We first show that a theorem by Cartan that generalizes the Frobenius integrability theorem allows us (given certain conditions) to obtain noncurvature solutions for the differential Bianchi conditions and for higher-degree similar relations. We then prove that there is no algorithmic procedure to determine, for a reasonable restricted algebra of functions on spacetime, whether a given connection form satisfies the preceding conditions. A parallel result gives a version of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem within an (axiomatized) theory of gauge fields.

In the last decades, Hegel’s mature political philosophy has come to be associated with some form of social or welfare liberalism. Challenging this line of interpretation, this study aims to show that his work harbours a more ambitious philosophical programme, grounded in a different vision of the modern state. However, this programme is only partly spelled out in the Philosophy of Right. While the conceptual logic that guides Hegel’s dialectical progression points beyond the modern liberal standpoint, some of his concrete (...) political choices are more conservative, and some are even opposed to the change of perspective I claim to be at stake in his work. In response to this tension, I undertake a systematic reconstruction of his social and political views, divided into two main parts. First, I highlight the critical dimension I take to be explicitly present in the Philosophy of Right but neglected or misrepresented in the secondary literature. I argue that the different stages of Hegel’s progression are not merely added to one another, but qualitatively transformed, and hence that his account of the state should not be read as a mere complement to the stage of civil society, but as a direct challenge to its underlying logic. Second, I draw the political and economic conclusions implicit in this line of approach. Shifting the focus from Hegel’s interpreters to Hegel himself, I show that the conscious pursuit of the common good he regards as essential to a rational state is not compatible with a capitalist production system nor with the constitutional monarchy he proposes. A true dialectical synthesis of the particular interests of individuals and the general interests of society entails nothing less than a comprehensive democratization of the economic and the political spheres. And the need for this transformation holds the key to Hegel’s enduring political relevance. (shrink)

Cet article reprend les textes de Kant sur le tremblement de terre de Lisbonne pour mettre en évidence l’intention philosophique générale qui les soutient, à la fois gnoséologique, épistémologique et métaphysique. Compris comme essais d’application de sa théorie des premiers principes de la connaissance, ils peuvent alors retrouver leur place dans l’ensemble de la production du philosophe dans cette année de 1755 et s’inscrire aisément dans sa recherche des fondements d’une science sensée de la nature.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

Apresenta-se, traduz-se e anota-se a Carta a Paul Landois, datada de 1756, que contém uma síntese das principais teses da filosofia moral de Diderot.

The Idea of the World offers a grounded alternative to the frenzy of unrestrained abstractions and unexamined assumptions in philosophy and science today. This book examines what can be learned about the nature of reality based on conceptual parsimony, straightforward logic and empirical evidence from fields as diverse as physics and neuroscience. It compiles an overarching case for idealism - the notion that reality is essentially mental - from ten original articles the author has previously published in leading academic journals. (...) The case begins with an exposition of the logical fallacies and internal contradictions of the reigning physicalist ontology and its popular alternatives, such as bottom-up panpsychism. It then advances a compelling formulation of idealism that elegantly makes sense of - and reconciles - classical and quantum worlds. The main objections to idealism are systematically refuted and empirical evidence is reviewed that corroborates the formulation presented here. The book closes with an analysis of the hidden psychological motivations behind mainstream physicalism and the implications of idealism for the way we relate to the world. (shrink)

Political theory is a field that finds nourishment in others. From economics, history, sociology, psychology, and political science, theorists have drawn a rich repertoire of schemas to parse the social world and make sense of it. With each of these encounters, new subjects are brought into focus as others recede into the background, ushering a change not only in how questions are tackled but also in what questions are thought worth asking.

The Turing test has been studied and run as a controlled experiment and found to be underspecified and poorly designed. On the other hand, it has been defended and still attracts interest as a test for true artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists and philosophers regret the test’s current status, acknowledging that the situation is at odds with the intellectual standards of Turing’s works. This article refers to this as the Turing Test Dilemma, following the observation that the test has been under (...) discussion for over seventy years and still is widely seen as either too bad or too good to be a valuable experiment for AI. An argument that solves the dilemma is presented, which relies on reconstructing the Turing test as a thought experiment in the modern scientific tradition. It is argued that Turing’s exposition of the imitation game satisfies Mach’s characterization of the basic method of thought experiments and that Turing’s uses of his test satisfy Popper’s conception of the critical and heuristic uses of thought experiments and Kuhn’s association of thought experiments to conceptual change. It is emphasized how Turing methodically varied the imitation game design to address specific challenges posed to him by other thinkers and how his test illustrates a property of the phenomenon of intelligence and suggests a hypothesis on machine learning. This reconstruction of the Turing test provides a rapprochement to the conflicting views on its value in the literature. (shrink)

