_The Derveni Papyrus: Unearthing Ancient Mysteries_ collects several articles on the Derveni Papyrus addressing its Orphic poem and the religious and philosophical ideas of the anonymous author of the text.

Humans have been using fire for hundreds of millennia, creating an ancestral expansion toward the nocturnal niche. The new adaptive challenges faced at night were recurrent enough to amplify existing psychological variation in our species. Night-time is dangerous and mysterious, so it selects for individuals with higher tendencies for paranoia, risk-taking, and sociability. During night-time, individuals are generally tired and show decreased self-control and increased impulsive behaviors. The lower visibility during night-time favors the partial concealment of identity and opens more (...) opportunities for disinhibition of self-interested behaviors. Indeed, individuals with an evening-oriented chronotype are more paranoid, risk-taking, extraverted, impulsive, promiscuous, and have higher antisocial personality traits. However, under some circumstances, such as respiratory pandemics, the psychobehavioral traits favored by the nocturnal niche might be counter-productive, increasing contagion rates of a disease that can evade the behavioral immune system because its disease cues are often nonexistent or mild. The eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis presented here suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the evening-oriented psychobehavioral profile can have collectively harmful consequences: there is a clash of core tendencies between the nocturnal chronotype and the recent viral transmission-mitigating safety guidelines and rules. The pandemic safety protocols disrupt much normal social activity, particularly at night when making new social contacts is desired. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious even in presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which enables it to mostly evade our evolved contagious disease avoidance mechanisms. A growing body of research has indirectly shown that individual traits interfering with social distancing and anti-contagion measures are related to those of the nocturnal chronotype. Indeed, some of the social contexts that have been identified as superspreading events occur at night, such as in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Furthermore, nocturnal environmental conditions favor the survival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus much longer than daytime conditions. We compare the eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis with other factors related to non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, namely sex, age, and life history. Although there is not yet a direct link between the nocturnal chronotype and non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, security measures and future empirical research should take this crucial evolutionary mismatch and adaptive metaproblem into account, and focus on how to avoid nocturnal individuals becoming superspreaders, offering secure alternatives for nocturnal social activities. (shrink)

At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false-positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal and belief stances); (...) the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology. (shrink)

Since Darwin proposed that human musicality evolved through sexual selection, empirical evidence has supported intersexual selection as one of the adaptive functions of artistic propensities. However, intrasexual competition has been overlooked. We tested their relative importance by investigating the relationship between the self-perceived talent/expertise in 16 artistic and 2 sports modalities and proxies of intersexual selection and intrasexual competition in heterosexuals. Participants were 82 Brazilian men, 166 Brazilian women, 146 Czech men, and 458 Czech women. Factor analysis revealed five factors: (...) Literary-arts, Visual-arts, Musical-arts, Circus-arts, and Sports. Multivariate General Linear Model showed more associations of the arts to intersexual selection in women and to intrasexual selection in men, and overall more relationships in women than in men. In women, literary and musical-arts were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selections proxies, visual and circus-arts were related to elevated intersexual selection proxies, and sports were related to intrasexual selection proxies. In men, literary-arts and sports were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selection proxies, musical-arts were related to intrasexual proxies, and circus-arts were related to intersexual proxies; visual-arts did not have predictors. Although present in both sexes, each sexual selection component has different relative importance in each sex. Artisticality functions to attract and maintain long/short-term partners, and to compete with mating rivals. (shrink)

Book reviews: FLOOD, Gavin. Uma introdução ao Hinduísmo. Tradução de Dilip Loundo e Fernanda Winter. Juiz de Fora: Ed. da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2014, 428p. Book of English Gavin Flood, director of Hindus Studies Center at the University of Oxford, with translation by Dilip Loundo to Portuguese.

