O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a caracterização que Hannah Arendt e Hans Jonas fazem da técnica moderna em suas visões da dimensão do homo faber, bem como suas críticas ao mundo da técnica no horizonte da modernidade, mostrando suas convergências e diferenças quanto a isso. A partir dessas críticas arendtianas e jonasianas, procuramos mostrar como ambos podem contribuir para uma ética e uma política baseada na ideia de responsabilidade pelas futuras gerações.

Este artigo tem como objetivo explicitar a noção de consciência em Sartre, explorando o modo como se dá a relação entre ontologia e fenomenologia na filosofia de Sartre.

Este texto procura analisar as noções de espaço e tempo kantianos na epistemologia schopenhaueriana com o objetivo de compreender o conceito de representação em Schopenhauer a partir da noção de fenômeno em Kant.

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar o conceito de Vontade a partir do estudo detalhado do livro II de O mundo como vontade e representação , no qual Schopenhauer explicita sua Metafísica da Natureza. Para este fim, nós analisaremos a relação entre Vontade e Representação como dois lados constitutivos e inseparáveis do mundo, bem como a ideia de finalismo da Vontade.

Este artigo é o resultado de uma atividade do PET-Filosofia denominada Cine-PET. Nesta atividade são exibidos alguns filmes e depois há uma discussão filosófica sobre o conteúdo dos mesmos. Neste filme – La vita é bella –, foram analisadas as idéias de otimismo, ilusão e representação para o querer-viver perpassadas pelo filme à luz da idéia de Schopenhauer sobre a Vontade como a verdadeira essência do mundo. A Vontade, para Schopenhauer, é caracterizada por ser um impulso cego, desejante e insaciável, (...) que por isso, constitui o sofrimento e as dores de todos os seres do mundo. (shrink)

Este pequeno texto é uma singela homenagem que dedico para o meu exprofessor da graduação em Filosofia e meu orientador no mestrado em Ética e Epistemologia da UFPI. Trata-se de um texto rememorativo e de agradecimentos pela convivência e aprendizagem que tive com o professor Dr. José Sérgio D. da Fonseca. A grata oportunidade de conhecer o professor Dr. José Sérgio ocorreu-me por volta do ano 2009 em uma disciplina de seminário, na qual o professor José Sérgio ministrou um curso (...) sobre filosofia da mente, se minha memória não falha. (shrink)

For the epic journey of autumn migration, long-distance migratory birds use innate and learned information and follow strict schedules imposed by genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, the details of which remain largely unknown. In addition, bird migration requires integrated action of different multisensory systems for learning and memory, and the hippocampus appears to be the integration center for this task. In previous studies we found that contrasting long-distance migratory flights differentially affected the morphological complexity of two types of hippocampus astrocytes. Recently, (...) a significant association was found between the latitude of the reproductive site and the size of the ADCYAP1 allele in long distance migratory birds. We tested for correlations between astrocyte morphological complexity, migratory distances, and size of the ADCYAP1 allele in three long-distance migrant species of shorebird and one non-migrant. Significant differences among species were found in the number and morphological complexity of the astrocytes, as well as in the size of the microsatellites of the ADCYAP1 gene. We found significant associations between the size of the ADCYAP1 microsatellites, the migratory distances, and the degree of morphological complexity of the astrocytes. We suggest that associations between astrocyte number and morphological complexity, ADCYAP1 microsatellite size, and migratory behavior may be part of the adaptive response to the migratory process of shorebirds. (shrink)

Cognitive dimensions of creativity: What makes the difference between creative and non-creative university students? This paper analyses the contribution of specific cognitive functions on creative performance. The main question was which cognitive variables differentiate extreme levels of creative performance and therefore can characterize highly creative college students. A sample of Portuguese university students of Fine Arts and Literature took part in this study. A battery of verbal and figural cognitive tasks, as well as two kinds of creative tasks have been (...) considered. Results showed that there were mostly the same cognitive dimensions, which differentiate extreme levels of creative performance in both text and poster productions. These results are discussed considering the relevance of the cognitive approach to explain creativity. Some practical ideas, possible to put into the educational context, are also discussed. (shrink)

