the case of Pedro Nunes to investigate how complex theoretical ideas were transmitted (...) to artisans in early modern Europe. It begins by examining the ways in which Nunes managed to interface with practitioners while working as a cosmographer. Second, it focuses on how his ideas, techniques, and results were used and transmitted by other agents, such as fellow cosmographers, navigation teachers, or mathematical practitioners. This paper concentrates on the transmission of such knowledge through vernacular texts – mainly navigation manuals and class notes – produced in the Iberian Peninsula and England in the 16th and 17th centuries. It shows how these agents facilitated the convergence between two distinct intellectual worlds – those of scholars and those of artisans – by rendering highly mathematical subjects more accessible to practitioners. (shrink)

This study attempts to analyse the relationship between two key psychological variables associated with performance in sports - Self-Determined Motivation and Competitive Anxiety - through Bayesian Networks analysis. We analysed 674 university students/athletes from 44 universities that competed at the University Games in México, with an average age of 21 years (SD = 2.07) and with a mean of 8.61 years’ (SD = 5.15) experience in sports. Methods: Regarding the data analysis, first a CHAID algorithm was carried out to determine (...) the dependence links between variables, and then a Bayesian networks was developed. The validation of the BN revealed AUC values ranging from 0.5 to 0.92. Subsequently, various instantiations were performed with hypothetical values applied to the “bottom” variables. Results showed two probability trees that have extrinsic motivation and amotivation at the top, while the anxiety/activation due to worries about performance was at the bottom of the probabilities. The instantiations carried out support the existence of these probabilistic relationships, demonstrating their scarce influence on anxiety about competition generated by the intrinsic motivation, and the complex probabilistic effect of introjected and identified regulation regarding the appearance of anxiety due to worry about performance. (shrink)

In a letter addressed to Mercator in 1558, John Dee made an odd announcement, describing the Portuguese mathematician and cosmographer Pedro Nunes as the ‘most learned and grave man who is the sole relic and ornament and prop of the mathematical arts among us’, and appointing him his intellectual executor. This episode shows that Dee considered Nunes one of his most distinguished contemporaries, and also that some connection existed between the two men. Unfortunately not much is known about this connection, (...) and even such basic questions such as ‘What could John Dee know about this Portuguese cosmographer’s scientific work?’ or ‘When, why and where did this interest come about?’ still lack proper answers. In this paper I address this connection and examine Nunes’ influence on Dee’s mathematical work. I argue that Dee was interested in Nunes’ work as early as 1552 . I also claim that Dee was aware of Nunes’ programme for the use of mathematics in studying physical phenomena and that this may have influenced his own views on the subject. (shrink)

Os medicamentos estão presentes no cotidiano de pessoas e sociedades de uma maneira inédita no âmbito da cultura. Do ponto de vista da economia, produção, circulação e consumo cresceram massivamente e integram de maneira decisiva os fluxos financeiros produtivos e rentistas que atravessam o planeta. Do ponto de vista das subjetividades, e enquanto objetos tecnológicos, eles atendem às demandas dos processos saúde doença, contribuem para a melhoria de diferentes performatividades humanas e ainda alimentam o sonho do melhoramento e da felicidade. (...) Com o objetivo de problematizar o lugar cultural e tecnocientífico dos medicamentos, este artigo percorre trabalhos de Madeleine Akrisch, François Dagognet, Philippe Pignare e Ronald W. Dworkin, que os abordam em diferentes perspectivas. Na sequência, discute os processos de medicalização e biomedicalização em curso nos dias atuais, destacando as questões do sujeito cerebral, do self neuroquímico, e do lugar atual da psicologia cognitiva. Em contraponto, retoma a figura do monstro, tal como abordada por Michel Foucault, para ativá-la como categoria da imaginação, da anomalia e da singularização, multiplicando os horizontes éticos que se colocam para a pesquisa conjunta entre tecnociências e subjetividades. (shrink)

Resenha do livro _Nietzsche: além-do-homem e idealidade estética_. Escrito por Roberto de Almeida Pereira de Barros..