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism with (...) the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters. (shrink)

Com este conjunto de treze artigos introdutórios, pretende-se apontar e, parcialmente, preencher uma lacuna significativa nos estudos sobre a Filosofia em Portugal e no Brasil. Com efeito, uma investigação bibliográfica tornará facilmente manifesto que a Filosofia do Conhecimento, enquanto tal, com os seus problemas específicos e as suas categorias próprias, não tem figurado, com uma assiduidade à medida da sua representatividade, na agenda daqueles que se dedicam à interpretação das proposta...

This article aimed to explore issues of concern related to quarantine, its social consequences and influences, challenging its effects on human behavioral expressions during social isolation. The advent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic impacted human lives in multifarious ways, threatening the meaning of normalcy. Quarantine, lockdown, isolation, and other terms reflecting conditions limiting human freedoms have become synonymous in importance to safety, security, and survival. To understand human defiance in the face of maintaining limited mobility during the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, reimagining situations of “unfreedoms” is explained as thinking of changes to inspire and improve the meaning of living lives meaningfully. During the pandemic, issues regarding healthcare practices and social behaviors focused much attention on interactive challenges that enhance ways to mitigate the spread of contagious diseases. Illuminating these issues, discussing concerns and highlighting recommendations to engage in alternative approaches and practices, heightens the declaration of efficiency of quarantine outcomes and effectiveness. Implications are proposed with the hope that they may lead the way forward in exercising contemporary healthcare practices. (shrink)

O que é posto em comum depende, em grande parte, de processos textuais específi cos que funcionam como condições de possibilidade pragmático-narratológicas da partilha dos sentidos que circulam pelo meio da linguagem. Tal implica que o simples uso corrente da linguagem, ao contrário do que é usual supor, ainda que indispensável, não seja sufi ciente para gerar essa comunidade, pois que nem todos os dispositivos linguísticos estão vocacionados para favorecer a convergência. Neste artigo, pretendemos, por conseguinte, reflectir sobre uma dessas (...) condições, a de que uma nova enunciação, para se tornar comum, tenha sempre de retomar uma versão enunciativa, já consolidada, não apenas formalmente, mas, também, no que respeita a sequências textuais específicas. Para o efeito, estendemos o conceito de retomada que, na filosofia de Eric Weil, surge no âmbito da Lógica da Filosofia, à totalidade da comunicação com pretensão a fazer sentido. Trata-se, portanto, de pensar com Weil, para lá de Weil, num exercício de (in)fidelidade e distanciação que constitui, em si mesmo, uma forma de o retomar. (shrink)

I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters (...) of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. (shrink)

Vítima, quer do contexto, quer da sua recepção, a obra de Eric Weil (1904-1977), editada entre os anos 50 e 70 do século passado, não tem obtido o devido acolhimento pela comunidade filosófica. Se as interpretações magistrais de Kant (Problèmes kantiens. Paris: Vrin, 1970) e de Hegel (Hegel et l’état. Paris; Vrin, 1950) constituem referências cada vez mais frequentes nos trabalhos da especialidade (os quais persistem, contudo, em ignorar os importantes artigos sobre a filosofia dos dois autor...

Este volume oferece o primeiro conjunto de artigos exclusivamente dedicados à noção de «retomada», tal como a entendeu Eric Weil (1904-1977), escritos por investigadores oriundos de Portugal, França, Brasil, Itália, Roménia, Burkina Faso e Chile. Nascido na Alemanha, Eric Weil foi discípulo de Ernst Cassirer que o orien­tou no estudo dos filósofos do Renascimento, como Pietro Pomponazzi e Marsílio Ficino. Naturalizado francês, após ter sido obrigado a abandonar o país de origem, contra o qual...

Le volume que nous présentons ici est le résultat d’un travail collectif entrepris pour la première fois exclusivement sur la notion de reprise, telle que l’a proposée Eric Weil (1904-1977), par des chercheurs venus du Portugal, de France, du Brésil, d’Italie, de Roumanie, du Burkina Faso et du Chili. Né en Allemagne, Eric Weil a étu­dié avec Ernst Cassirer qui l’a dirigé sur des recherches concernant les philosophes de la Renaissance, comme Pietro Pomponazzi et Marsile Ficin. Naturalisé fran...