Psychosis is associated with distorted perceptions and deficient bottom-up learning such as classical fear conditioning. This has been interpreted as reflecting imprecise priors in low-level predictive coding systems. Paradoxically, overly strong beliefs, such as overvalued beliefs and delusions, are also present in psychosis-associated states. In line with this, research has suggested that patients with psychosis and associated phenotypes rely more on high-order priors to interpret perceptual input. In this behavioural and fMRI study we studied two types of fear learning, i.e., (...) instructed fear learning mediated by verbal suggestions about fear contingencies and classical fear conditioning mediated by low level associative learning, in delusion proneness—a trait in healthy individuals linked to psychotic disorders. Subjects were shown four faces out of which two were coupled with an aversive stimulation while two were not in a fear conditioning procedure. Before the conditioning, subjects were informed about the contingencies for two of the faces of each type, while no information was given for the two other faces. We could thereby study the effect of both classical fear conditioning and instructed fear learning. Our main outcome variable was evaluative rating of the faces. Simultaneously, fMRI-measurements were performed to study underlying mechanisms. We postulated that instructed fear learning, measured with evaluative ratings, is stronger in psychosis-related phenotypes, in contrast to classical fear conditioning that has repeatedly been shown to be weaker in these groups. In line with our hypothesis, we observed significantly larger instructed fear learning on a behavioural level in delusion-prone individuals compared to non-delusion-prone subjects. Instructed fear learning was associated with a bilateral activation of lateral orbitofrontal cortex that did not differ significantly between groups. However, delusion-prone subjects showed a stronger functional connectivity between right lateral orbitofrontal cortex and regions processing fear and pain. Our results suggest that psychosis-related states are associated with a strong instructed fear learning in addition to previously reported weak classical fear conditioning. Given the similarity between nocebo paradigms and instructed fear learning, our results also have an impact on understanding why nocebo effects differ between individuals. (shrink)

Apesar do maior reconhecimento da importância das relações entre saúde, religião e espiritualidade no cuidado em saúde, as universidades brasileiras ainda não fornecem treinamento adequado nesse âmbito. O objetivo desse artigo é compreender como docentes de uma universidade pública brasileira percebem as relações entre saúde, religião, espiritualidade e seu ensino. 10 professores foram submetidos à entrevista semiestruturada e os dados foram analisados por meio da análise de conteúdo. Apreenderam-se três núcleos temáticos e, a partir destes, emergiram cinco categorias: Religião e (...) Espiritualidade: Conceitos superpostos?; Bom ou ruim para a saúde?; Dimensão excluída da prática clínica; Ensino: Seria bom, mas não agora; Questionamentos e barreiras à inclusão no ensino. Os resultados demonstraram que os participantes superpunham os conceitos de religião e espiritualidade, reconheceram seus impactos positivos sobre a saúde, entretanto, enfatizaram seus aspectos problemáticos. O ensino de saúde, religião e espiritualidade não foi considerado prioritário e as crenças do corpo docente parecem influenciar nesta posição. Diante da quantidade e qualidade das evidências científicas sobre o impacto positivo da religião/espiritualidade na saúde, a inserção desse tópico na formação dos profissionais de saúde não deve depender apenas das percepções e/ou preferências do corpo docente universitário. (shrink)

O pesquisador americano Joseph Banks Rhine (1895 – 1980) e o psiquiatra suíço Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) foram contemporâneos, o interesse mútuo de pesquisa levou os dois autores a estabeleceram uma troca de correspondências a partir de 1934, que duraria as duas décadas seguintes. A partir desse diálogo importantes repercussões teóricas ocorreram no trabalho dos dois autores, especialmente, em relação a Jung. Em nossa metodologia analisamos as obras de Rhine e de Jung, com destaque para o impacto dos (...) experimentos sobre percepção extrassensorial (PES) sobre o trabalho de Jung de 1952, _Sincronicidade: um princípio de conexões acausais_. Apesar das controvérsias existentes sobre o conceito de sincronicidade, com alguns autores estabelecendo que PES e sincronicidade são eventos distintos, o autor suíço estabelece de forma clara três categorias ou facetas de seu conceito, duas delas incluindo a PES. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n1p1 A teoria darwinista tem contribuído para a discussão de problemas nos mais diversos campos filosóficos, entre os quais se inclui a ética e a teoria moral. A sociobiologia e a psicologia evolucionista elucidaram muitos aspectos do comportamento social de diversas espécies animais, a partir de mecanismos como a seleção de parentesco e o altruísmo recíproco que, contudo, são insuficientes para explicar a cooperação no caso humano. Como alternativa, a teoria da dupla herança busca explicar o comportamento humano considerando tanto (...) a biologia quanto as ciências sociais. Segundo esta abordagem, a psicologia social humana é caracterizada por instintos sociais tribais e marcadores simbólicos, que resultam em uma mente que pressupõe princípios morais inatos e universais, selecionados para a vida em grupos orientados por normas sociais, mas que são plasticamente moldados à realidade cultural de cada sociedade. (shrink)