The fictional regime of the photographic image allows Helena Almeida to stage a theatrical metamorphosis of her own body through displacements, expansions and dissimulations, placing photography at the heart of a pictorial transgression that undermines the disciplinary boundaries of visual media: the artist becomes ink, inhabits the empty canvas space, multiplies herself in mirror games that produce the unfolding of a body in deep crisis, thrown beyond its physical limits and identity. Moreover, in multimedia works such as Feel me, (...) Hear me and See me (1979–1980), as well as in some images of the series entitled The House (1982–1983), Almeida seems to move towards a radical linguistic and pictorial derangement, likely to break the traditional communicative and representative mechanisms. We seek to demonstrate, on the basis of these different aspects relating to photography’s effects of hybridization, and making use of the post-structuralist thought of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, that the artist moves towards the designation of a structural space that combines photography, writing and the reinvention of the body. Almeida’s work confronts us with a complex reconfiguration of ways of seeing, feeling and thinking the photographic act, as well as its discursive features. (shrink)

In his essay “Pre-Conventions: A Fragment of the Background”, Bruno Celano seems to endorse three claims about what he calls ‘pre-conventions’: that such ‘entities’ exist; that they are neither rules nor de facto regularities; and that their ‘character’ is at once factual and normative: that pre-conventions are “literally, ‘normative facts’.” I suggest that and are not particularly striking claims, and that Celano’s case for is unpersuasive.

A tradução anotada do Minos, acompanhada de uma valiosa introdução e de notas explicativas, de autoria do Professor Bruno Amaro Lacerda, lançada pela Editora Max Limonad no ano de 2021, é uma importante contribuição para os Estudos Clássicos e também para os interessados em Filosofia do Direito.

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, (...) since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. (shrink)

Translation of the initial chapters of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics into Portuguese and introduction, which addresses interpretative disagreements and translation choices.

Discussions of divine simplicity generally overlook the distinction between identity claims that are reductivist and identity claims that are eliminativist. If, for instance, the identity claim that 'the chair = a configuration of particles' is merely reductive, then there exist chairs and there exist configurations of particles and it turns out that they are identical. The identity in this case does not reduce the ontological complexity of the world. But if the identity claim is eliminativist, then it is true again (...) that chairs are configurations of particles, but chairs do not in fact exist. The illusory object that we call a chair turns out to be nothing over and above a configuration of physical particles. The chair reduces to the configuration of particles without remainder. The defense of divine simplicity in this paper argues that it is in this eliminativist sense that God's intrinsic properties are identical to God. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that intrinsically bad possible worlds are inconsistent with the perfect goodness of God. A perfectly good being could not exist in possible worlds that are intrinsically bad. Indeed it is widely believed that possible worlds that are insufficiently good are inconsistent with a perfectly good God. Modal atheological arguments aim to show that, since the pluriverse includes intrinsically bad worlds and insufficiently good worlds, there necessarily does not exist a perfectly good God. I show that modal (...) atheological arguments are in general invalid. Modal atheological arguments fail to show that there exists no perfectly good God even on the assumption that there are extremely bad worlds in the pluriverse. Modal atheological arguments depend entirely on the logic of modality in S5. But the logic of S5 ensures that a perfectly good God is consistent with extremely bad possible worlds and so guarantees that a perfectly good God is consistent with a plenitudinous pluriverse. (shrink)

William Rowe has argued that if there is an infinite sequence of improving worlds then an essentially perfectly good being must actualize some world in the sequence and must not actualize any world in the sequence. Since that is impossible, there exist no perfectly good beings. I show that Rowe's argument assumes that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent. Since we are given no reason to believe that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent we (...) have no reason to believe Rowe's Argument from Improvability is sound. (shrink)

I consider the most serious problem for the traditional account of divine creation in theistic actualism. According to van Inwagen's modal collapse argument, ultimate explanation entails that gratitude to God for one's existence is totally inappropriate. Ultimately, the actual world, and everything in it, is self-explanatory, and not a consequence of divine creation. I argue that van Inwagen's argument is unsound. It is consistent with an ultimate explanation for the world that the actual world is contingently necessary. If God actualizes (...) the world as a matter of contingent necessity, then gratitude to God for one's existence is perfectly appropriate. It is true that we exist as a matter of necessity, but that necessary existence is just a contingent fact. There are possible worlds in which we fail to exist altogether. (shrink)