Com este artigo, procurámos expor a dinâmica que assiste à Filosofia do Conhecimento de Francisco Vieira de Almeida (1888-1962), Professor da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa de 1915 a 1958, por um lado, apresentada como acesso privilegiado à prática filosófica, por outro, entendida como exercício de sistematização que recusa a fixação num sistema, por fim, atravessada pela intenção de promover a osmose entre o conhecimento de «tipo-filosofia» e o de «tipo-ciência», surpreendendo a gestualidade dessa ética do filosofar naquela (...) que é tida, consensualmente, como sua obra-prima, Pontos de Referência, publicada em 1961. As sinuosidades particulares de uma tal pragmática, resistindo deliberadamente a todo o esforço de circunscrição, levaram-nos a cruzar um primeiro nível de leitura, orientado para evidenciar os traços gerais, e um segundo, ocupado com problemas de teor mais específico. (shrink)

Drawing upon a distinction between epistemically and metaphysically motivated notions of a concept, I consider the insurmountable problems of theories that appeal to our epistemic capacities to address the problem of the nature of concepts satisfactorily. Prominent theories of concepts hold that primitive concepts must have internal structure if they are to account for the explanatory functions that cognitive scientists have attributed to such constructs as prototypes, exemplars, and theories. Vindicating the role of non-experimental philosophy in the critical examination of (...) empirical theories, I argue that the explanatory effectiveness of those constructs is orthogonal to an argument concerning the structure of primitive concepts. Conceptual atomism provides an alternative approach to individuating primitive concepts the precise formulation of which has yet to be worked out. Despite its unpopularity, the atomist alternative is still in a better position to face the question of what concepts are than its competitors. (shrink)

Turing’s much debated test has turned 70 and is still fairly controversial. His 1950 paper is seen as a complex and multilayered text, and key questions about it remain largely unanswered. Why did Turing select learning from experience as the best approach to achieve machine intelligence? Why did he spend several years working with chess playing as a task to illustrate and test for machine intelligence only to trade it out for conversational question-answering in 1950? Why did Turing refer to (...) gender imitation in a test for machine intelligence? In this article, I shall address these questions by unveiling social, historical and epistemological roots of the so-called Turing test. I will draw attention to a historical fact that has been only scarcely observed in the secondary literature thus far, namely that Turing’s 1950 test emerged out of a controversy over the cognitive capabilities of digital computers, most notably out of debates with physicist and computer pioneer Douglas Hartree, chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, and neurosurgeon Geoffrey Jefferson. Seen in its historical context, Turing’s 1950 paper can be understood as essentially a reply to a series of challenges posed to him by these thinkers arguing against his view that machines can think. Turing did propose gender learning and imitation as one of his various imitation tests for machine intelligence, and I argue here that this was done in response to Jefferson's suggestion that gendered behavior is causally related to the physiology of sex hormones. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a general taxonomy of different forms of eliminativism. In order to do so, I begin by exploring eliminativism from a broad perspective, providing a comparative picture of eliminativist projects in different domains. This exploration shows that eliminativism is a label used for a family of related types of eliminativist arguments and claims. The proposed taxonomy is an attempt to systematise those arguments and claims.

This book is a multi-faceted exploration and critique of the human condition as it is presently manifested. It addresses science and philosophy, explores the underlying nature of reality, the state of our society and culture, the influence of the mainstream media, the nature of free will and a number of other topics. Each of these examinations contributes an angle to an emerging idea gestalt that challenges present mainstream views and behaviors and offers a sane alternative. The book is organized as (...) a series of short and self-contained essays, most of which can be read in under one hour. (shrink)

