The paper follows the thesis, that the perception of real or virtual media shares the anthropological state of "Ausdruckswahrnehmung" or perception of expression (Ernst Cassirer). This kind of perception does not represent a distant, neutral point of view, but one that is guided by feelings or "vitality affects" (Daniel N. Stern). The prerequisites, however, for triggering these feelings/"vitality affects" are not recognizable objects or motifs, but rather their sensually evaluable “abstract representations” or their formal logical structures. In contrast to aesthetic (...) feelings, however, they affect not only our feelings of lust or unlust or our knowledge (formal aesthetics) but also our actions (semiotics). So, when I extend aesthetic experiences to semiotic effects, I will talk about vitality semiotics. This new concept is of consequence, because the thesis of the responsibility of the producer is based on these effects. This is to be carried out by analyzing and presenting the approach of the Bauhaus master Josef Albers. (shrink)

Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. The one I propose (...) also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments. (shrink)

SOCIOLOGIA: TRANSFORMAÇÕES SOCIAIS E POLÍTICAS -/- SOCIOLOGY: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE - [email protected] e [email protected] e WhatsApp:(82)98143-8399 -/- -/- 1. PREMISSA -/- Muitas foram as transformações sociais e políticas vividas em nossa sociedade. Algumas foram violentas e transformaram radicalmente as sociedades. Outras levaram à independência do jugo colonial ou neocolonial. Há também aquelas que brotaram de acordos entre classes dominantes ou que se constituíram movimentos liderados pela burguesia ascendente. -/- (...) Merecem destaque aquelas que eclodiram no século XX, consideradas populares por terem registrado significativa participação do povo nos países onde ocorreram. -/- 2. TRANSFORMAÇÕES LENTAS E GRADUAIS -/- As transformações em algumas sociedades foram lentas e graduais, permeadas por acordos, conciliações, reformas. Em alguns momentos houve até atos violentos, coordenados por quem estava no poder e sempre em acordo com as novas classes dominantes e os grupos mais poderosos dos momentos históricos precedentes. -/- São exemplos desse tipo de mudança social o que aconteceu na Inglaterra, no Japão e na Alemanha. -/- A Revolução Inglesa foi um movimento em que uma parcela dos senhores de terras e comerciantes se insurgiu contra o poder absoluto do rei e de seus associados (principalmente a nobreza e o clero, que nada produziam). Iniciada em 1642, tinha como objetivo limitar e condicionar esse poder a determinadas funções, impedindo o controle do comércio e da indústria e a criação de impostos pelo rei sem autorização do Parlamento. Após prolongado conflito civil, as forças políticas que lutavam contra o absolutismo derrubaram a monarquia, em 1649, e proclamaram a república. Esse movimento tornou possível a eliminação dos últimos laços que prendiam os ingleses a uma sociedade feudal. -/- A monarquia foi restaurada em 1660, mas o rei e os nobres perderam os poderes anteriores. O Parlamento havia adquirido força política e dividia o poder com a monarquia. Era o grande passo para que o mercantilismo se expandisse e, como consequência, o processo de industrialização se desenvolvesse a partir do século seguinte. O fundamental nesse processo foi a implantação de uma série de direitos que hoje são considerados universais. Mas foi um movimento em um único país e alterou substancialmente a situação apenas em uma sociedade. Só posteriormente teve repercussão maior. -/- A Inglaterra pode ser considerada o paradigma das transformações lentas e graduais mesmo tendo passado por algumas revoltas e irrupções políticas, uma vez que conseguiu manter a monarquia e também um sistema político e jurídico estável por muito tempo. -/- Pode-se dizer que a Revolução Inglesa é resultado de um acordo entre as várias classes dominantes existentes. Constituiu-se, assim, uma integração cultural em torno da ideia de nacionalidade. -/- Na Alemanha e no Japão também aconteceram mudanças políticas decorrentes de um pacto social entre as classes dominantes: os grandes proprietários de terras e a burguesia industrial e comercial emergente. Mesmo com as características próprias de cada país, o que houve foram alterações políticas e econômicas necessárias para o desenvolvimento de sociedades industriais modernas. Apesar de mudanças significativas nos processos e nas relações de produção, houve poucas alterações na estrutura do Estado e os detentores do poder político continuaram os mesmos. Assim, os proprietários da terra não perderam sua fonte de poder e continuaram conduzindo de forma compartilhada com a nova burguesia os destinos do Estado nacional. -/- No Japão, o período entre o início do século XVII até a segunda metade do século XIX (1600-1868) foi marcado por um governo autoritário assentado sobre a grande propriedade rural feudal. Esse período ficou conhecido como Era Xogunato Tokugawa, família que tinha apoio dos famosos guerreiros samurais. A chamada Revolução ou Restauração Meiji refere-se ao período de renovações políticas, religiosas e sociais profundas que ocorreram no Japão entre 1868 e 1900. É também chamado de “Renovação”, já que transformou o Império japonês num estado-nação moderno, o que levou o país a entrar na corrida imperialista do século XIX, principalmente na Ásia, tendo como fundamento o domínio econômico e o expansionismo militar. Essa reforma propriamente dita, apesar de ter assistido a revoltas e batalhas, não resultou na abolição das relações de produção no campo nem na derrubada da monarquia absoluta. Nesse contexto é que os antigos samurais e a pequena nobreza, composta de classes instruídas e já comandantes da burocracia estatal e de parte do exército, passam a ser uma força significativa no Estado japonês. Pode-se dizer, portanto, que houve uma “revolução conservadora” ou apenas uma conciliação de interesses e objetivos que visava manter os mesmos grupos e classes no comando das ações do Estado. Somente depois do fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945) é que se iniciou no Japão a reforma agrária, o que alterou profundamente a estrutura de propriedade da terra. -/- Na Alemanha, as mudanças passaram pelo processo de unificação de muitas unidades políticas, territoriais e culturais. A Alemanha de hoje é fruto de vários movimentos militares, políticos e culturais. Entre 1860 e 1871, foram incorporados novos territórios, demonstrando a força dos exércitos da Prússia – antigo Estado que fazia parte da então Alemanha pré-unificação –, concomitante à ideia de um inimigo externo e comum a todos que desejavam a unificação. Como consequência dessas necessidades, perpetrou-se guerra contra a Dinamarca, depois contra a Áustria e, finalmente, contra a França, em 1870, o que concorreu para o aumento do território. -/- Com a vitória na Guerra Franco-Prussiana, em 1870, a Prússia conseguiu unificar a Alemanha. O rei Guilherme I foi coroado kaiser (imperador) da Alemanha e considerado o líder máximo do país. Mas, mesmo quando o Império alemão se constituiu como tal, ainda existiam 22 estruturas políticas e territoriais diferenciadas, como principados, ducados, grão -ducados, grandes reinos (como os da Baviera e da Prússia) e até cidades livres (como Bremen e Hamburgo). -/- Apenas depois de 1870 foram possíveis a unificação nacional e a transformação da Alemanha em um país industrializado e desenvolvido, uma vez que, além das questões militares, houve outras ações urgentes para que a união se efetivasse. Otto von Bismarck – chefe de governo que estava à frente do processo de unificação alemã e uma das figuras mais proeminentes da política europeia do século XIX – desenvolveu um intenso projeto educacional que incluía um programa curricular unificado, no qual a língua alemã era obrigatória. Além disso, passaram a ser produzidas histórias da nação germânica atreladas a uma formação religiosa protestante única, cujo objetivo era unir a língua, a história e a religião e identificá-las com o povo alemão, rejeitando a diversidade e postulando a falsa ideia de uma unidade alemã indissolúvel e harmônica. -/- Assim, o pacto político orquestrado no interior dos Estados nacionais alemão e japonês aprofundou os laços políticos entre os grandes proprietários de terras e a burguesia, excluindo os operários e os camponeses do direito pleno à democracia e à cidadania, bem como ao acesso à terra. A burguesia não tinha poder para fazer a transformação, e os grandes proprietários não tinham como manter as coisas como estavam. Esse processo de modernização conservadora conduziu esses países à formação de uma sociedade industrial modernizada, mas cuja estrutura política se manteve conservadora. -/- 3. REVOLUÇÕES E MOVIMENTOS ANTICOLONIAIS -/- O rompimento com os laços coloniais também configura um conjunto de movimentos em prol de mudanças sociais. Mais do que isso: como resultado de profundas conscientizações políticas por parte de populações historicamente exploradas e segregadas, esses movimentos anticoloniais estabelecem de modo bastante peculiar um novo patamar para o conceito de revolução. -/- 3.1 Revoluções no continente americano pela independência -/- A