Olexandr Lukovyna’s interview with Professor Plínio Junqueira Smith is devoted to skeptic research in Brazilian philosophy, the beginning of skeptic studies in Brazil, Oswaldo Porchat’s and Ezequiel de Olaso’s roles in establishing the tradition of skeptic studies, contemporary studies in skepticism, and the global state of affairs in skeptic research.

Review of Canhada, J. M. (2023). Le discours et l’histoire: la philosophie au Brésil au dix-neuvième siècle. (F. Brandi, Trans.). Paris: Harmattan.

This volume, The Brazilian Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, is the first attempt to present to a general audience, works from Brazil on this subject. The included papers are original, covering a remarkable number of relevant topics of philosophy of science, logic and on the history of science. The Brazilian community has increased in the last years in quantity and in quality of the works, most of them being published in respectable international journals (...) on the subject. The chapters of this volume are forwarded by a general introduction, which aims to sketch not only the contents of the chapters, but it is conceived as a historical and conceptual guide to the development of the field in Brazil. The introduction intends to be useful to the reader, and not only to the specialist, helping them to evaluate the increase in production of this country within the international context. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test for nationality bias among members of the Brazilian philosophical community. Faculty members and postgraduate students from philosophy departments at seven Brazilian universities evaluated texts attributed to authors of European and Latin American nationalities. Results showed a clear preference for French nationality over Brazilian. They were inconclusive, however, when contrasting other Latin American nationalities with European nationalities, which likely relates to the academic background of the participants. (...) These overall results support the claim that Brazilian academic philosophers are highly critical of Brazilians who produce theories of their own. The paper calls on philosophers to carefully consider the ways in which Eurocentrism impacts their very ability to reason. (shrink)

When Spinoza described his dream of a ‘black, scabby Brazilian’, was the image indicative of a larger pattern of racial discrimination? Should today’s readers regard racist comments and theories in the texts of 17th- and 18th-century philosophers as reflecting the prejudices of their time or as symptomatic of philosophical discourse? This article discusses whether a critical discussion of race is itself a form of racism and whether supposedly minor prejudices are evidence of a deeper social pathology. Given historical hindsight, (...) we may read such discussion of race in early modern philosophy as a sign of the incipient struggle against prejudice, a sign that we can recognize and use in the struggles of our own time. Key Words: colonialism • the concept of haunting • essentialism • David Hume • Immanuel Kant • racism • Benedict Spinoza. (shrink)

The present special issue of Disputatio brings together some of the best work recently done in Brazil and Portugal in the tradition of analytic philosophy (broadly conceived). Over the past ten years or so we have witnessed an impressive growth of analytic philosophy in both countries, either in terms of quantity or in terms of quality of the produced philosophy. We hope that this volume capture, at least partly, the dynamics and strength of such development. The range (...) of philosophical problems and topics covered by the contributed essays is vast, cutting across several philosophical disciplines. Indeed, one can find therein issues in philosophical logic, meta-philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and metaphysics. Such variety of subject-matter is also a trait of recent Luso-Brazilian analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This is the book of abstracts of the 19th Brazilian Logic Conferences. The Brazilian Logic Conferences (EBL) is one of the most traditional logic conferences in South America. Organized by the Brazilian Logic Society (SBL), its main goal is to promote the dissemination of research in logic in a broad sense. It has been occurring since 1979, congregating logicians of different fields — mostly philosophy, mathematics and computer science — and with different backgrounds — from undergraduate (...) students to senior researchers. The meeting is an important moment for the Brazilian and South American logical community to join together and discuss recent developments of the field. The areas of logic covered in the conference spread over foundations and philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, philosophy and history of logic, mathematics, computer science, informatics, linguistics and artificial intelligence. Previous editions of the EBL have been a great success, attracting researchers from all over Latin America and elsewhere. -/- The 19th edition of EBL takes place from May 6-10, 2019, in the beautiful city of João Pessoa, at the northeast coast of Brazil. It is conjointly organized by Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), whose main campus is located in João Pessoa, Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), whose main campus is located in the nearby city of Campina Grande (the second-largest city in Paraíba state) and SBL. It is sponsored by UFPB, UFCG, the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Paraíba. It takes place at Hotel Luxxor Nord Tambaú, privileged located right in front Tambaú beach, one of João Pessoa’s most famous beaches. (shrink)