A recepção de Hannah Arendt ocorre principalmente no domínio da filosofia política, de modo a interpretá-la como uma teórica das crises do século XX. Contudo, essa perspectiva perde de vista os pressupostos e compromissos teóricos que a obra arendtiana assume com a tradição filosófica alemã, os quais permitem identificar problemas ainda não tratados em sua recepção. Assim, por meio de uma revisão bibliográfica, aliada à análise de ensaios teóricos da autora, esse artigo objetiva apontar uma lacuna na literatura arendtiana ao (...) verificar, de um lado, a presença de uma estrutura fenomenológica nos textos de Hannah Arendt e, por outro, conexões entre os seus temas e métodos e o problema da crise de identidade da filosofia. Dessa forma, ao evidenciar o tratamento deste problema na obra de Hannah Arendt, amplia-se sua recepção além do domínio da filosofia política. (shrink)

Esta pesquisa fundamenta-se nos debates sobre o papel da escola na atualidade e dos professores em temos de formação, atuação e práticas pedagógicas, dando prioridade nesta abordagem aos novos tempos vivenciados por essa classe de profissionais, pondo em questão as instituições escolares enquanto ambientes formadores e os professores como atores que, muitas vezes, tem papel decisivo para o processo ensino-aprendizagem, papel esse que tem estado em maior evidência por conta das diversas mutações ocorridas na sociedade, caracterizadas pelo mundo contemporâneo. Este (...) estudo está sendo realizado por meio de levantamento bibliográfico. O foco desta investigação determina-se em proporcionar, uma contribuição favorável para discussão sobre a atuação da escola e da prática exercida pelos professores, frente aos novos tempos e aos novos desafios trazidos pela contemporaneidade. (shrink)

Translated from the French, this book analyzes the paradoxes that fundamentally characterize Nietzsche’s philosophy and texts.

On the basis of arguments showing that none of the most influential analyses of Moore's paradox yields a successful resolution of the problem, a new analysis of it is offered. It is argued that, in attempting to render verdicts of either inconsistency or self-contradiction or self-refutation, those analyses have all failed to satisfactorily explain why a Moore-paradoxical proposition is such that it cannot be rationally believed. According to the proposed solution put forward here, a Moore-paradoxical proposition is one for which (...) the believer can have no non-overridden evidence. The arguments for this claim make use of some of Peter Klein's views on epistemic defeasibility. It is further suggested that this proposal may have important meta-epistemological implications. (shrink)

Michael J. Almeida presents a bold new defence of the existence of God. He argues that entrenched principles in philosophical theology which have served as basic assumptions in apriori, atheological arguments are in fact philosophical dogmas. Almeida argues that not only are such principles false - they are necessarily false.

Giordano Bruno.--La cena de le ceneri.--De la causa, principio e uno.--De l'infinito, universi e mondi.--Spaccio de la bestia trionfante.--De gli eroici furori.--Accusa e condanna di Bruno.--Nota bibliografica (p. 313-315).

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in legal philosophy about how to attribute purposes to rules. Separately, within cognitive science, there has been a growing body of research concerned with questions about how people ordinarily attribute purposes. Here, we argue that these two separate fields might be connected by experimental jurisprudence. Across four studies, we find evidence for the claim that people use the same criteria to attribute purposes to physical objects and to rules. In both cases, purpose attributions appear to (...) be governed not so much by original intention or by moral value as by current practice. We argue that these findings in the cognitive science of purpose attribution have implications for jurisprudential questions involving purposivist legal interpretation. (shrink)

This paper examines undergraduate business students' perception of corporate social responsibility in cases in which they have not attended any specific course either dealing with CSR or providing training in ethics. A survey was conducted of 535 Spanish business students as future managers. The results show that the stakeholders' perspective deserves a huge attention for those students considering what the keys of business success are. Significant differences in perception were nevertheless identified when a multifactorial analysis was undertaken. Female students are (...) more concerned about CSR issues. The maximization of value for shareholders is less valued by second- and third-year students than by first-year ones. The findings point to a number of important orientations for the future development of university curriculum. (shrink)