Revolução Americana, ocorrida em 1776, caracterizou-se como uma luta contra o colonialismo inglês. O movimento teve grande repercussão, principalmente nos países da América Latina, pois provocou o rompimento dos laços coloniais. Teve influência significativa também por pregar a liberdade individual como um dos pilares da sociedade que se formara na América do Norte. -/- O Boston Tea Party foi um protesto de colonos ingleses considerado fundamental para a deflagração da Revolução Americana, o movimento de independência dos Estados Unidos. -/- Na América do Sul, Simón Bolívar foi sumamente decisivo para a conquista da independência da Venezuela, proclamada em 1811, mas só consumada com a tomada de Caracas e outras regiões de importância estratégica que permaneciam até 1821 sob domínio da coroa espanhola. -/- A maioria dos países da América Latina e do Caribe, seguindo o exemplo do que havia acontecido nos Estados Unidos e sob influência da Revolução Francesa, iniciou as lutas pela independência no início do século XIX, cujos desdobramentos se estenderam até 1820, aproximadamente. Foram necessárias muitas batalhas para que a Espanha aceitasse os termos de independência desses países. Após a emancipação, os países se organizaram politicamente na forma de repúblicas, abolindo a escravidão e o trabalho servil. -/- O Brasil, antiga colônia portuguesa, foi o único país que manteve a monarquia e a escravidão. Com o fim dos laços coloniais, os países que obtiveram a liberdade política assumiram uma nova forma de dependência econômica, agora em relação à Inglaterra, posto que o interesse do capitalismo britânico era conseguir manter o fornecimento de matérias-primas e ampliar o consumo de seus produtos manufaturados em território latino-americano. -/- 3.2 Independência das colônias no século XX -/- A segunda fase do processo de descolonização desenvolveu-se no contexto do neocolonialismo, após a Segunda Guerra Mundial e até a última parte do século XX. Os palcos principais foram a África e a Ásia. -/- O continente africano, no final do século XIX, tinha sido loteado pelos países europeus (com exceção de Portugal, que possuía colônias desde o século XVI), que buscavam matérias-primas para o desenvolvimento de suas indústrias e ampliação do mercado consumidor para os seus produtos manufaturados. Assim, a maior parte das estruturas políticas tribais foi sendo gradativamente destruída, bem como as formas de vida e de produção existentes. -/- Após o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, em 1945, muitos povos africanos se organizaram e passaram a lutar por sua independência, criando, assim, uma série de novos países. -/- A independência, no entanto, não significou autonomia, uma vez que os novos países surgidos após a descolonização enfrentaram problemas para promover o desenvolvimento econômico e social. As heranças deixadas pelos colonizadores, representadas tanto por uma economia sempre dependente do exterior, exportadora de matéria-prima e importadora de gêneros de primeira necessidade quanto pelo baixo nível educacional e técnico da população, impediram os projetos de desenvolvimento e provocaram a continuidade da dependência através do endividamento, mantendo esses países subordinados aos interesses das antigas metrópoles. -/- Na Ásia, alguns países obtiveram sua independência mediante lutas ou acordos com as potências colonizadoras. Aqueles que foram invadidos durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial pelo Japão aproveitaram, depois da derrota nipônica em 1945, para iniciar ou retomar os vários movimentos pela independência. Do mesmo modo, o Vietnã, o Laos e o Camboja se tornaram independentes da França, e a Indonésia, da Holanda. Em alguns casos, houve acordo, como a Malásia e Cingapura, que conseguiram a independência da Inglaterra nos anos de 1957 e 1965, respectivamente. -/- O caso da Índia – emblemático – reúne movimentos por independência e acordos com o país colonizador. A presença dos ingleses na Índia data do século XVII e foi se ampliando com o tempo. A dominação foi facilitada pela inexistência de um governo centralizado e também pela diversidade religiosa e de castas, o que não contribuía para uma visão de unidade nacional. -/- Em 1920, logo após o término da Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918), surgiram movimentos pela independência, os quais, ao final da Segunda Guerra, quando o declínio do poder econômico e militar da Inglaterra ficou evidente, foram muito bem -sucedidos em suas lutas. Assim, a dominação na Índia não pôde ser mantida e em 1947 os ingleses reconheceram a independência indiana, que, em função das rivalidades religiosas, deu origem à União Indiana, com maioria hinduísta, e à Liga Muçulmana, com maioria islâmica, que veio a constituir o Paquistão (Ocidental e Oriental). O Ceilão, de maioria budista, tornava-se também independente, passando a ilha a se denominar Sri-Lanka. Posteriormente, o Paquistão Oriental se tornou o atual Bangladesh. -/- 4. REVOLUÇÕES RADICAIS E POPULARES -/- Muitas foram as revoluções radicais e populares. Aqui será abordada apenas a Revolução Francesa. -/- 4.1 Revolução Francesa -/- A Revolução Francesa eclodiu em 1789 como um movimento contrário ao poder monárquico e aos resquícios do feudalismo na França. Foi exemplo para a luta em várias nações do mundo ocidental contra os regimes absolutistas e pela eliminação da monarquia, uma vez que essas formas e sistemas de governo significavam opressão à maioria da população. -/- Além disso, com a revolução foi alterada profundamente a estrutura da propriedade rural, eliminando entraves para o desenvolvimento de uma nova sociedade. Entretanto, o fato mais importante foi que os revolucionários lutaram em nome das pessoas (apesar de não incluir as mulheres), e não só dos franceses, o que transformou o movimento em paradigma das revoluções posteriores. -/- 5. REVOLUÇÕES POLÍTICAS NO SÉCULO XX -/- No século XX ocorreram várias experiências revolucionárias. Entretanto, foram poucas as que envolveram os mais explorados e, portanto, a maioria da sociedade. Duas delas serão aqui tratadas. -/- 5.1 Revolução Mexicana -/- A Revolução Mexicana começou em 1910 e foi uma resposta dos explorados no campo e nas cidades a uma situação insustentável de desigualdade e de exploração. Havia no México uma grande desigualdade social: 1% da população possuía 97% das terras, o que gerava uma situação de exploração e miséria muito grande. -/- Três grandes grupos, representando classes sociais diferentes, participaram do movimento: o dos camponeses, que eram a maioria (seus líderes mais conhecidos foram Pancho Villa no norte e Emiliano Zapata no sul); o dos trabalhadores urbanos organizados em torno da Casa del Obrero Mundial (COM), de orientação inicialmente anarquista; e o da burguesia urbana e rural, liderada por Francisco Madero. Os camponeses exigiam o fim da concentração e a redistribuição das terras. A burguesia dissidente exigia que fossem definidas regras claras sobre as eleições para que se implantasse uma democracia de tipo liberal. Os trabalhadores urbanos, por sua vez, que não tinham nenhum direito nem liberdade de expressão e reunião, exigiam direitos garantidos pela Constituição. -/- O movimento estendeu-se até 1917, quando foi promulgada uma nova Constituição para o México. Várias reivindicações dos camponeses foram atendidas, mas todas sob o controle do Estado. Grandes propriedades, principalmente as da Igreja, foram expropriadas e repartidas. Possibilitou-se a manutenção das terras comunais na forma de cooperativas, mas a reforma agrária (divisão dos latifúndios) propriamente dita não foi realizada e a restituição das terras usurpadas não se efetivou. Assim, os camponeses pouco tiveram a comemorar. -/- Aos trabalhadores urbanos garantiu-se uma série de novos direitos, como jornada máxima de oito horas e a regulamentação do trabalho das mulheres e de menores, do trabalho noturno, do repouso semanal, das férias e das horas extras. Além disso, foram regulamentados a liberdade de organização sindical e o direito à greve, entre outros direitos. -/- A burguesia industrial, os banqueiros, os grandes comerciantes e proprietários de terras, em nome da “revolução mexicana”, constituíram o Partido Revolucionário Institucional (PRI), que se manteve no poder de 1929 até 2000. -/- 5.2 Revolução Russa -/- Enquanto os mexicanos conquistavam sua Constituição, na Rússia a sociedade fervilhava. A maior parte dos russos, tanto no campo como na cidade, vivia em condições precárias e, desde 1905, lutava pela construção de uma nova ordem social. -/- A Revolução Russa de 1917 começou com a derrubada do czar, em fevereiro, e culminou com a tomada do poder pelos bolcheviques, liderados por Vladimir Ilitch Ulianov, o Lênin, e por Leon Trotsky, em outubro. O movimento teve como base os trabalhadores urbanos e os soldados. -/- Os revolucionários organizavam-se em conselhos populares que expressavam a proposta de uma sociedade que se orientasse pela vontade da maioria. Esses conselhos populares eram chamados de sovietes e constituíram o fato mais inovador da revolução. -/- Após a tomada do poder, com a constituição de uma nova estrutura estatal, os sovietes perderam pouco a pouco sua força. O termo, no entanto, ficou gravado no nome da unidade política e nacional