It is about analyzing the connection between just memory, narration and art, using an approach that mixes philosophy and visual arts. We will start from the perspective of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur on fair memory, presented in his work Memory, History, Oblivion (2000), according to which there is an institutionalized ideologization of memory in which narrations are silenced or distorted by the so-called official history. In the process of recovering fair memory, these narratives need to be heard, recognized (...) and valued, deconstructing abusive mechanisms that silence them with the aim of producing oblivion or that manipulate them involve distorting the facts to benefit hegemonic discourses. Next, we will discuss how the myth of Brazilian racial democracy is an example of institutionalized ideologization of memory, considering mainly the reflections of Brazilian philosophy Sueli Carneiro in Device of raciality (2023). Finally, we will show how Elian Almeida's pictorial counter-narratives, especially the Vogue series (2020), work to strengthen and disseminate unofficial narratives about Brazil that have been suffocated by official history. (shrink)

This article proposes to analyse some aspects of the appropriation of New School thinking in Brazil, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis is based on the assumption that the developmentalist ideology that punctuated the debate on the economic, political and social restructuring of the country in these two decades constituted fertile ground for the return and expansion of pragmatist thinking amongst Brazilian educators, articulating itself, sometimes in contradictory ways, with this ideology. The focus of the (...) analysis will be on the writings of the group of educators which circulated around the figure of Anísio Teixeira, at the time director of the National Institute for Pedagogic Studies, an organ linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which set itself the task of producing research that would support public policy in the field of education, as well as constituting itself as a center for teacher education and the stimulus and development of innovative experiences in the public school system. The appropriation of Deweyan pragmatism, in this context, had a triple perspective: pragmatism as scientific method, implying a specific conception of science, particularly the social sciences, with emphasis on the application of scientific knowledge in the solution of practical problems; as a way of democratic life; and as a synonym for experimentalism, in the sphere of schooling. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é contribuir com o conhecimento e reconhecimento da filosofia brasileira, apresentando alguns aspectos da teoria de um de nossos autores mais originais, Vilém Flusser. Embora seja um pensador judeu de origem tcheca, Flusser foi naturalizado brasileiro e viveu mais de trinta anos em São Paulo. Nesse período, escreveu uma importante e pouco discutida parte de sua obra. Por esse motivo, pretendemos expor alguns aspectos da ontologia inicial de Flusser, que marcam sua permanência em solo intelectual (...) brasileiro. O artigo concentra-se em sua tese inaugural de que a língua e a realidade são o mesmo, ou melhor, de que as diversas línguas se identificam com as diversas realidades - tese defendida em seu primeiro livro publicado, em 1963, Língua e realidade.: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge and recognition of Brazilian philosophy by presenting some aspects of the theory of one of our most original authors, Vilém Flusser. Of Czech and Jewish origins, Flusser was naturalized as a Brazilian and lived for over thirty years in São Paulo. During this period, he wrote an important but little-studied part of his work. This paper analyses certain aspects of Flusser's ontology which characterize his experience on Brazilian intellectual ground. The paper focuses on his thesis that language and reality are the same, or rather, that the various languages can be identified with various realities. This idea was defended in Flusser's first book, Língua e realidade, which was published in 1963. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to present the thesis “On the Ontogenetic Evolution of the Human Embryo in its Relations with Phylogenesis,” by Affonso Regulo de Oliveira Fausto, published in Brazil in 1890. To our knowledge, it was one of the first Brazilian academic works focused specifically on evolution. It was also the first doctoral thesis that addressed the topic of recapitulation in order to analyze what was then called the progressive evolution of the human species in tandem (...) with the embryological development of the individuals that would constitute the Brazilian “type.” In the present work, we analyze the author’s thesis in relation to its sources, concepts, as well as the country’s political context at the time of its publication. Fausto’s text, in which he explicitly recognized the influence of Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, represents a window to understand better a concept of nation based on science and on the idea of inexorable progress that was accepted in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