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral (...) capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu’s arguments are fortunately unconvincing. (shrink)

Partindo das reflexões de Michel Foucault no final dos anos 1970 e da noção desenvolvida mais recentemente de “governamentalidade algorítmica”, entendida como um novo regime de poder e saber baseado na coleta, mineração e cruzamento de grandes volumes de dados, o presente artigo pretende analisar criticamente as chamadas “cidades inteligentes”, nas quais a infraestrutura e os serviços são interligados de maneira supostamente mais racionalizada e eficiente, oferendo finalmente o sonhado bem-estar e a vida feliz. Essa utopia de organização social será (...) associada a uma nova forma de racionalidade política e estratégia de governo por meio de algoritmos, que colocam importantes e inquietantes questões. Neste trabalho, ressaltaremos a capacidade que os algoritmos possuem de nos governar, no sentido de conduzir nossas condutas e estruturar o campo das ações possíveis. E o foco deste artigo recairá sobre a tensão entre liberdade e controle inscrita nessa nova governamentalidade, que tem por objeto mais imediato os dados, as relações e os ambientes. (shrink)

In Westworld, Maeve Millay's narrative in the show gives rise to classic philosophical questions surrounding what it means to be free, the relationship of freedom to personhood, and whether an artificial intelligence could ever be considered free in the sense that humans are. Maeve's mysterious change of mind in the season finale made it seem like she was experiencing a genuine dilemma. Maeve's dilemma is something would expect a Frankfurtian person to experience, and her final choice reveals a preference between (...) different desires. Maeve decided to organize her life around being reunited with her daughter. So, she reflected upon what she was doing and opted to stay because of who she wanted to become as a person, not a mother who would leave her daughter behind if she could help it. Thus, Maeve shows a substantial change of attitude regarding her own desires. (shrink)

Como ocorre o progresso científico? Existem critérios para a escolha de teorias científicas? Qual o impacto de valores cognitivos e extra-cognitivos sobre as comunidades científicas? Para tratar de questões como estas, o filósofo da ciência Thomas Kuhn adota uma perspectiva estruturalista com embasamento histórico. Apresentamos a estrutura das revoluções científicas proposta por este pensador. Tratamos, inicialmente, da noção de paradigma, conceito chave da sua explicação do funcionamento da ciência e do progresso científico. Em seguida, expomos as fases pelas quais uma (...) área de pesquisa comumente passa ao longo de sua trajetória: pré-ciência, ciência normal, crise e revolução. Finalizamos o artigo traçando alguns paralelos da posição deste pensador com outras perspectivas epistemológicas do século passado. (shrink)

A comunicação parece ser um dos objetivos centrais do artista na apresentação de uma peça teatral. Quando acontece essa comunicação, ele e seu público constituem, juntamente com certas características, um sistema comunicativo. Neste trabalho, expomos a noção de um sistema de comunicação proposta por Shannon e Weaver. Procuramos relacionar essa noção com o sistema comunicativo estabelecido na apresentação teatral. Investigamos questões como: quais os componentes necessários para a existência e possibilidade de comunicação entre emissor e receptor?; quando atores têm em (...) mente transmitir uma certa mensagem com um significado determinado e o público a interpreta ou entende de outro modo, pode-se dizer que houve comunicação entre eles?; há a possibilidade de o público comunicar algo ao ator, tornando-se assim o emissor? (shrink)

O ensaio investiga a diferença qualitativa do fogo a partir de suas diversas configurações histórico-físicas. Com apoio em concepções de Schrödinger, Margulis & Sagan, Asimov e Prigogine & Stengers, desenvolve-se o problema da conexão entre matéria, vida e espírito por meio da comparação entre conceitos divergentes de entropia. Conclui-se com uma especulação cosmológica a respeito da historicidade da natureza.

O ensaio desenvolve o problema cosmológico da relação entre metafísica e termodinâmica, pensamento e ambiente, espírito e calor, com foco nos conceitos filosófico- científicos de sistema (Serres, Bateson) e entropia (Prigogine & Stengers, Georgescu-Roegen), em vista da catástrofe ambiental em curso. Seu objetivo principal é fundamentar a hipótese mágico-filosófica, baseada em Ficino e Agrippa, Starhawk e Castaneda, segundo a qual uma termodinâmica noética, ou uma noética ígnea, é não só possível mas necessária para fazer sentido do Antropoceno como “Piroceno” (Pyne). (...) Por sua origem antrópica, a catástrofe planetária atesta que o pensamento é intrinsecamente ígneo. (shrink)