formada em consequência da revolução: República Soviética. -/- A situação na Rússia, que era terrível por causa da Primeira Guerra Mundial, tornou-se ainda pior no período de afirmação da revolução. Mesmo assim, a propriedade privada foi extinta e procurou-se alterar a estrutura estatal e de serviços, como a educação, a saúde, o transporte ferroviário e o sistema bancário. A grande dificuldade foi mudar a estrutura da propriedade rural, que ainda era medieval, e a condição dos camponeses, precária em todos os sentidos. Assim, foi necessário primeiro privatizar a terra para depois torná-la coletiva. Isso foi possível com a concentração do poder pelo Partido Comunista e pelo Estado. -/- Em 1922 foi criada a União das Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas (URSS), formada por 12 repúblicas, todas sob o comando político e militar da República Soviética Russa. Depois da Segunda Guerra Mundial, mais três repúblicas foram incorporadas à URSS. -/- Em 1924, com a morte de Lênin, Josef Stálin assumiu o comando da URSS e aprofundou a concentração do poder no Partido Comunista e no Estado, eliminando a oposição. A partir de então, uma revolução que nascera com o propósito de transformar o sistema anterior e garantir a liberdade para todos gerou uma sociedade que teve parte dos problemas econômicos resolvidos, mas à custa da submissão a um Estado autoritário que oprimiu a maioria da população. -/- A União Soviética desmoronou na década de 1980, tendo seu fim assinalado pela queda do Muro de Berlim, em 1989. Deixou oficialmente de existir em dezembro de 1991. -/- Além da experiência russa, outras revoluções populares de orientação socialista ocorreram no século XX. Podemos citar alguns exemplos: na China, em 1949, a revolução liderada por Mao Tsé-Tung; em Cuba, em 1959, o movimento revolucionário encabeçado por Fidel Castro e Che Guevara; no Vietnã, de 1945 a 1954, o movimento liderado por Ho Chi Minh. -/- 5.3 Um breve balanço -/- Como se pode perceber, uma coisa é o início de uma revolução, com seus propósitos transformadores; outra é a situação pós-revolucionária ou a institucionalização da revolução, em que o momento inicial de tomada do poder e alteração das estruturas políticas, econômicas e sociais precisa ser deixado para trás. É necessário, então, criar novas instituições ou reformular as antigas para que a revolução possa se desenvolver. -/- Com o passar dos anos, a liderança muda, e as situações interna e externa se modificam; aparecem interesses novos e são necessárias novas ações, que podem gerar maior emancipação ou não. -/- Algumas revoluções, como a do México, são populares, mas depois do momento inicial as demandas da maioria do povo são deixadas de lado e, em nome delas, há uma reorganização das classes dominantes para continuar no poder. -/- Os exemplos analisados aqui são de sociedades que alteraram sua estrutura e seu modo de vida, mas avançaram pouco no processo de liberdade e emancipação. Pode-se afirmar, então, que não são parâmetros para futuras mudanças, embora devam ser vistos como repletos de lições da história, da vida e dos rumos sempre otimistas e de esperança num mundo melhor. -/- 6. E O QUE VEM PELA FRENTE? -/- A transformação radical de uma sociedade – revolução – está sempre ligada à superação de um sistema por outro, havendo um movimento popular ou uma classe social oprimida organizada para ir à frente e derrubar o antigo regime. -/- Na sociedade capitalista, segundo Marx, a classe social oprimida é o proletariado. Depois das muitas revoluções que ocorreram no mundo, há a possibilidade de a classe proletária, ou trabalhadora, organizar-se para derrubar o sistema capitalista? Há condições objetivas (crise do sistema, organização, poder, armas) e subjetivas (consciência social, aliança entre os diversos segmentos dos explorados) para que isso ocorra? Não se pode negar a existência de algumas dessas condições, principalmente nos países periféricos do sistema capitalista, mas, com as sociedades submetidas a forte esquema de massificação, torna-se cada dia mais difícil acontecer um movimento revolucionário nos moldes da Revolução Russa. -/- Hoje, em todos os meios de comunicação, ouvimos declarações de que estamos vivendo em uma “nova” sociedade, em uma “era pós-moderna”, em uma “sociedade pós-burguesa”, em uma “sociedade pós-industrial” etc. Com isso, afirma-se que está se estruturando uma nova organização social, completamente diferente da anterior. -/- Ora, na sociedade atual estão sendo levadas ao limite as potencialidades da modernidade estabelecida pela Revolução Industrial dos séculos XVIII e XIX, sem mudanças nas estruturas de poder e na economia; mas há indícios de que uma transformação esteja ocorrendo. Em que direção? As respostas a essa questão são divergentes. -/- É possível perceber que a ideia de uma revolução violenta, com a tomada do poder do Estado para desenvolver uma nova sociedade, está cada dia mais distante da realidade. Parece remota, também, a ideia de uma mudança significativa mediante ações lentas e graduais por parte das instituições políticas, pois estas estão muito amarradas às estruturas de poder existentes. Diante de uma possibilidade de mudança, a força da reação normalmente é muito grande e pode aniquilar qualquer tentativa de resistência. Além disso, devido à crise na democracia representativa, as pessoas já não acreditam que seus representantes possam tomar medidas que alterem profundamente a sociedade. -/- Então não há alternativa? Parece difícil, porque a capacidade de cooptação por parte dos poderes vigentes é muito grande. Mas a consciência da desigualdade e do sofrimento que isso acarreta não é apagada ou silenciada e se expressa em manifestações populares e revoltas pontuais em várias partes do mundo. -/- 6.1 Mobilizações e mudanças no século XXI -/- Para pensar um pouco mais sobre as possibilidades de mudança social, é urgente atentar para o que está acontecendo no mundo. Se é verdade que a simples ideia de mudanças lentas e constantes, em termos políticos, não avança para uma grande transformação da vida em sociedade, é também verdadeiro que os sintomas da inquietude que se alastram pelo mundo contemporâneo permitem observar a gestação de novas realidades no curso do processo histórico. -/- O filósofo italiano Antônio Negri (1933-) e o filósofo estadunidense Michael Hardt (1960-) destacaram ao menos três características que podem multiplicar os sintomas da inquietude social: -/- • o nascimento de um grupo composto de novos e jovens sujeitos políticos, conectados com o mundo e inconformados com os limites e a mediocridade de sua vida cotidiana nas periferias das metrópoles, que já não aceitam a condição de subordinação e, para abandoná-la, estão dispostos a sacudir o status quo; -/- • o cultivo de um projeto emancipador por esses jovens sujeitos políticos: eles querem organizar a produção e a distribuição de riquezas horizontalmente e em rede – sem os limites das hierarquias e da mercantilização atuais; -/- • a prática de uma nova democracia, ainda em construção, numa época em que a representação tradicional está se tornando cada vez mais obsoleta e desprestigiada. -/- Exemplos de inquietude social foram as Jornadas de Junho de 2013, quando as ruas do Brasil foram tomadas por insubmissas e plurais personagens. O mesmo aconteceu durante a ocupação, pelos estudantes, das escolas públicas paulistas, em 2015 e 2016, contrários às políticas do governo estadual. -/- Conforme o sociólogo espanhol Manuel Castells (1942-), em termos tecnológicos, econômicos e culturais já há um longo caminho percorrido e muitas transformações efetivadas. De acordo com ele, o período atual é um tempo de eclosão de uma nova era em termos políticos e institucionais. -/- É crucial que se estabeleça um alerta para as possíveis reações contrárias às mudanças sociais e políticas, posto que as forças conservadoras são robustas e poderosas e não desejam mudanças que possam ameaçar seus privilégios. É do confronto entre as correntes progressistas e conservadoras, no entanto, que poderá emergir uma nova era que seja constituída de saltos qualitativos na vida coletiva ou, então, que faça prevalecer o ritmo obscuro e perigoso do retrocesso histórico, rumo a um tempo que não garanta a existência de direitos, em que gritos não são ouvidos e em que as utopias não se alimentam. -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- ALMOND, M.; BATISTA, G. O livro de ouro das revoluções. 2ª ed. Nova Iorque: Harper Collins, 2018. -/- ARRUDA, J. J. de A. A Revolução Inglesa. Vol. 82. 1ª ed. São Paulo: brasiliense, 1984. Col. Tudo é História. -/- COTRIM, G. História global. Vol. Único. 11ª ed. São Paulo: Saraiva, 2016. -/- FUKASAWA, M.; ISI, M.; IRIMAJIRI, Y. Cultura japonesa 7: a era Meiji. Vol. 7. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Nikkey Shimbun, 2018. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. Vol. Único. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Moderna, 2016. -/- VÁRIOS AUTORES. O livro da Sociologia. Trad. Rafael Longo. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Globo, 2015. -/- -/- Todos os direitos reservados para Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva © 2019 -/- Estimule a criatividade, respeite o direito autoral. -/- EICdaS, Belo Jardim, Pernambuco, 2019. (shrink)