In the history of Brazilian education, it is only since the 1980s, during the redemocratization of Brazil, that proposals for public education in a socialist perspective have been presented. The past two decades have been marked by a growing interest in Gramscian thought, mainly in the educational field, making possible the elaboration of proposals for public school organization in Brazil. However, intellectuals and pedagogues in Brazil have confused the Gramscian ‘unitary school’ with what is known in Brazil as the (...) ‘polytechnical school’, a vague idea of education which is attributed to Marx and taken up by Lenin in the course of the Soviet Revolution. The two conceptions of education differ because of the varying historical contexts in which Marx, Lenin and Gramsci lived and developed their thinking on the roles of State and school. These fundamental differences have been overlooked during the diffusion of Gramscian thought in Brazil, causing confusion in the understanding of the ‘unitary school’ and the ‘polytechnical school’. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility refers to the duty of management to consider and respond to issues beyond the organization’s economic and legal requirements in line with social and environmental values. However, ‘management’ is constituted by real people responsible for routine decisions and formulation and implementation of policies. It can be said therefore that the ethical ideals and beliefs of these individuals – in particular their personal values – play an important role in their decisions. It is contended in this article that (...) the personal values of managers may contribute to the creation and maintenance of ‘CSR cultures’ in their organizations; that is, organizational cultures focused on ensuring environmental and social sustainability. Based on an exploratory study carried out in Brazil in 2008, this article explores the perceptions of five CSR managers in relation to the influence of their personal values on their work. The first part discusses the notion of CSR within the context of Brazilian society, the second provides a brief literature review on the link between values and organizational cultures and the third explores the perceptions of the participating managers, identifying the main thematic patterns that emerged in the study. (shrink)

Carolina Maria de Jesus, Abdias Nascimento, and Lélia Gonzalez are presented in this essay as Afro-Brazilian existentialist thinkers, whose global significance lies in their outlining philosophical interpretations of Brazil that center racial relations in the formation of the nation. By combining accounts of the lives and intellectual contributions of these thinkers, one can understand the core of each of their projects, whether in philosophical literature, sociological study of ethnic-racial relations, or philosophical anthropology. Part of a line of thought in (...) which the terms “black” and “existence” are put together, Jesus, Nascimento, and Gonzalez exemplarily proposed practices of decolonial knowledge production based on the notion that it is possible with the struggle for freedom and justice to reverse power structures that hierarchize human beings. (shrink)

In 1975, the English evolutionist William Donald Hamilton held in Brazil a series of lectures entitled “Population genetics and social behaviour”. The unpublished notes of these conferences—written by Hamilton and recently discovered at the British Library—offer an opportunity to reflect on some of the author’s ideas about evolution. The year of the conference is particularly significant, as it took place shortly after the applications of the Price equation with which Hamilton was able to build a model that included several levels (...) of selection. In this paper I mainly analyse the inaugural lecture in which Hamilton proposes a simple model to disprove the hypothesis supported by the British zoologist C. Vero Wynne-Edwards regarding mechanisms to prevent “over-exploitation of the food supply” in “the interests of the survival of the group”. The document presented here is of great historical interest. Not only because manuscript offers a model that—since it was intended for teaching purposes—had never before appeared in the published version, but also because of the general index of the lectures that accompanies it. The latter allows us to make some hypothetical considerations on the relationship and differences between kin-selection, group-selection and inclusive fitness that Hamilton wanted to present to the attentive, well-prepared audience of the foreign university that had invited him. (shrink)