Our new cosmological argument for the existence of God weakens the usual Principle of Sufficient Reason premise that every contingent true proposition has an explanation to a weaker principle (WPSR) that every such proposition could have an explanation. Almeida and Judisch have criticized the premises of our argument for leading to a contradiction. We show that their argument fails, but along the way we are led to clarify the nature of the conclusion of our argument. Moreover, we discuss an (...) argument against us based on a principle of alternate explanation incompatible with our WPSR, and show that his argument fails. (shrink)

Argumentos evolutivos debunking (AEDs), de maneira geral, têm o objetivo de danificar o status epistêmico de um domínio de crenças ao se apelar para suas origens evolutivas. No horizonte da metaética, AEDs normalmente são direcionados a teses realistas da moralidade e consistem essencialmente em afirmar que se nossas crenças morais sofreram influência significativa de pressões seletivas durante nossa história evolutiva, então se segue algum tipo de ceticismo moral. Um dos argumentos paradigmáticos articulados nessa direção é o Dilema Darwiniano de (...) Sharon Street. Nossa proposta no artigo presente é colocarmos o argumento evolutivo contra o naturalismo (AECN) de Alvin Plantinga – um AED oriundo da filosofia analítica da religião – como possível resposta ao problema do ceticismo moral proposto por Street. Dessa forma, Plantinga pontua que considerações evolutivas tomadas dentro do framework do naturalismo ontológico acarretam em um conflito epistêmico para o sujeito que deseja manter em seu sistema doxástico tanto a crença na teoria contemporânea da evolução, quanto a crença no naturalismo ontológico. Argumentamos, a partir dessa questão, que o Dilema Darwiniano sofre de um problema estrutural por causa do seu comprometimento com a ontologia naturalista, o que faz com que o dilema se generalize em seu escopo e afete, de maneira nociva, crenças não-morais, se tornando autorreferencialmente incoerente. Palavras-chave: realismo moral. Naturalismo. Crenças. (shrink)

Pretende-se auscultar a possibilidade de instrução moral pela literatura. Defender-se-á que a arte narrativa é capaz de instruir moralmente pois 1) proporciona um tipo de conhecimento não-proposicional que permite o acesso a novas perspetivas, e 2) é capaz de cultivar e refinar os valores e as práticas morais dos leitores, através do engajamento emocional. Tentar-se-á mostrar que o poder inverso — o poder de corromper moralmente — não se verifica (ou não se verifica tão facilmente): apelar-se-á à resistência imaginativa (...) humana que parece impedir que o Homem exporte perspetivas morais que violentam o seu próprio posicionamento axiológico. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem como objetivo o estudo da ética da compaixão em Arthur Schopenhauer para que possamos chegar a um conceito de alteridade na sua filosofia. O ponto de partida é a concepção metafísica do mundo como Vontade e Representação, a partir do qual consideramos as possibilidades de uma ética não prescritiva, diferentemente de Kant, em que o reconhecimento do “outro” e da “Vontade” como coisa-em-si apresenta-se como o melhor caminho para as ações morais do homem, no sentido (...) em que este pode elevar-se à condição de “Bondade”, descrita por Schopenhauer sob as bases da “compaixão” e “Alteridade”. (shrink)