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the (...) energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU. (shrink)

In Who's Afraid of Idealism? the philosophical concept of idealism, the extent to which reality is mind-made, is examined in new light. Author Luis M. Augusto explores epistemological idealism, at the source of all other kinds of idealism, from the viewpoints of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, two philosophers who spent a large part of their lives denigrating the very concept. Working from Kant and Nietzsche's viewpoints that idealism was a scandal to philosophy and the cause of nihilism, Augusto evaluates (...) these philosophers and their role in shaping epistemological idealism. Using textual evidence from their writings and their reactions to western philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, and Hegel, Who's Afraid of Idealism? argues that in fact Kant and Nietzsche were really idealists at heart. In accessible prose, this text puts forward a theory that goes against current scholarly opinion, and even Kant and Nietzsche's opinions of themselves. (shrink)

Abstract: Forests are areas with a high density of trees, and they play a vital role in the health of the planet. They provide a habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal species, and they help to regulate the climate by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While in 2010, the world had 3.92Gha of forest cover, covering 30% of its land area, in 2019, there was a loss of forest cover of 24.2Mha according to the Global Forest (...) Watch institute. Discovery and classification depend on human experience and effort, so the error in the results of this process can lead to forest fires and disasters. Therefore, deep learning algorithms from artificial intelligence and machine learning sciences have been applied to help specialists avoid false or inaccurate diagnoses when detecting Forest fires in images using a pre-trained convolutional neural network called VGG16. The model was customized to fit the Forest fires classification and then applied to a dataset consisting of (14,000) of the Forests collected from the Kaggle depository. We trained, validated, and tested the modified VGG16 model. The proposed VGG16 model obtained Precision (99.96%), Recall (99.96%), and F1-Score (99.96%). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemic Leaks and Epistemic Meltdowns: A Response to William Morris on Scepticism with Regard to Reason Mikael M. Karlsson I. In an excellent paper which appeared in the April, 1989 issue of this journal,2 William Morris attemptsto demonstrate thatthe arguments which make up Hume's notorious chapter, "Of scepticism with regard to reason, are, in the first place, coherent—both internally and with the overall strategy of the Treatise—and, in the (...) second place, successful. Morris' paper is an exercise in the noble art of what I style constructive exegesis, an enterprise to which many readers of Hume Studies, and myself as much as any, are committed. It is a guiding principle ofthis art that we donotunderstandaphilosophical textuntil we can interpret it in such a way as to render it both coherent and correct. From this point ofview, coherence and correctness are not as independent of one another as they may seem to be to others who are differently committed. Some texts, such as Hume's chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason," are notoriously resistant to constructive exegesis, despite the formidable bag of tricks which scholars and interpreters have developed; so resistant, that in gloomier moments we may be brought to wonder about our interpretative enterprise itself. Constructive exegesis is indeed a strange, and peculiarly optimistic, enterprise. Someday, I imagine, in a leisurely moment, I will think more reflectively about the principles ofour art. But not now.6 As a fellow practitioner of constructive exegesis, I am in full sympathy with what Morris tries to do in his paper; and I think that he does contribute substantially to our understanding of what Hume is up to in the chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason." The third section of Morris' paper is, in my judgement, particularly successful in showing how Hume's chapter fits into the larger framework of the Treatise: Hume is, we see, attacking both what Morris labels "intellectualist rationalism" and its counterpart, which we may call 'unmitigated scepticism', although the chapter's two main arguments go primarily to the former. I also think that Morris gives very helpful, Volume XVI Number 2 121 MIKAEL M. KARLSSON and to my mind accurate, accounts of these two arguments, which I dub, respectively, the epistemic leak argument, and the epistemic meltdown argument. However, I have personally never found either of these arguments remotely convincing; and I still do not, despite Morris' clarification and defense. In what follows, I shall indicate some ofthe reasons for my dissatisfaction.?. Theepistemicleakargumentpurportsto"prove"(in Hume's sense)that reason or demonstration cannot support knowledge. Morris rightlyreminds us that whatHume meansby knowledge is perfect assurance or conviction: Knowledge is, in short, subjective certainty. This has caused confusion, for this is not what we usually mean nowadays by knowledge; nor was it what people, philosophers included, generally meant prior to Descartes. In Hume itis the product ofthe attempttoresolve all epistemic statesintomental eventsorwhat he calls "perceptions." In any case, we must—as Morris rightly explains—be clear that the epistemic leak argument is aimed at showing that demonstration cannot supportperfect conviction. Inoutline, the argumentissimple: Itworks, asMorrismakes clear, by shifting attention away from the subject-matter or "objects" of demonstration, that is, relations of ideas, to the exercise of demonstrative reason by human agents. The necessity of relations of ideas may suggest to us that we can be certain about them. Against this, one may point out that people do err in the conclusions arrived at by demonstration; this presumably shows that our (rational) understandingis fallible. And once we recognize this, our confidence in any conclusion produced by exercising this facultyislessened—thus do we move from knowledge, or subjective certainty, toprobability: belief, or imperfect conviction. Arguments ofthis general type (we can call them, using Descartes' famous figure, Totten-apple arguments ) were around long before Hume, although they were more commonly directed against the senses than against reason. We find them in antiquity—in Plato and Sextus Empiricus, for instance —and in Descartes, in parallel passages in the Discourse on Method, the First Meditation and the Principles of Philosophy, wherein one can discern a version directed precisely against reason and demonstration.12 To find out what, if anything, Hume has... (shrink)