In this research, we evaluate the response of Brazilian consumers to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives accompanied by a price increase. We demonstrate that the extent to which Brazilian consumers perceive a company to be socially responsible (i.e., their CSR perceptions) is related to both the basic transactional outcome of purchase intentions as well as two relational outcomes: the likelihood to switch to a competitor and to complain about the CSR-based price increase. More interestingly, we find that these (...) relationships are jointly mediated by the consumers’ perceptions of price fairness and feelings of personal satisfaction. Perhaps most interesting, we find that these mediating effects vary with consumer purchasing power; the mediating effect of price fairness on purchase intention is stronger for lower income than for higher income consumers, whereas the mediating effects of personal satisfaction on switching and complaining intentions are stronger for higher income than for lower income consumers. (shrink)

BackgroundBrazil is among the sixteen countries that conducts the most clinical trials in the world. It has a system to review research ethics with human beings made up by the National Commission on Research Ethics and 779 Research Ethics Committees, in 2017. The RECs are supposed to follow the same rules regarding their membership, although the RECs that review Social Science and Humanities researches must respect Resolution 510/16. There are Brazilian RECs that review SSH and clinical trials. This study (...) aimed to analyze the academic professional profile of the members of the CONEP and Brazilian RECs, their adequacy to the norms, and the challenges faced by the REC’s Chairs to compose their membership. MethodsAll 779 Brazilian RECs’ chairs are invited to fill in a questionnaire informing academic and professional background of the RECs members, and 92 answered. However, eight were excluded for having sent an incomplete questionnaire, leaving a total of 84 participants. The variables were described by absolute and relative frequency. The Chi-square test and ANOVA was used to analyze regional differences related difficulties to compose the committee. The significance level was 95%. ResultsThe results showed a predominance of members from the biomedical area, while 33% were members of the Social Sciences and Humanities and 5.5% were community representatives. As for the academic degree, there were PhD and masters. The divergences in relation to the guidelines result from the difficulties of having participants in some areas and the little interest in the work carried out by the committees.ConclusionThe RECs are partially adequate to the norms and their performance may be compromised by the low participation of community representatives. The organization of REC’s specifics to review biomedical research could improve the ethical review process, ensuring a membership more qualified for these protocols. (shrink)

As a result of a spate of studies geared to investigating Brazilian racial categories, it is now believed by many that Brazilians reason about race in a manner quite different to that of Americans. This paper will argue that this conclusion is premature, as the studies in question have not, in fact, investigated Brazilian categories. What they have done is elicit sorting tasks on the basis of appearances, but the cognitive models of respondents have not been investigated in (...) order to determine what are the boundaries of their concepts. Sorting based on appearances is not sufficient to infer the boundaries of concepts whenever appearance is not a defining criterion for the concepts in question, as the case appears to be for racial and ethnic categories. Following a critique of the methods used, I review a terminological and theoretical confusion concerning the use of the terms 'emic' and 'etic' in anthropology that appears directly responsible for the failure so far to choose methods appropriate to parsing the conceptual domain of 'race' in Brazil. (shrink)

Based on a mixed-methods study involving triad tasks and ethnobiological models, we analyze local categories and knowledge of key ethnospecies of fish exploring partial overlaps between artisanal fishers’ and academic knowledge in a fishing community in northeast Brazil. We argue that fishers’ and academic knowledge overlaps may provide common ground for transdisciplinary collaboration, while their partiality requires reflection on epistemological and ontological differences. Here, we show how knowledge of artisanal fishers can complement academic knowledge and bring about tensions that need (...) to be addressed through intercultural dialogue. By integrating a general philosophical framework of partial overlaps with a mixed-methods study on fishers’ knowledge, we show how ethnobiology can contribute to reflective and empirically-grounded transdisciplinary practices. (shrink)