Turing made strong statements about the future of machines in society. This article asks how they can be interpreted to advance our understanding of Turing’s philosophy. His irony has been largely caricatured or minimized by historians, philosophers, scientists, and others. Turing is often portrayed as an irresponsible scientist, or associated with childlike manners and polite humor. While these representations of Turing have been widely disseminated, another image suggested by one of his contemporaries, that of a nonconformist, utopian, and radically progressive (...) thinker reminiscent of the English Romantic poet Percy B. Shelley, has remained largely underexplored. Following this image, I will reconstruct the argument underlying what Turing called (but denied being guilty of) his “Promethean irreverence” (1947–1951) as a utopian satire directed against chauvinists of all kinds, especially intellectuals who might sacrifice independent thought to maintain their power. These, Turing hoped, would eventually be rivaled and surpassed by intelligent machines and transformed into ordinary people, as work once considered “intellectual” would be transformed into non-intellectual, “mechanical” work. I study Turing’s irony in its historical context and follow the internal logic of his arguments to their limit. I suggest that Turing genuinely believed that the possibilities of the machines he envisioned were not utopian dreams, and yet he conceived them from a utopian frame of mind, aspiring to a different society. His ever-learning child machines, whose intelligence would grow out of their own individual experiences, would help distribute power. (shrink)

A obra em questão, Favor fechar os olhos: em busca de um outro tempo, de Byung-Chul Han, nascido na Coreia e radicado na Alemanha, onde é professor de Filosofia e Estudos Culturais na Universidade de Berlim, se trata de uma reflexão filosófica acerca das questões que envolvem o paradigma digital contemporâneo atrelado à problemática do tempo, e, mais propriamente, acerca do ato natural de fechar os olhos ante a coação permanente pelo visual, pela vigilância. O ensaio de Byung-Chul Han está (...) dividido em cinco capítulos, os quais poderíamos nominar de cinco tempos: O tempo do silêncio, O tempo bom, O tempo da festa, O tempo do outro e Em um tempo inoportuno; à partida se pode observar os títulos como uma espécie de ideia reguladora, ou seja, como uma dimensão de alteridade, de algum modo, inspirada em um pensamento ético como o de Emmanuel Lévinas. Nesta resenha crítica, procuramos esboçar reflexões possíveis advindas desse trabalho. Data de registro: 07/04/2022 Data de aceite: 27/10/2022. (shrink)

The contemporary cultural mindset posits that the world has no intrinsic semantic value. The meaning we see in it is supposedly projected onto the world by ourselves. Underpinning this view is the mainstream physicalist ontology, according to which mind is an emergent property or epiphenomenon of brains. As such, since the world beyond brains isn’t mental, it cannot a priori evoke anything beyond itself. But a consistent series of recent experimental results suggests strongly that the world may in fact be (...) mental in nature, a hypothesis openly discussed in the field of foundations of physics. In this essay, these experimental results are reviewed and their hermeneutic implications discussed. If the world is mental, it points to something beyond its face-value appearances and is amenable to interpretation, just as ordinary dreams. In this case, the project of a Hermeneutic of Everything is metaphysically justifiable. (shrink)

This invited article is a response to the paper “Quantum Misuse in Psychic Literature,” by Jack A. Mroczkowski and Alexis P. Malozemoff, published in this issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Whereas I sympathize with Mroczkowski’s and Malozemoff’s cause and goals, and I recognize the problem they attempted to tackle, I argue that their criticisms often overshot the mark and end up adding to the confusion. I address nine specific technical points that Mroczkowski and Malozemoff accused popular writers in (...) the fields of health care and parapsychology of misunderstanding and misrepresenting. I argue that, by and large—and contrary to Mroczkowski’s and Malozemoff’s claims—the statements made by these writers are often reasonable and generally consistent with the current state of play in foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

> Context • The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain mat- ter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining mind in terms of mat- ter (mainstream physicalism), in the sense of being structurally equivalent despite being reversely arranged. > Problem • I argue that this is an error arising from language artifacts, for dichotomies must reside in the same level of abstraction. > Method • I (...) show that, because matter outside mind is not an empirical observation but rather an explanatory model, the epistemic symmetry between the two is broken. Consequently, matter and mind cannot reside in the same level of abstraction. > Results • It then becomes clear that attempting to explain mind in terms of matter is epistemically more costly than attempting to explain matter in terms of mind. > Implications • The qualities of experience are suggested to be not only epistemically, but also ontologically primary. > Constructivist content • I high- light the primacy of perceptual constructs over explanatory abstraction on both epistemic and ontic levels. > Key words • Idealism, physicalism, pancomputationalism, anti-realism, hard problem of consciousness, epistemic symmetry, explanatory abstraction, levels of abstraction. (shrink)

AFINAL, PARA QUE SERVE A PENA? A TRAGÉDIA DA AUTORIDADE?