We provide a cognitive analysis of how children represent belief using mental files. We explain why children who pass the false belief test are not aware of the intensionality of belief. Fifty-one 3½- to 7-year old children were familiarized with a dual object, e.g., a ball that rattles and is described as a rattle. They observed how a puppet agent witnessed the ball being put into box 1. In the agent’s absence the ball was taken from box 1, the child (...) was reminded of it being a rattle, and emphasising its being a rattle it was put back into box 1. Then the agent returned, the object was hidden in the experimenter’s hands and removed from box 1, described as a ‘‘rattle,” and transferred to box 2. Children who passed false belief had no problem saying where the puppet would look for the ball. However, in a different condition in which the agent was also shown that the ball was a rattle they erroneously said that the agent would look for the ball in box 1, ignoring the agent’s knowledge of the identity of rattle and ball. Their problems cease with their mastery of second-order beliefs. Problems also vanish when the ball is described not as a rattle but as a thing that rattles. We describe how our theory can account for these data as well as all other relevant data in the literature. (shrink)

The approach of structuralism came to philosophy from social science. It was also in social science where, in 1950–1970s, in the form of the French structuralism, the approach gained its widest recognition. Since then, however, the approach fell out of favour in social science. Recently, structuralism is gaining currency in the philosophy of mathematics. After ascertaining that the two structuralisms indeed share a common core, the question stands whether general structuralism could not find its way back into social science. The (...) nature of the major objections raised against French structuralism – concerning its alleged ahistoricism, methodological holism and universalism – are reconsidered. While admittedly grounded as far as French structuralism is concerned, these objections do not affect general structuralism as such. The fate of French structuralism thus does not seem to preclude the return of general structuralism into social science, rather, it provides some hints where the difficulties may lie. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ontological status of the ontological categories as defended within E.J. Lowe’s four-category ontology (kinds, objects, properties/relations, and modes). I consider the arguments in Griffith (2015. “Do Ontological Categories Exist?” Metaphysica 16 (1):25–35) against Lowe’s claim that ontological categories do not exist, and argue that Griffith’s objections to Lowe do not work once we fully take advantage of ontological resources available within Lowe’s four-category ontology. I then argue that the claim that ontological categories do not exist has (...) no undesirable consequences for Lowe’s brand of realism. (shrink)

Motivated by recent controversies concerning the relationship between modern mindfulness-based interventions and Buddhism, this article discusses the relationship between mindfulness and dogmatism in general, and dogmatism in ethics in particular. The point of view taken is primarily that of the psychology of judgment and deci-sion making: Various cognitive illusions affect the feelings of righteousness and certainty that tend to accompany ethical and moral judgments. I argue that even though there is some evidence that mindfulness practice im-proves judgment and decision making, (...) thisimprovement is rarely as strong as is implied in various contributions to the above-mentioned controversies. In addition, I reflect on claims that “the original teachings of the Buddha” jus-tify the moral stances taken. I argue that these stances likely arise, at least in part, due to the cultural transmission of cognitive dissonance of early Christianity rather than being inherent in the Buddha’s teachings. (shrink)

The present article critiques standard attempts to make philosophy appear relevant to the scientific study of well-being, drawing examples in particular from works that argue for fundamental differences between different forms of wellbeing, and claims concerning the supposedly inherent normativity of wellbeing research. Specifically, it is argued that philosophers in at least some relevant cases fail to apply what is often claimed to be among their core competences: conceptual rigor—not only in dealing with the psychological construct of flow, but also (...) in relation to apparently philosophical concepts such as normativity, objectivity, or eudaimonia. Furthermore, the uncritical use of so-called thought experiments in philosophy is shown to be inappropriate for the scientific study of wellbeing. As an alternative to such philosophy-as-usual, proper attention to other philosophical traditions is argued to be promising. In particular, the philosophy of ZhuangZi appears to concord well with today’s psychological knowledge, and to contain valuable ideas for the future development of positive psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 30, Number 2, November 2004, pp. 213-236 Pleased and Afflicted: Hume on the Paradox of Tragic Pleasure E. M. DADLEZ How fast can you run? As fast as a leopard. How fast are you going to run? A whistle sounds the order that sends Archie Hamilton and his comrades over the top of the trench to certain death. Racing to circumvent that order and arriving seconds (...) too late, Archie's friend Frank screams in rage and despair. Archie is cut down before he has run twenty yards. Peter Weir's film Gallipoli is a chronicle of the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of the first World War, but it is also a film about racing. Archie is trained by his uncle Jack to run "as fast as a leopard." The film begins as it ends, with Archie sprinting in response to a whistle. Frank is first shown racing after a train, along with friends who are on their way to enlist. Archie and Frank meet while competing in a race, they race in Cairo once they have enlisted, and they finally race death. From the beginning, Archie has been faster; even at the end he is the first to die. And from the beginning he has swept Frank along in his wake, encouraging him, pushing him, inspiring him, and helping him to positions for which he is inadequately qualified. In the end, Archie's compassion and kindness prompt a decision which has grim consequences both for himself and for hundreds of others. Knowing that his friend fears death in the trenches, Archie recommends Frank as a substitute for himself, a designated message runner. But Frank is not fast enough, and falls short by mere seconds which Archie would not have lost. This is what leads to the failure of the one real effort to countermand the fatal charge. E. M. Dadlez is Professor of Humanities and Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK 73034, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 214 E. M. Dadlez I am an emotional wreck by the time the movie is over, though I should admit that most of my tears are the result of sheer rage. Both my dogs exited the room in some haste once I began to shout at the television and the unpardonably dimwitted British officers who sat sipping tea at a comfortable distance as they gave the order for soldiers to commit suicide. But it isn't just the scope of the real human disaster, or the enormity of the blunder, or the pointlessness of the entire enterprise, or even my renewed conviction that stupidity is, in fact, evil, that is so unsettling. The film unnerves with respect to personal as well as global concerns, focusing attention on the chance of vanity's leading one to undertake responsibilities beyond one's competence, the possibility of advancement or security being achievable only at the expense of another, and the realization of how easy it might be to let those things happen. Gallipoli is a sad, disturbing film, and the spectator is grieved and disturbed in the course of watching it. Yet, having said that, I must own to having a copy in my possession, and to having watched it more than once. I recommend it to friends, offering to lend them my videotape. In fact, I press it on them. I say that it is a terrific, rewarding work which they should take the time to see. How is it that I can describe my experience of the film in such glowing terms and at the same time acknowledge the extreme distress I felt in the course of watching it? How can I reconcile the discordant aspects of my experience? David Hume explores some possible answers in his essay "Of Tragedy."1 He begins by calling attention to the paradox of tragic pleasure: It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror... and other passions, which are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle.... The whole art of the poet is employed in rousing and supporting the compassion and... (shrink)