The number of available legal documents has presented an enormous growth in recent years, and the digital processing of such materials is prompting the necessity of systems that support the automatic relevant information extraction. This work presents a system for ontology-based information extraction from natural language texts, able to identify a set of legal events. The system is based on an innovative methodology based on domain ontology of legal events and a set of linguistic rules, integrated through inference mechanism, resulting (...) in a flexible approach and scalable approach. A case study with the use of documents from the Superior Court in Brazil is related, with satisfactory results in precision and recall. (shrink)

The article is a reflection about the controversies on social media. It analyzes a week of Folha de São Paulo’s posts, the largest Brazilian newspaper, on its Facebook page. The methodological basis adopted is the Grounded Theory. From the results, in a week of data collection, it seeks to theorize over coercive factors for the emergence of discursive struggles, with the aim of outlining a phenomenology of commentaries, based on Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger. Finally, it contrasts (...) this situation of online conflicts with the Brazilian identity and the historical moment of the country. (shrink)

The author argues that polity and policies of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo cannot be fully understood without exploring the legacy of Rio Grande do Sul. The southern state’s first republican governor, Júlio de Castilhos, had taken inspiration in Auguste Comte’s multifaceted political philosophy and inculcated its authoritarian traits into political institutions. Yet, he and his followers substantially adapted Comte’s positivism to the specific economic and political circumstances in their republiqueta sui generis. In contrast to Comte, the State merged temporal (...) and spiritual powers to pursue evolutionary political changes, a balanced socioeconomic modernisation, and the incorporation of the populus qua paternalistic public policies, and all this with a strong focus on education. Changing contexts resulted in further adjustments, when Vargas became governor in 1928: an ‘orderly’ inclusion of the opposition into the polity, a stronger state interventionism in the economy and labor market, and an experimentation with state corporatism. These experiences paved the way for this comtismo-turned-castilhismo-turning-varguismo to enter the national stage two years later. Despite all the compromises with other contenders for power that Vargas had to make thereafter, he and his gaúcho and other co-opted protégés remained united in the strong belief in technical solutions to social problems and a quest for rational institutions to carry out transformative policies. For them, the State was to be agent of development, tutor of corporate interest groups, and now also guarantor of national security. While highlighting the significant, and still underestimated, impact of French positivism on Vargas’s first 15 years in government, the article places emphasis on the pragmatic dimensions of its appropriation, propagation, and reinterpretation by two generations of state-builders. (shrink)

Resumo: Alguns eventos políticos transcorridos em um passado recente de uma nação, como uma ditadura militar, que perdurou durante vinte e quatro anos, produzem sequelas aparentemente invisíveis, com sintomas cuja origem é difícil de ser diagnosticada. A dificuldade desse diagnóstico está na razão de que, para muitos, a ditadura militar ocorrida em solo brasileiro se aproxima do não-Ser de Parmênides: impensável e indizível, algo que simplesmente deve ser esquecido. Mas como reconciliar-se com o nosso passado e construir bases sólidas de (...) uma nova democracia se não falamos e refletimos sobre nossas mazelas fomentadas, fundamentalmente, em “nossos campos”, nos porões dos DOPS? O presente artigo tem como objetivo refletir acerca de algumas características constitutivas da ditadura militar brasileira, transcorrida entre os anos de 1964 a 1988, balizada pelos conceitos de estado de exceção, vida nua e campo do filósofo italiano Giorgio Agamben. A pesquisa se justifica, uma vez que, em nosso entendimento, aproximar a ditadura militar brasileira com tópicas da filosofia política de Agamben, nos dota de importantes ferramentas argumentativas que nos auxiliam na compreensão do que se passou no Brasil em seus “anos de chumbo”.: Some political events passed in the recent past of a nation, as a military dictatorship, which lasted for twenty-four years, produce aparently invisible sequels, with symptoms whose origin is difficult to be diagnosed. The difficulty of this diagnosis is the reason that, for many, the military dictatorship that took place on Brazilian soil approaches the not-Being of Parmenides: unthinkable and unspeakable, something that should just be forgotten. But how to reconcile with our past and build solid foundations of a new democracy if we do not talk and reflect on our ills fostered mainly on "our fields", the holds of the Departments of Political and Social Order? This article aims to reflect on some constitutive features of the Brazilian military dictatorship, elapsed between the years 1964 to 1988, buoyed by the state of emergency concepts, bare life and field of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. The research is justified since, in our view, approaching the Brazilian military dictatorship with topical political philosophy of Agamben, endows us with important argumentative tools that help us understand what happened in Brazil in his "years of lead". Key words: Brazilian military dictatorship, Giorgio Agamben, state of exception, bare life, field. (shrink)