COMUNICANDO SOBRE O DIREITO A PARTIR DA COMUNICAÇÃO.

In this article it is defended that the notion known as “The mark of the cognitive” is better characterized as a process that performs the function of generating intelligent behavior, in a flexible and adaptive way, capable of adapting to circumstances, given it is a context sensitive process. For that, some relevant definitions of cognition are examined. In the end, it is pointed out that the definition of the mark of cognition as a context-sensitive process takes into account several factors (...) that were added as constitutive parts of cognitive phenomena over the years, especially the 4E Cognition, which cannot be satisfactorily accommodated alongside the preceding notions of cognition. Accordingly, this essay shouldn’t be mistaken merely as an exercise in intellectual history, but as a brief and accessible attempt to advance the debate. (shrink)

For the philosopher Ivan Illich, society became a set of systems rather than a group of people. As such, society depersonalizes life and brings the need for open non-systematized spaces where people can act and interact outside their typical roles. On the other hand, an absence of formal structures may simply open spaces for the informal reproduction of society’s already well-established structures. Given this conjuncture, can systems be designed to foster personal expression? The answer I found in cybernetics is self-organization, (...) a process of adaptation to a context that can grow different organizations depending on what this context provides. This implies that personal expression is a concern in society’s emergent organizations, calling for meta planning to design the context of some of society’s self-organization processes. The cybernetician Gordon Pask argued that depersonalization follows from non-conversational communications, like the ones that develop in large committees. In response, Pask’s fellow cybernetician Stafford Beer proposed a meeting protocol called Team Syntegrity allowing large groups to subdivide into small integrated discussion groups. While Beer’s work has been extensively discussed in existent literature, this article presents the results of four experiments conducted by using variations of Beer’s protocol to understand both the ease with which it can be adapted to different situations, and the implications of its conversational structure on personal expression. The experiment’s realization demonstrates that the protocol’s preparation is laborious and hard to adapt in a timely manner in situations where participant numbers fluctuate. Automation of these processes, however, offers possibilities to use the approach in loosely organized groups. Automation can also help choosing the most appropriate protocol for particular situations through the manipulation of its configuration. Despite difficulties, the protocol offers promise for different purposes, encouraging personal expression in a way that reverberates with others’ personal perspectives. (shrink)

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these ontologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this (...) is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other arguments—such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc.—are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology. (shrink)

according to Plotinus, it is possible for the soul of the philosopher to follow a way of ascension towards the superior realities. This way is composed of two parts. The first one goes from the sensible world to the Intellect and the second, from the Intellect to the one. In this paper, I investigate the trópos and mēkhanaí, as Plotinus writes in I, 6, necessary to this journey.

Segundo Plotino, devemos subir novamente ao Bem, que toda alma deseja (En. I, 6, 7, 1-2). De fato, descobrimos nas Enéadas algumas importantes passagens a respeito da ascensão da alma em direção ao Intelecto e o Um. Não é claro, todavia, qual a natureza dessa ascensão: Plotino escreve sobre aspectos diferentes do processo nos diversos textos. Neste artigo, tento analisar alguns desses aspectos, pensando a ascensão como despertar, orientação das faculdades da alma, interiorização e conversão.

O artigo busca evidenciar os pontos de contato entre as análises de Foucault e Kant sobre o Iluminismo. Ademais, cumpre explicitar a relação ambivalente da filosofia contemporânea com a razão esclarecida, ora considerada responsável por práticas de dominação, ora como condição de possibilidade para a autonomia e liberdade. Partindo da declaração de Foucault sobre seu trabalho situar-se na tradição crítica kantiana, trata-se de compreender como os dois filósofos problematizaram o processo de saída do homem de sua menoridade.

This book is a three-part journey into the rabbit hole we call the nature of reality. Its ultimate destination is a plausible, living validation of transcendence. Each of its three parts is like a turn of a spiral, exploring recurring ideas through the prisms of religious myth, truth and belief, respectively. With each turn, the book seeks to convey a more nuanced and complete understanding of the many facets of transcendence. Part I puts forward the controversial notion that many religious (...) myths are actually true; and not just allegorically so. Part II argues that our own inner storytelling plays a surprising role in creating the seeming concreteness of things and the tangibility of history. Part III suggests, in the form of a myth, how deeply ingrained belief systems create the world we live in. The three themes, myth, truth and belief, flow into and interpenetrate each other throughout the book. (shrink)