Social emergence is one the most important problems in social science that the way it is answered affects the results of social studies and policies. The complexity of social emergence conception has caused a variety of definitions. This article seeks to define the robust social emergence conditions, using the philosophy of mind conception such as subvenience, wildly disjunctives, and multiple realization. Different approaches have different challenges in satisfying robust social emergence conditions. These challenges could be formulated in three problems i.e. (...) realism, top-down causality, and mechanism. This article aims to analytically criticize how critical realism approaches these problems. Critics believe that critical realism faces two sort of difficulties in satisfying robust social emergence: the first, the independence of structure from agencies that leads to reifying and the second, that ontological and causal emergence conflicts with subvenience. It seems the first problem could be resolved by employing the unrestricted mereological composition conception, and the second by the fact that subvenience do not necessitate ontological dependence. (shrink)

Philosophers of race and other writers in the Black and Latinx intellectual traditions have remarked on what it is like to live under “the racial gaze,” to be shaped and limited by the way whites perceive us. However, little work has been spent developing how the racial gaze functions in whites’, and other racially privileged people’s, moral psychology. I argue in this paper that there is a morally objectionable way of perceiving people of color. This claim builds on an insight (...) from Iris Murdoch that our perception can be morally evaluable and extends it to issues of race. I articulate how racial stereotypes and misvaluing distort one’s perception of people of color and that these distortions are organizing around a dominant conception for race that plays an important role in the oppression of people of color. I believe understanding racist perception lays a foundation for understanding the moral dimensions of interpersonal (as opposed to structural) racism. (shrink)

Because we must often make decisions in light of imperfect information about our prospective actions, the standard principles of objective obligation must be supplemented with principles of subjective obligation (which evaluate actions in light of what the agent believes about their circumstances and consequences). The point of principles of subjective obligation is to guide agents in making decisions. But should these principles be stated in terms of what the agent actually believes or what it would be reasonable for her to (...) believe about her prospective actions? I show that there are many decisions for which “reasonable belief” principles can’t be used by the decision-maker, especially in cases in which whether (or how) the agent investigates or deliberates affects the nature of the prospective action itself. I conclude that subjective rightness depends on what the agent actually believes, not what it would be reasonable for her to believe. (shrink)

Inspired by Charles Taylor’s locating of Herder and Rousseau’s “expressivism” in Marx’s understanding of the human as artist, I begin this essay by examining expressivism in Taylor, followed by its counterpart in M. H. Abrams’s work, namely the wind as metaphor in British Romantic poetry. I then further explore this expressivism/wind connection in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and Marx’s The German Ideology. Ultimately I conclude that these expressive winds lead to poetic gesture per se, and thereby, (...) to a kind of poetry at the heart of Marx’s philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:This Universalism Which Is Not OneLinda M. G. Zerilli (bio)Ernesto Laclau. Emancipation(s). London: Verso, 1996.Judging from the recent spate of publications devoted to the question of the universal, it appears that, in the view of some critics, we are witnessing a reevaluation of its dismantling in twentieth-century thought. One of the many oddities about this “return of the universal” 1 is the idea that contemporary engagements with it are (...) more or less of a piece, and that they reflect a growing consensus that poststructuralist political theories are incapable of generating a viable alternative to the collective fragmentation that characterizes late modernity. 2 The putative return to the universal marks, on this view, both a homecoming to Enlightenment ideals—purified of their more poisonous elements, of course—and a reconciliation of sorts between those who refuted these ideals and those who sought to realize them. Now that “we” all know and agree that poststructuralism is critically valuable but politically bankrupt; now that we all know and agree that the “old universal” was indeed a “pseudo-universal,” so the homecoming narrative goes; we can get on with the project of constructing a “new universal.” 3 This authentic universal would really be inclusive of all people, regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and whatever else attaches to the “embarrassing etcetera” that, as Judith [End Page 3] Butler reminds us, inevitably accompanies such gestures of acknowledging human diversity.Before signing on to this felicitous agreement about “the necessity of universalism,” we may wish to know whether we have anything like a minimal agreement in language, that is, whether we who speak of this universal are even speaking about the same thing. Apart from the not insignificant problem of translating from a philosophical to a political idiom, the whole question of this agreement is virtually occluded by the rush to rescue politics from the virulent particularisms that admit no common ground or sense of collective belonging. Presented in terms of the familiar binary couple, the choice between universalism and particularism seems settled by merely pointing to global and domestic political realities. Universalism is the only alternative to social fragmentation, wild child of the collapse of communism, the rise of deadly nationalisms, and the multiculturalist romance with particularism. To invoke the name of the universal in any affirmative sense is already to sign on to the political diagnosis and its solution.One of the many virtues of Ernesto Laclau’s Emancipation(s) is that it offers both an alternative to the binarisms spawned by the “return” to the universal (for example, false universalism/true universalism) and a trenchant critique of the original binary couple itself (universalism/ particularism). Demonstrating the imbrication of the universal and the particular, Laclau shows why it is a matter not of choosing one over the other but of articulating, in a scrupulously political sense, the relation between the two. He thus explicitly rejects the notion that this relation is one of mutual exclusion, and shows that the tendency to see it as just that has led to the impasse of the contemporary debate, an impasse that is glossed over in some highly visible academic cases by proclaiming the necessary return to the universal. Although the language of universalism as spoken by Laclau searches for some common ground between particularists and universalists, it is more by way of articulating their mutual contamination, that is, how each is rendered impure by the irreducible presence of the other.The Problem of UniversalsLaclau situates his collection of essays in the context of the increasingly polarized debate over multiculturalism, a debate in which the classical universalism of the philosophical tradition has come under serious question. Reading his essays, one comes to see the deep dependence of the entire contemporary discussion on this tradition, even when its metaphysical assumptions are explicitly rejected (as, say, in the work of Seyla Benhabib) or insufficiently comprehended (as in most of the popularized political discourse). Laclau’s book can help us to see that the political question of universalism cannot be posed properly as long as it remains tethered to the classical philosophical “problem of universals.” At stake in sorting out the affinities and... (shrink)

Richness theory offers a promising axiology. In this paper, I discuss how to translate it into a deontology. To do so, I recruit the concept of moral distance from a recently developed epistemology, and construe it in terms of causal power. Finally, I apply the resulting decision-theoretic framework to the question of how best to avert ecological disaster over the next 36 years and achieve ecological harmony over the next 986.