Transdisciplinary research challenges the divide between Indigenous and academic knowledge by bringing together epistemic resources of heterogeneous stakeholders. The aim of this article is to explore causal explanations in a traditional fishing community in Brazil that provide resources for transdisciplinary collaboration, without neglecting differences between Indigenous and academic experts. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in a fishing village in the North shore of Bahia and our findings show that community members often rely on causal explanations for local ecological phenomena with (...) different degrees of complexity. While these results demonstrate the ecological expertise of local community members, we also argue that recognition of local expertise needs to reflect on differences between epistemic communities by developing a culturally sensitive model of transdisciplinary knowledge negotiation. (shrink)

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey’s ideas in the movement that defended the educationl renovation in Brazil at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the power derived from the disciplinary idea of progress, which was embedded in the process of rationalization of the social relations submitted by a factory (...) model; the second, developed by influence of Dewey, is characterized by a project of democratization of society and school that prevented the individual massification and the adoption of the rationalizing model inspired by the factory without any criticism. When Dewey was put in the center of the debate on political, pedagogical and social goals of the Brazilian New School, he was called to introduce a series of concepts that helped to find the balance between the respect for individuality and the observation of the social needs. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, dismisses household chores (...) as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

Many argue that transgenic technology will have wide-ranging implications for farmers in developing nations. A key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies, exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers. Conversely, those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive, particularly in commodity-based export markets. Drawing on interview data conducted in Brazil and supporting data collected in North America, Europe and China, we found that the impact of transgenic technology (...) varies. It has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment, and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility. Earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports, but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed [D. Lee: 2005, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, 1325-1334], nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions, exacerbating social exclusion. Multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance. We discuss the implications for policy makers, multinationals and small-scale farmers. (shrink)

Background Infertility is an increasingly prevalent disease in society and is considered by the World Health Organization to be a public health problem. An important ethical issue arises from the clarification of reproductive rights in a fair and equal way. The objective of this study was to deepen and update the knowledge and discussion about the difficulty of accessing infertility treatments in Brazil. Methods A cross-sectional observational study was carried out through the application of an online questionnaire that collected the (...) socioeconomic characteristics of couples and identify how barriers to infertility care affect the most vulnerable populations. We included couples who sought medical assistance to achieve pregnancy at two clinics in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Results A total of 201 questionnaires were analyzed. Most couples self-declared as white and the average age of wives was 36 years and husbands 38 years. 65% (65%) of couples would proceed with the treatment in a different city to which they lived, 37% evaluated as having easy access to a medical specialist only after indication, and more than half of the participating have thought about giving up the treatment due to some difficulty in accessing it. 39% of participants sought more than one medical service to find better reception, 42% of couples sought more than one medical service to define where it would be better financially, and 67.2% referred to the high cost of treatments, that is, financial issues, as a great difficulty in accessing medical services and/or treatment. Although 72.6% of couples considered having a good quality of life, 54.2% admitted that infertility and the search for treatment generated anxiety/stress in the couple’s life. Conclusion There is a need for public education on reproductive health and for policymakers to raise awareness of the importance of the difficulty that many couples face in seeking treatment to become pregnant, especially in countries with less financial resources. Indeed, it is commonly accepted that there is a universal human right to access healthcare of appropriate quality as a matter of justice. Discussion of access to reproductive technologies should be considered taking into account the longstanding ethical debate regarding fertility, fecundity, and infertility, as well as reproductive care. (shrink)