A precursor to the hard problem of consciousness confronts nihilism. Like physicalism, nihilism collides with the first-personal fact of what perception and action are like. Unless this problem is solved, nature’s inclusion of conscious experience will remain, as Chalmers warns the physicalist, an “unanswered question” and, as Jacobi chides the nihilist, “completely inexplicable". One advantage of Kant’s Copernican turn is to dismiss the question that imposes this hard problem. We need not ask how nature is accompanied by the first-person standpoint (...) because “I think” is an apperceptive form of thinking that must be able to accompany any cognition of nature. Kant’s formal conception of apperception worries Fichte in his Nova Methodo lectures. This conception arguably cannot exhaust the ground of experience, for it does not show why we posit objects “at all". For Fichte, it is our agency that first opens a world of objects, viz., as subjects, means, ends, and obstacles. In what follows, I argue that, for Fichte, the I poses no hard problem because it collides exclusively with nihilistic views like Spinozism, which are refuted by a properly transcendental idealist conception of apperception, according to which the first-person standpoint is the absolute ground of our experience of nature. If transcendental idealism refutes nihilism, nature is no more explicable than that there is something it is like for me to perceive and act. In Section 1, I show why Kantian apperception is necessary for possible experience. In Section 2, I reconstruct Fichte’s argument that a modified conception of apperception refutes guises of nihilism, thereby solving the hard problem of consciousness. In Section 3, I suggest that transcendental idealism undermines Chalmers’ proposed solution to and Dennett’s dismissal of this problem. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the pluralist (...) are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’. I argue that, properly applied, the principle of logical realism is no threat to the claim that the languages in question are notational variants. Indeed, there seems to be every reason to think that they are. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or epistemic rationality ) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.

The Illusion of the Body: Introducing the Body Alive Principle is the divinely inspired work of author David Almeida. This book opens the door to a new understanding in metaphysical thinking. The author draws on the philosophy of panpsychism to support his contention that an unseen ocean of consciousness exists all around us, and within our own bodies (i.e. cells, organs, and systems). The author refers to the Body Alive Principle as “panpsychic healing.” This text offers proven techniques for (...) communicating with the body intelligences the author terms the “little minds.” This process is intended to bring healing to those with both minor and severe medical conditions. Some of the most common medical complaints treated by the Body Alive Principle includes:1. Back or neck pain2. Allergies3. Arthritis/rheumatism4. Difficulty walking5. Headaches6. Lung problems7. Digestive8. Gynecological9. Anxiety disorders10. Heart conditionsThe author contends that even the most nefarious medical issues are curable or can be successfully managed using the Body Alive Principle. This is accomplished through the action of human “super mind”, which will at times consciously supervise the activities of the little minds. The Illusion of the Body instructs its Body Alive practitioners to approach their recovery using several time-tested techniques. Three widely recognized methods are employed in the application of the panpsychic healing philosophy. These modalities are creative visualization and empathetic listening followed by affirmative commands. Each technique is essential to the effectiveness of the Body Alive Principle.This book also discusses guilt and its deleterious effect on the body. True guilt has a beneficial quality when it prevents us from repeating an unacceptable behavior. Beyond this, guilt causes us to become ineffectual. The author holds that this antiquated form guilt needs to be purged, so that we may move on with our lives. A step-by-step process for liberating oneself from the chains of guilt is provided.There is also a section dedicated to trauma because of its potential to immobilize an affected person. Traumatic experiences suddenly unleashed on the body may produce waves of acute anxiety, which wreak havoc on its finely tuned systems. The author recounts his personal experience of negotiating the discharge of negative experiences with the entities supporting them.The Body Alive Principle promotes the importance of adhering to high moral standards in order to maintain homeostasis within ourselves. Integrity is of the outmost importance to the little minds. The author emphasizes the necessity for one to act within the domain of moral excellence. However, the author makes it clear that integrity is a process we work to perfect throughout our lives.The Illusion of the Body represents the author's many years of metaphysical study and experimentation. The author hopes to generate a greater awareness and appreciation of our precious bodily intelligences. The organic vessels that contain our consciousness are alive. They are almost countless in number. If we, the super mind can learn to communicate with the little minds in a positive way, we can ensure ourselves of a more comfortable journey. (shrink)

This chapter challenges Cantor’s notion of the ‘power’, or ‘cardinality’, of an infinite set. According to Cantor, two infinite sets have the same cardinality if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. Cantor showed that there are infinite sets that do not have the same cardinality in this sense. Further, he took this result to show that there are infinite sets of different sizes. This has become the standard understanding of the result. The chapter challenges this, arguing (...) that we have no reason to think there are infinite sets of different sizes. It begins with an initial argument against Cantor’s claim that there are infinite sets of different sizes and then proceeds, by way of an analogy between Cantor’s mathematical result and Russell’s paradox, to a more direct argument. (shrink)