The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – and this (...) in an admiring sense – "mafiosi" (Rescher). They are known primarily for the small workshops they have been organizing in uncomplicated Anglo-Saxon manner all over Europe. Their goal has been to show that analytic philosophy as it has been pursued up to now is in need of reform and also that the history of scientific philosophizing is not identical to the history of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. Above all, they have tried to make more well known the Austrian tradition of scientific philosophy, and they can be given credit for having done much to promote the current interest in this tradition, which means: the history of Austrian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries and its historical context in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (shrink)

"This self-consistent evolution of the fragments, their causal relationships, and their quantum properties is at the heart of the FCQG-SM framework, providing a unified description of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the Standard Model.".

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for (...) the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies. (shrink)

The first purpose of this series of articles is to introduce case studies on how current AI models can be used in the development of a possible theory of quantum gravity, their limitations, and the role the researcher has in steering the development in the right direction, even highlighting the errors, weaknesses and strengths of the whole process. -/- The second is to introduce the new Presentist Fragmentalist ontology as a framework and use it for developing theories of quantum gravity (...) and speculate on achieving a TOE. We emphasize it is necessary for the researcher to check everything in these articles for themselves. While there are many good ideas in this series of papers, the AI is known to make even arithmetic and algebraic mistakes. -/- To select just five apparently good ideas, there is a causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(F1, F2) that encodes the causal relationship and the strength of the (possibly non-local) interaction between two fragments of reality (formed by each quantum system). There is a quantitative prediction for a testable table-top experiment. There is an explanation of how spacetime emerges from the fragments and their interactions. There is an explicit account of the double-slit experiment. And there is an explanation how this theory accommodates dark matter and dark energy simultaneously. -/- We explore ideas, equations they lead to, concrete calculations, and give corrections along the way. While these are generally morally right within this framework they must be checked by the researcher. Given this caveat, we believe we have made significant progress with the PF interpretation in developing a theory of quantum gravity and pointing out a possible path to a TOE. (shrink)

In his book “Reconstruction of Scientific Change” R.M. Nugayev proposes a new model of theory change by analyzing the reasons for theory change in science. Nugayev’s theoretical concept is based on a realist’s philosophical attitude. The most important notions of Nugayev’ s conception of theory change are “theories’ cross” and “crossbred objects”, which he takes from the terminology of other Russian philosophers of science (Bransky, Podgoretzky, Smorodinsky). His investigations often refer to several famous Western philosophers. Yet his study is not (...) free of some drawbacks. Nevertheless, Nugayev’s book is worth reading and discussing within the current debate about the structure of scientific revolution and theory changes. (shrink)

The article presents the interdisciplinary approach of Edwin Hutchins, analyzing his conception of distributed cognition as probably the most important and lasting contribution of anthropology to the repertoire of theoretical tools in cognitive science. At the same time, this conception resulted in one of the most interesting relationships between cognitive science and social sciences. These relationships are made possible by the assumptions of Hutchins’ conception, which directly contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration. His account of distributed cognition has enormous potential, allowing the (...) integration of research into cognitive and social processes. This is also because it breaks with methodological individualism. (shrink)

General Introduction to the PF interpretation of QM and quantum gravity Merriam, P., Habeeb, MAZ The first purpose of this series of articles is to introduce case studies on how current AI models can be used in the development of a possible theory of quantum gravity, their limitations, and the role the researcher has in steering the development in the right direction, even highlighting the errors, weaknesses and strengths of the whole process. The second is to introduce the new Presentist (...) Fragmentalist ontology as a framework and use it for developing theories of quantum gravity and speculate on achieving a TOE. We emphasize it is necessary for the researcher to check everything in these articles for themselves. While there are many good ideas in this series of papers, the AI is known to make even arithmetic and algebraic mistakes. To select just five apparently good ideas, there is a causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(F1, F2) that encodes the causal relationship and the strength of the (possibly non-local) interaction between two fragments of reality (formed by each quantum system). There is a quantitative prediction for a testable table-top experiment. There is an explanation of how spacetime emerges from the fragments and their interactions. There is an explicit account of the double-slit experiment. And there is an explanation how this theory accommodates dark matter and dark energy simultaneously. We explore ideas, equations they lead to, concrete calculations, and give corrections along the way. While these are generally morally right within this framework they must be checked by the researcher. Given this caveat, we believe we have made significant progress with the PF interpretation in developing a theory of quantum gravity and pointing out a possible path to a TOE. (shrink)

Parallels between the ancient Hellenistic philosophies of the Stoics and Epicureans, on the one hand, and modern cognitive psychotherapy, on the other, are well known and a topic of current discussion. The present article argues that there are also important parallels between Pyrrhonism, the third of the major Hellenistic philosophies, and the currently state-of-the-art “3rd wave” cognitive-behavioral therapies in general, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (act) in particular. This provides a crucial insight into Pyrrhonism: understanding Sextus’ term adoxastos using the (...) technical act term ‘defusion’ illuminates the psychological condition of the Pyrrhonist and explains why the apraxia objection against Pyrrhonism is misguided. (shrink)

A book review of Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). I will pass over her compelling critiques of cost-benefit analysis, rational desire theory, and "consequentialist" moral theories, among many topics she dispatches successfully, with fierce intelligence and wit. Instead I want to focus on the central justificatory strategy that underpins her defense of her pluralist, nonconsequentialist, rational attitude theory of value. Anderson states at the outset that she is not that interested in such (...) metaethical questions as whether value judgments express beliefs or emotions or other attitudes (p. xiii). But I think her own answers to these questions might have implications for normative and pragmatic issues of concern to her. So I want to try tinkering with the metaethical arguments in ways that might streamline her treatment of the normative and pragmatic ones somewhat. (shrink)

In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar subjects the institution of birthright citizenship to close scrutiny by applying to citizenship the historical and philosophical critique of hereditary ownership built up over four centuries of liberal and democratic theory, and proposing compelling alternatives drawn from the theory of private law to the usual modes of conveyance of membership. Nonetheless, there are some difficulties with this critique. First, the analogy between entailed property and birthright citizenship is not as illustrative as Shachar intends it (...) to be; second, the mechanism of the birthright privilege levy is insufficient for addressing structural impediments to growth; and third, the principle of ius nexi, while an important corrective to currently dominant principles of nationality, will likely have effects both unnecessary and insufficient to correct the injustices that Shachar identifies. In the end, the most significant improvements in the lives of the neediest persons on the planet are more likely advanced through conventional arguments for the lowering of barriers to the circulation of goods, labor, and capital. This shift in attention from opening borders to extending citizenship risks being a distraction from more effective means of addressing the injustices associated with global inequality.Dans son livre The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar soumet l’institution de la citoyenneté par droit de naissance à un examen rigoureux, en appliquant à la citoyenneté la critique philosophique et historique de la propriété héritée construite pendant quatre siècles de théorie démocratique libérale, et en proposant aux modes habituels d’attribution de la citoyenneté une alternative séduisante tirée de la théorie du droit privé. Néanmoins, cette critique comporte certaines difficultés. Premièrement, l’analogie entre la transmission de la propriété par l’institution de la taille et la citoyenneté par droit de naissance n’est pas aussi éclairante que le soutient Shachar ; deuxièmement, le mécanisme de la taxe sur le privilège du droit de naissance est insuffisant pour s’attaquer aux obstacles structurels à la croissance ; et troisièmement, le principe du jus nexi, bien qu’on puisse le considérer comme un important correctif du principe de nationalité actuellement dominant, aura vraisemblablement des effets à la fois non nécessaires et insuffisants pour corriger les injustices que Shachar identifie. En fin de compte, les améliorations les plus significatives dans la vie des personnes les plus démunies de la planète sont vraisemblablement mieux défendues à l’aide des arguments conventionnels en faveur d’une baisse des barrières à la circulation des biens, du travail et du capital. Ce déplacement de l’attention de l’ouverture des frontières à l’extension de la citoyenneté risque de nous distraire des moyens plus efficaces de nous attaquer aux injustices associées à l’inégalité globale. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of papers developing a theory of quantum gravity that is consistent with the PF interpretation of quantum mechanics. "Key Features: Reconciles quantum theory, general relativity, and the PF interpretation in a common framework...".