Stingless bees are among the most dominant pollinators in the south tropics. As such, the rational beekeeping of stingless bee species, called meliponiculture, is an ancient and relevant activity, related to sustainable agricultural development, and which connects traditional knowledge to innovation and novelty. Given the relevance of this topic, this paper discusses the possibilities of a semiotically mediated communication between humans and Meliponini (stingless bees). Zoosemiotics, as the studies of animal views of the world, is the ideal modelling system for (...) the investigation of the possibilities of mutual understanding between these two species. Starting from the premise that, for there to be inter-specific communication, there must be a shared code, and that this depends on the biological makeup and sensory apparatus of both organisms involved in the communication process, this research suggests that a possible way to communicate with stingless bees is with the use of olfactory (chemical) signals, since this channel seems to be common to both humans and bees. Considering that for human-animal relations one party must be able to recognize the other (iconic learning), it is revealed that chemical signals do allow bees to recognize individual humans, even going so far as profiling this person as ‘not a threat’. Finally, bees are seen to act cooperatively while the beekeeper is taking action to protect and maintain the nest, something that can be interpreted as an opening of semiotic relations, where the bees are deeming the beekeeper as part of their social group. (shrink)

Introduction: philosophies of race and ethnicity / Peter Osborne, Stella Sandford -- pt. 1. Ch. 1. Philosophy and racial identity / Linda Martin Alcoff -- ch. 2. Fanon, phenomenology, race / David Macey -- Ch. 3. Primordial being: enlightenment and the Indian subject of postcolonial theory / Chetan Bhatt -- Ch. 4. Race and language in the two Saussures / Robert J.C. Young -- pt. 2. Ch. 5. Unspeakable histories: diasporic lives in old England / Bill Schwarz -- Ch. (...) 6. Race, colonialism and history: China at the turn of the twentieth century / Rebecca E. Karl -- Ch. 7. Ethnicity and species: on the philosophy of the multi-ethnic state in Japanese imperialism / Naoki Sakai -- Ch. 8. On Chineseness as a theoretical problem / Rey Chow -- Ch. 9. Race and slavery: the politics of recovery and reparation / Fran¸ coise Vergés -- Ch. 10. Rewriting the black subject: the black Brazilian emancipatory text / Denise Ferreira da Silva. (shrink)

Clarice Lispector puts forth nothing less than a complete philosophy of time in her writings, that is, a cohesive philosophical examination of what time is, of its physics and metaphysics, of how humans and animals perceive time, and even an innovative aesthetic theory in which time is the inspiring force giving rise to literary and artistic creation. Her view of time is unique in the Western philosophical canon, offering original solutions to many of time’s classic difficulties. For Lispector, time (...) is pure actuality. Reality is an unwavering present that never stops being, is fully material, and is ceaselessly attentive to itself. The present, matter, and attention form the unquestionable unit of the real and the core of Lispector’s philosophy of time. Supporting this structure is her inventive metaphysics of time, anchored in her notion of the “fourth dimension of the instant-now,” which is given close attention. (shrink)