Em 1945, uma coleção de manuscritos em língua copta foi encontrada por camponeses egípcios, próxima à cidade de Nag Hammadi. Esta coleção, contendo treze códices feitos de papiro e cobertos com couro, recebeu o nome de Biblioteca Copta Nag Hammadi . Uma importante descoberta para a língua copta, para a história da filosofia antiga e para o cristianismo primitivo, pois esta biblioteca abre-nos uma nova janela sobre o período formativo do cristianismo por fornecer tratados de teologia sistemática, obras exegéticas, epístolas, (...) apocalipses, biografias e diários de viagem, relatos apócrifos da paixão de Jesus e códigos morais de várias fontes e inspirações. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a categoria “luz” no Evangelho de Tomé e no Evangelho de Filipe e fazer um paralelo com a categoria “luz” que aparece no Quarto Evangelho. A idéia sobre a categoria "luz" que aparece nesses manuscritos circularam pela comunidade joanina? A comunidade joanina deixou-se influenciar por algumas idéias ou seitas de sua época? Esses textos demonstram a possibilidade de que tais categorias circulavam anteriormente, mesmo os manuscritos tendo sido copiados décadas ou mesmo séculos depois? Palavras-chave : Nag Hammadi. Luz. Judaísmo. Identidade. Quarto Evangelho.In 1945 some Egyptian farmers discovered a collection of Coptic manuscripts near the city of Nag Hammadi. The collection that consists of thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices received the name Nag Hammadi Library. It was an important discovery regarding the Coptic language as well as the history of ancient philosophy and early Christendom, because this library gives new insights about the period when Christianity produced a huge variety of scriptures. The content of the Nag Hammadi Library ranges from systematic-theological treatises, exegesis, letters, apocalypses, biographies and travel diaries to apocryphic accounts of the Passion of Jesus and moral codices from various sources. The objective of this article is to analyze the category “light” in the Gospel of Thomas as well as in the Gospel of Philip and draw an analogy between the category “light” as it appears in the Fourth Gospel. Did the idea of the category “light” as presented in these manuscripts circulate within the Johannine community? Is it possible that the Johannine community was influenced by certain contemporary religious ideas or sects? Do these texts indicate the possibility that such categories already have been in circulation and the manuscripts were copied for decades or even centuries after its emergence? Keywords: Nag Hammadi. Light. Judaism. Identity. Fourth Gospel. (shrink)

Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding (...) contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play. (shrink)

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

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences’ enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new discussions of (...) positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist social science, along with a completely updated literature guide that keys chapters to widely anthologized papers. (shrink)

While it might seem prima facie plausible that divine foreknowledge is all that is needed for prophecy, this seems incorrect. To issue a prophecy, God hasto know not just how someone will act, but how someone would act were the prophecy issued. This makes some think that Middle Knowledge is required.I argue that Thomas Flint’s two Middle Knowledge based accounts of prophecy are unsatisfactory, but one of them can be repaired. However the resources needed for repair also yield a sketch (...) of a foreknowledge-only account of prophecy. (shrink)

Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.

Researchers are often faced with attempting to estimate a correlation based on the aggregation of sample rs either from several samples or from repeated measures within a single sample. The usual approach is either to average the observed correlations or to average the Fisher’s z- transformed rs and to back-transform the average z value. This note describes a minimum-variance unbiased estimator for the situation that is superior to either approach and is also simple to compute.

O trabalho investiga a revista O Clarim, produzida pelos alunos de uma escola, em Porto Alegre/RS, entre os anos de 1945 e 1965. A história de O Clarim constitui-se em uma rica documentação de história da educação, pois revela um pouco das representações da cultura juvenil daquele tempo. Aqui interessam os significados da difusão dos discursos difundidos pelo periódico, nos processos de subjetivação provocados pelos textos e suas possíveis influências na construção das identidades daqueles jovens. A pesquisa identifica-se com os (...) pressupostos teóricos da História Cultural e se inscreve no campo das práticas de leitura e escrita e de memórias juvenis, tendo como referenciais as concepções de cultura escrita como uma produção discursiva de um determinado tempo e lugar. (shrink)

Discussion of the relevance of grounding to substantiveness, theory-choice, and “location problems” in metaphysics.