This note outlines a Theory of Everything consistent with the PF interpretation of quantum mechanics.

We present an abstract social aggregation theorem. Society, and each individual, has a preorder that may be interpreted as expressing values or beliefs. The preorders are allowed to violate both completeness and continuity, and the population is allowed to be infinite. The preorders are only assumed to be represented by functions with values in partially ordered vector spaces, and whose product has convex range. This includes all preorders that satisfy strong independence. Any Pareto indifferent social preorder is then shown to (...) be represented by a linear transformation of the representations of the individual preorders. Further Pareto conditions on the social preorder correspond to positivity conditions on the transformation. When all the Pareto conditions hold and the population is finite, the social preorder is represented by a sum of individual preorder representations. We provide two applications. The first yields an extremely general version of Harsanyi's social aggregation theorem. The second generalizes a classic result about linear opinion pooling. (shrink)

Most people do not know there are different kinds of medical studies; some are conducted on people who already have a disease or medical condition, and others are performed on healthy volunteers who want to help science find answers. No matter what sort of research you are invited to participate in, or whether you are a patient when you are asked, it’s entirely up to you whether or not to do it. This decision is important and may have many implications (...) for your health and well-being, as well as those of other patients now and in the future. Making a good decision – the right one for you – requires you to become educated about topics you may not have thought about before, some of which may be quite complicated. This chapter explains the key issues to help you make a good decision. (shrink)

The first purpose of this series of articles is to introduce case studies on how current AI models can be used in the development of a possible theory of quantum gravity, their limitations, and the role the researcher has in steering the development in the right direction, even highlighting the errors, weaknesses and strengths of the whole process. -/- The second is to introduce the new Presentist Fragmentalist ontology as a framework and use it for developing theories of quantum gravity (...) and speculate on achieving a TOE. We emphasize it is necessary for the researcher to check everything in these articles for themselves. While there are many good ideas in this series of papers, the AI is known to make even arithmetic and algebraic mistakes. -/- To select just five apparently good ideas, there is a causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(F1, F2) that encodes the causal relationship and the strength of the (possibly non-local) interaction between two fragments of reality (formed by each quantum system). There is a quantitative prediction for a testable table-top experiment. There is an explanation of how spacetime emerges from the fragments and their interactions. There is an explicit account of the double-slit experiment. And there is an explanation how this theory accommodates dark matter and dark energy simultaneously. -/- We explore ideas, equations they lead to, concrete calculations, and give corrections along the way. While these are generally morally right within this framework they must be checked by the researcher. Given this caveat, we believe we have made significant progress with the PF interpretation in developing a theory of quantum gravity and pointing out a possible path to a TOE. (shrink)

Presentist Fragmentalism is a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics. This paper develops the resulting theory of Quantum Gravity.

This paper continues and extensive exploration of the QG and TOE resulting from the PF interpretation of QM. Some highlights are an exploration of symmetries of the Standard Model, outlines of testable predictions of implications for QG, that this theory can simultaneously give an account of dark matter and dark energy, probabilities and statevector collapse vs. gravity, applications of the causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(Fi, Fj). Note the first section mentions qualia but this is not a psychological theory this is an (...) ontic theory. (shrink)

What's wrong with Copenhagen, GRW, Superdeterminism, QBism, Many-worlds, Bohmianism, and Retrocausality, and how theses differ from Presentist Fragmentalism.

Drawing from the work of Mabogo More, this paper will attempt to present a comprehensive analysis of Steve Biko’s views on race and racism. The analysis will commence by reviewing and outlining the broad philosophical schools of thought regarding the conceptualization of race, and it’s relevance within society, namely; Racial Naturalism, Racial Nihilism or Skepticism, and Racial Constructivism. Subsequently, this paper will attempt to locate More’s interpretation of Biko’s views as being constructivist, despite the prevalence of non-racial, skeptical conceptions within (...) contemporary South Africa. In light of these skeptical conceptions, this paper will apply Biko’s philosophical views to specifically answer the following questions: Firstly, Can black people be racist? Secondly, Could racism ever go out of existence? Finally, this paper will address the question: Could race ever cease to exist? (shrink)

This book presents an elaborate analysis of the widely discussed problem of reconstruction of scientific theory change, based on material from theoretical physics. It gives a detailed , although not complete, analysis of the ideas of such authors as T. Kuhn, I. Lakatos, P. Feyerabend, E. Zahar and G. Holton, the empiristic account of the notion of “crucial experiment”, as well as of some leading Russian philosophers of science such as V. Stepin, E. Mamchur and V. Branskii. On the positive (...) side, the book offers an original model of reconstruction of scientific theory change. As the author himself insists on several occasions, his model does not pretend to completeness. Nugayev’ s model of scientific theory change is extensively tested on the example of the Lorentz-Einstein transition. The result is an empirical justification of his model, which shows not only that it works quite well in this particular reconstruction, but also that it explains some historical facts that have been left aside by some other authors. (shrink)

This paper give the first foray into the development of a Theory of Everything that is consistent with the PF interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Two philosophical arguments gave the novel interpretation of quantum mechanics Presentist Fragmentalism. This paper gives the resulting theory of quantum gravity.

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers includes a relatively short but comprehensive discussion with the AI Claude 3.5 Sonnet on how the CQ impacts various theories of consciousness, including Materialism, Dualism, Idealism, and 14 others. (shrink)

This paper comments on the strategies and goals of a politics of recognition as celebrated by Nancy Nicol’s important documentary coverage of the gay and lesbian movement for family rights in Quebec. While agreeing that ending legal discrimination against lgbt families is important, I suggest that political recognition of same-sex families and their children is a too limited goal for queer families and their allies. Moreover, it is a goal, I argue, that often trades on trades on troublesome assumptions about (...) gender, class, race, age and normative commitments to monogamy as these relate to distinctions between, for example, “fit” and “unfit” parents. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers addresses the question of why is there something rather than nothing, at length, and gives a radical new answer. It has to do with the fact in CQ that, while blackness is contingently possible, █ is necessarily actual, as it was in this sentence. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers address equations vs. qualations (which contain non-referential terms), proofs, and logic. An example of an equation is x+2=4, which uses exclusively referential terms, even if some of them are numbers. A Qualation is like an equation except it uses actual non-referential terms (qualia), like █ ≠ ▲, and can be clearly non-trivial, like ¬((█ ≠ ▲) ∧ (▲ ≠ ■) → (█ ≠ ■)). (see below). This has implications for assertions, proofs, truth, etc. Incompleteness and truth are addressed in a different paper in this series. (shrink)

A Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed (on PhilPapers). The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader's mind and is non-referential, *it does not even refer to itself*. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. In this paper in this series of papers, we discuss verifiability, experimental predictability and expanding science (...) to include the notion of systematic 1st-person versions of these. For example, I can make systematic predictions about a chair based on intersubjective agreement. I cannot do that with qualia, but if I witness (or experience) the truth of the qualation █ ≠ ▲ I can systematically predict that you will witness (or experience) the truth of your version of it, based on CQ and *intrasubjective* agreement. This is a radical expansion of the scientific methodology to include 1st-person verifiability and predictions and is an important part of the beginning of a paradigm shift. (shrink)