Logic and philosophy of logic have increasingly become areas of research and great interest in Latin America and Spain, where significant work has been done and continues to be done in both of these fields. The goal of this volume is to draw attention to this work through a collection of original and unpublished papers by specialists from Latin America and Spain. Some of the papers are of importance for set-theory and model theory. They cover topics such as the (...) foundations of paraconsistency, the use of paraconsistent logic as a basis for set-theory, and the methodological aspects in both the justification of new axioms in set theory and the formalization of pre-theoretic notions. Other papers are related to epistemic logic. They deal with the issues of abduction and the choice of the simplest hypothesis, the definition of group probability, and the nature of explanation and understanding in such logic. There are also papers on logical paradoxes, the semantics of names, and the nature of relations. Max A. Freund is Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the University of Costa Rica and the National University of Costa Rica. He is co-author of the book Modal Logic its syntax and semantics, as well as the author of Judicial Logic, and of a forthcoming book The Logic of Sortals. Max Fernandez de Castro is Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico. He is the author of the book Quine y la Ontologíaa and co-author of the books Lógica Matemática I: lógica proposicional, intuicionista y modal, Lógica Matemática II: clásica, intuicionista y modal, Teoría de Conjuntos, Lógica y Temas Afines I. Marco Ruffino is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Campinas and the editor of Manuscrito, the Brazilian international journal for Analytic Philosophy. He has many publications, in important philosophical journals, in the philosophy of language, of logic, and of mathematics; in the history of analytic philosophy, and on Frege and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In 1963 Vilem Flusser presented a series of lectures at the Brazilian Institute of Philosophy (IBF) in Sao Paulo concerning the philosophy of language. The resulting ten essays would eventually be published in 1965 in the annual magazine of the Brazilian Institute of Technology and Aeronautics (ITA), and published here for the first time in book form. Flusser prepared each lecture as a response to the dialogs that followed the preceding lecture, thereby expanding and explicating his (...) philosophy of language in an intense dialogical process. Despite the fact that the other side of the dialogue was not recorded, it becomes clear to the reader that the resulting discussions and polemics generated by the lectures progressively and profoundly changed Flusser's intended trajectory for the course. This kind of philosophy in fieri was in part the result of a group effort between all of those present, and subsequently synthesized by Flusser in every essay. As a result of this experience, Flusser adopted this dialogic method as an integral part of his future work -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Si la pensée est universelle, nous ne pouvons toutefois pas nier la spécificité des modalités de pensées. Les études réunies dans cet ouvrage apparaissent ainsi comme une occasion d'interroger et de dégager les différentes modalités d'appropriation de la philosophie cartésienne au Brésil.

This paper is an attempt to connect the Brazilian Paulo Freire’s well known educational thinking with the “philosophy for children” movement. It considers the relationship between the creator of philosophy for children, Matthew Lipman and Freire through different attempts to establish a relationship between these two educators. The paper shows that the relationship between them is not as close as many supporters of P4C have claimed, especially in Latin America. It also considers the context of Educational Policies (...) in our time and why Freire’s understanding of the politics of education makes it impossible to be Freirean and at the same time be neutral or favorable to the actual status quo. Finally, after presenting Lipman’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy, education and democracy and their connection to capitalism, it proposes ways to begin the political path of philosophizing with children inspired by Paulo Freire’s educational thinking. As a result, a more politically committed path to doing philosophy with children is offered. (shrink)

Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in 2018 and is now more popular than ever. He is famous for being brave enough to eat things most Americans would not regard as food, including a whole cobra, raw seal's eyeballs, and unwashed warthog rectum. His book Kitchen Confidential (2000) was his first best-seller but not his last. Though best known as an authority on food and international travel, Bourdain also wrote popular crime novels and books on history and other topics. He was a (...) fan and friend of The Ramones, and dedicated his hilarious book The Nasty Bits (2007) to the members of the band. Bourdain was a heavy user of multiple drugs, a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and an exposer of sexual harassment both in the restaurant business and the movies. All his writings and recorded conversations are witty and penetrating, and express his strong personal opinions on many subjects, from vegetarianism to religion. Anthony Bourdain and Philosophy is a collection of chapters by a diverse group of philosophers on many aspects of Bourdain's life and work. Among the topics discussed: What counts as food, and what counts as good food? What can we learn from travel that we could not glean from books and movies? Do eating habits bring people together or drive them apart? Is suicide a moral issue or just a matter of personal preference? Is it okay for an addictive personality to indulge his many indications, including addictions to work and sports? Are vegetarianism and other progressive lifestyle features "first world luxuries"? Scott Calef is professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ohio Wesleyan University. He edited Led Zeppelin and Philosophy: All Will Be Revealed (2009), and has written many scholarly articles on philosophy. (shrink)