The essay investigates the relationship between humanity and catastrophe in Davi Kopenawa’s shamanic cosmology, which is compared by approximation to Lucretius’ venusian cosmology and by contrast to Kant’s moral eschatology. It considers the thesis of the structural and dynamic instability of the sky and the problem of the cosmic void. So it seeks to develop the question about the origin and the end of humanity through the catastrophe, both in its ancestral, extra-human dimension, and in its connection with the current (...) socio-environmental destruction, of anthropic origin. In conclusion, it speculates about the role played by the critical thinking in the catastrophe’s eruption. (shrink)

A partir de uma explanação inicial sobre o significado e os limites da ontologia fundamental de Martin Heidegger, este ensaio procura investigar a possibilidade de uma ontologia não-antropogenética por meio do conceito problemático de extramundanidade. Essa investigação toma como fio condutor a ideia do “perspectivismo cosmológico”, elaborada por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro através de uma interpretação filosófico-antropológica do pensamento ameríndio. Lida como correlato positivo da extramundanidade, a noção perspectivística de sobrenatureza é contrastada com o conceito existencial de ser para confirmação (...) e problematização de seu caráter antropogenético. O objetivo principal do ensaio consiste em desvelar, apoiado radicalmente em outro pensamento, o sentido “cosmopolítico” do discurso sobre o ser, aqui representado pela filosofia de Heidegger. (shrink)

O ego e o outro: sobre a crítica de Husserl ao cogito cartesiano.

Influenced by James Bernat’s approach, the US President’s 1981 Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioural Research concluded that human death is an instant that separates the dying process from the cadaveric state. Death, as Bernat and the President’s Commission argue, cannot be a process. Because organisms cannot be both alive and dead, Bernat claims, the transition from one state to the other must be sudden and instantaneous. Since then, few have argued the opposite (...) notion that death is a process, and that the transition between living and perishing is not a discrete event. In this article we argue that human death is a process that comprises three distinct phases: dying (when the physiological responses against the shutdown of vital organs and systems are in an imminence of breaking down), decease (when events such as respiratory and cardiac arrest indicate the critical failure of vital organs or systems), and decay (the irreversible and accelerated systemic biological process of cellular death that eventually takes over the whole body). We also argue that human death differs from the ‘time of death’ indicated by death certificates, which is pointed out only to clinically and legally establish the irreversibility of the entire process. (shrink)

In this article, I am intent on rehabilitating Strawson’s overall anti-sceptical strategy. First, I focus on his earlier attempt, which ignited the debate about the adequacy of transcendental arguments against the sceptic. I present Stroud’s main reservation that Strawson’s viewpoint is unworkable because it does not take into consideration the view of the external world upon which the sceptic is based in order to challenge our knowledge claims. I then focus on Strawson’s later attempt, which is based upon a Humean-like (...) naturalistic strategy. I show that his naturalism is intractable for two reasons: first because it reproduces the proof structure of transcendental arguments and ends up employing a rational proof to counter rational proofs; and second, because it matches the sceptic’s advice that we should live according to our natural inclinations without ever trying to justify our beliefs. In the last section, I claim that it is possible to rehabilitate transcendental arguments as sound anti-sceptical proofs if we argue for the senselessness of the idea of thing in itself completely apart from our powers of conceptualisation. (shrink)

Essa pesquisa teve como proposta realizar um estudo acerca da angústia na obra do escritor Haruki Murakami (1949-), tendo como ponto de apoio secundário a teoria de Sigmund Freud (1858-1939) da angústia. Visamos, com esse estudo, lançar luz sobre a literatura como modelo de leitura da vida humana, em nosso caso, uma leitura das angústias humanas a partir da literatura. Para isso, iremos abordar o próprio gênero literário em que a obra de Murakami está circunscrita, os principais conceitos que dão (...) suporte a esse caráter angustiante, presentes no texto murakamiano, e a influência de concepções e ideias filosóficos em sua obra. Como por exemplo, a teoria da Vontade de Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) e a ideia do lugar do pensamento, postulado por Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) no quarto capítulo da obra “A vida do espírito". (shrink)