For a novice this book is a mathematically-oriented introduction to modal logic, the discipline within mathematical logic studying mathematical models of reasoning which involve various kinds of modal operators. It starts with very fundamental concepts and gradually proceeds to the front line of current research, introducing in full details the modern semantic and algebraic apparatus and covering practically all classical results in the field. It contains both numerous exercises and open problems, and presupposes only minimal knowledge in mathematics. A specialist (...) can use the book as a source of references. Results and methods of many directions in propositional modal logic, from completeness and duality to algorithmic problems, are collected and systematically presented in one volume. (shrink)

Much more than their machinic reality, current iterations of AI rely on imagined divisions of human and non-human properties and skills that have genealogical ties to colonization. For this reason, research efforts have recently been made to historicize these imaginaries, connecting them to colonial ideals that delegate black and brown colonized people into the realm of the non-human. Atanasoski and Vora (Surrogate humanity. Race, robots and the politics of technological futures, Duke, Durham and London, 2019) have called this a “surrogate (...) humanity”, where narratives of autonomous technologies function to disappear precisely the formerly colonized peoples that are enveloped in its production process. At the same time, the gendered and racialized roots of this maternal figure represents an opportunity to uncover and critique the invisibilization of embodied resources necessary to produce AI, precarious bodies labouring to produce algorithmic infrastructures in a manner that can be considered in a genealogy of carework and reproduction. These genealogies complicate the detachment suggested by the surrogate figure and go beyond it to proclaim a more generative function of the relationship between the black maternal figure and AI. The article analyses Tabita Rezaire’s multi-media artwork Sugar Walls Teardom to think through decolonial and queer renderings of the black female bodies upon which technological imaginaries rest, to extend beyond AI surrogacy and towards notions of kinship, care and world-making by producing an AI aesthetics that is relational, embodied, and celebratory of other ways of liveness. (shrink)

Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework (...) for formulating such characterizations in a computable fashion. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in the Space Object Ontology and stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space domain awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators. This paper presents the core of the Space Object Ontology, discusses its advantages over other approaches to space object classification, and demonstrates its ability to combine diverse sets of data from multiple sources within an expandable framework. Finally, we show how the ontology provides benefits for enhancing and maintaining longterm space domain awareness. (shrink)

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

Maria Isabel Mendes de Almeida mergulhou na tarefa pesada de trabalhar a questão da subjetividade humana, elaborada de maneiras distintas por autores como Rousseau, Tocqueville, Simmel, Weber, Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, Paulo Prado, Gilberto Freyre e Ant.

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

Tem-se por objetivo discorrer sobre a problemática acerca do uso de máscaras em manifestações públicas, especificamente acerca da proibição de seu uso em manifestações pacíficas. As liberdades de manifestação do pensamento e de reunião são direitos fundamentais previstos no artigo 5º da Constituição de 1988, constituindo cláusulas pétreas. As vedações são capazes de contrariar tais direitos. Por outro lado, há no próprio dispositivo constitucional da liberdade de manifestação do pensamento, a vedação do anonimato. Deste modo, a pesquisa abordará o limite (...) constitucional da liberdade de manifestação de pensamento e sua relação com o direito de liberdade de reunião. (shrink)

A counterpossible is a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. Counterpossibles present a puzzle for standard theories of counterfactuals, which predict that all counterpossibles are semantically vacuous. Moreover, counterpossibles play an important role in many debates within metaphysics and epistemology, including debates over grounding, causation, modality, mathematics, science, and even God. In this article, we will explore various positions on counterpossibles as well as their potential philosophical consequences.

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

College students have become more representative as blood donors, mainly to help other people. This study ascertained the association between spirituality and adherence or intention to donate blood in post-graduate students. In this quantitative and cross-sectional study, participants were 281 students from a post-graduate programme at a Brazilian public university. After complying with ethical requirements, data were collected through a questionnaire for sociodemographic characterization and identification of blood donation practices, followed by the Spiritual Well-Being Scale. Descriptive statistics and parametric tests (...) were used for data analysis. A total of 74% of the participants were female and 26% were male. Previous experience and/or intention to donate blood were found in 75.3%; 14.3% donated blood periodically. In addition, 12.2% were not adept to donation and 12.5% were inapt. Spiritual Well-Being scores were similar between individuals who are not adept and those who donate periodically. In conclusion, in the sample, spirituality and blood donation are not associated, but spiritual well-being and gender are. To enhance blood donation, further research is needed. (shrink)