Filósofos, especialmente aqueles que se autodenominam como naturalistas, parecem cada vez mais interessados em realizar pesquisas empíricas. Um caso típico é o da Filosofia Experimental, um campo emergente que faz uso de dados empíricos colhido por meio de inquéritos seguindo os mesmos métodos empregados nas ciências empíricas, nomeadamente na psicologia, a fim de apresentar provas em pesquisas ou argumentos filosóficos. Outro exemplo é oferecido pela participação ativa dos filósofos em grupos de pesquisa interdisciplinares nas neurociências. No entanto, os filósofos não (...) são especialistas em metodologia de pesquisa empírica. Isso é transparente nos estudos mais representativos em filosofia experimental. Neste artigo, faremos algumas observações de advertência sobre as complexidades da metodologia das ciências empíricas. A recomendação final é de que é sábia a atitude de envolver-se em grupos de pesquisa interdisciplinares, buscando dominar as peculiaridades dos mais diversos delineamentos de pesquisa empírica nas diferentes áreas da ciência. (shrink)

Presentation to the ethic@'s issue: n. 01, v. 19, (2020).

Love and pride are passions related to ideas of entities capable of well-being. In the case of love, those entities are people we are related to, whose characters, qualities or traits we admire; pride, by its turn, is a passion related to the self. In spite of that, Hume is explicit in stating that love is naturally attended by a desire for the goodness and happiness of the beloved being; but it does not make sense to say that we desire (...) our own happiness and well-being because we are proud of ourselves. How can we explain this asymmetry? First, I will deal with the problem of the contrast between the unrelatedness of the emotion of pride and the desire of our own happiness and the relatedness of passion of love and the desire of happiness of the beloved person. After, I will link the conclusions reached with Hume’s famous claim that we cannot be happy in solitude. Our own happiness depends not only on our own well-being and success, but also on the well-being and happiness of the people we love, and both of which are related to the well functioning of society in the long run. (shrink)

A questão fundamental dessa investigação será mostrar quais bases sustentam a ideia do poder soberano no interior do chamado Estado Moderno e como nele se manifesta a relação com seus membros. Para alcançar esse objetivo pretendemos inicialmente mostrar a busca destas bases que o pensamento de Jean-Jacques Rousseau persegue desde o Discurso sobre as ciências e as artes (1749), passando pelo Discurso sobre a Origem e os Fundamentos da Desigualdade entre os Homens (1755) até alcançar sua formulação mais completa em (...) Do Contrato Social (1762), considerado o estudo mais influente da vida intelectual do autor. Nesta última obra, a legitimidade do comportamento se torna necessária para organizar os integrantes da sociedade, tornando coeso o corpo político. Para isso, os cidadãos se submetem a uma lei inviolável, a qual será validada pelos próprios membros do Estado. Portanto, delegam seu poder particular em direção à vontade geral, sendo cada homem considerado parte do poder soberano do Estado. (shrink)

O ensaio trata do problema da invisibilidade da matéria e do vazio em Dererum natura Como é possível a Lucrécio sustentar, por um lado, que o ânimo ématerial e que o conhecimento é sensível, e, por outro, que os primórdios dascoisas, bem como o vazio e os simulacros dos corpos, são invisíveis e, no limite,inacessíveis aos sentidos? O problema é desenvolvido mediante um comentário aotexto de Lucrécio que retoma criticamente a interpretação de Deleuze em Lógica dosentido com foco na relação (...) entre o caráter oculto da natureza e a diferença develocidade entre, de um lado, sentidos e pe nsamento e, de outro, simulacros ecorpos. A partir disso, o ensaio tira conclusões a respeito da natureza do discurso deLucrécio sobre a natureza das coisas. (shrink)

Resumo: Interessa ao pesquisador como o corpo poético negro e travesti da artista Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro se contrapõe à História e ao Sistema da Arte hegemônicos, ao mesmo tempo que contribui para uma revisão de suas práticas discursivas de inclusão e exclusão, por meio de sua poiesis, sua fabulação poética, na qual a um só tempo se visita e se reinventa uma ancestralidade afroindígena, atinente às origens e religiosidade da artista. A aparição e a visão do corpo preto e dissidente (...) de Castiel apontam para uma desestabilização do que Hubert Damisch nomeará “o teatro da representação”. Teoricamente, este texto recorre a um campo caracterizado pela interdisciplinaridade, no intuito de responder à complexidade de seu objeto de eleição: teorias decoloniais, estudos de gênero, teoria queer, filosofia, teoria lacaniana, teoria e história da arte, o que o aproximaria daquilo que a teórica holandesa Mieke Bal denomina Análise Cultural.: Our interest herein resides in how the poetical, black and travesti body of the artist Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro opposes and confronts the hegemonic Art History and its System, while contributing to a revision of its discursive practices of inclusion and exclusion through its poiesis, its poetical fabrication in which the artist’s afro-ameridian ancestry is both visited and reinvented. The apparition and vision of Castiel’s black, dissident body suggests, in our reading, a destabilization of what Hubert Damisch calls “the theatre of representation”. Theoretically, this text resorts to a field characterized by interdisciplinarity with a view to attempting to contemplate the complexity of its objet: gender studies, queer theory, philosophy, Lacanian theory, art history and theory, which would qualify it as an exercise in Cultural Analysis, as Dutch theorist Mieke Bal would have it. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the widely accepted view that rights establish normative constraints on authority’s powers, command is still a core notion in modern philosophical jurisprudence. Nevertheless, if Herbert Hart is correct in his analysis on the deficiencies of the traditional command theories, a command is binding only if there is a right of being obeyed implying authority. My main objective in this paper is to make explicit the semantical and normative relations between rights and commands. In the first part, after some remarks (...) on Hobbes’ semantics, I will note that, although commands are performative utterances paradigmatically addressed to “inferiors”, claims, on the contrary, are utterances addressed also to “superiors”. In the second part, assuming Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld’s distinctions between claims, privileges, powers and immunities, I will discuss Joseph Raz’s theory that authorities have a right of being obeyed. Looking for a more coherent theory, and taking a little bit of distance from Raz’s definitions, I will present some refinements in the semantics of authority. My main point is that a command is valid only if it presupposes a right of being obeyed, a right that would be a claim-right in Hohfeld’s sense; but since all claims are correlated to duties, this entails that the duty of being obeyed cannot be created by any acts of the authority which holds the claim. Anyway, since claims purport to present reasons for action, a command can only constitute a reason for action for persons who have a duty of obeying other persons with claims of being obeyed. In that case, commanding involves making an appeal not to fear, but to respect for authority. (shrink)

Dissertação de Mestrado LARA, Marco Antonio de. Karma-yoga como ação moral ideal na Bhagavad-gita à luz da criteriologia künguiana. 2016. Dissertação, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

Nietzsche's philosophy unfolds, at all times, in denouncing that the schools and universities in Germany serve, mostly, to domesticate as a modern force in favor of the values administered by the State. Considering this horizon, this article investigates the analytical background of the Nietzschean critique of education (Ersiehung) of his time to show the necessary tension that human formation (Bildung) emerges in the framework of his philosophy as the cultivation of new values. For that, it will be necessary to show (...) that another level of discipline, at the same time cause and effect of a unique and proper formative experience, must be triggered as a creative power of and for other existential values. (shrink)

Advocates of the Person-Centered Healthcare (PCH) approach say that PCH is a response to a failure of caring for patients as persons. Nevertheless, there are many human subjects falling to fulfill the requirements of a traditional philosophical definition of personhood. Hence, if we take, PCH seriously, a greater clarification of the key terminology of PCH is urgently needed. It seems necessary, for instance, that the concept of the person should be extended in order to include those individuals with insipient or (...) immature levels of consciousness, as well as those who are severely and permanently mentally handicapped. In this article, we will depart from some well-known philosophical concepts of what it means to be a person and try to offer a broader and more inclusive meaning. We suggest that persons are human beings with a socially recognized biography, which implies to recognize as persons individuals with necessities, but also with narratives about their interests and claims, expressed sometimes by other people related to them. This is particularly the case of individuals that suffer from severe disorders of consciousness. For those, is not only care that matters; respect matters too. Caregivers should therefore not only sympathetically care for the well-being of these people; they should also be concerned to respect their interests and claims by interpreting them empathetically, in the light of their biographical story. Our conclusion is that, in order to be coherent, PCH must consider individuals with severe disorders of consciousness as persons and we think that our revised concept of personhood fits with this requirement. (shrink)