Modelos

"What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data - a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal. Predators need a different kind of model from prey, even though their worlds necessarily overlap. A monkey's brain must have software capable of simulating a three-dimensional maze of branches and trunks. A water boatman's brain doesn't need 3D software, since it lives on the surface of the pond in an Edwin Abbott Flatland. [...] The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used rather than by the sensory modality involved. [...] The general form of the mind model - as opposed to the variables that are constantly being inputted by sensory nerves - is an adaptation to the animal's way of life, no less than its wings, legs and tail are." Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

Leite

Esvaziamento

O livre-arbítrio é um conceito filosófica e cientificamente estéril. Considerando qualquer situação passada, se repetíssemos o mesmo estado do mundo, agiríamos sempre da mesma forma. A evidência existente aponta de forma esmagadora para esta possibilidade. A não ser que aceitemos uma perspectiva dualista - e.g., a existência de uma alma imaterial - não há fundamentos para afirmar que as mesmas condições poderiam dar lugar a decisões diferentes. E actualmente, considera-se o dualismo como um conceito epistemologicamente inútil, tal como os deuses, a referida alma, o vitalismo ou o elã vital.

É comum, nesta temática, referir o problema do determinismo como ameaça ao livre-arbítrio. Por isso, os seus defensores tentam minar a afirmação do determinismo, levantando dúvidas e argumentos à sua existência mais ou menos relevantes. Os dois lados podem concordar num ponto: nunca teremos a certeza que o mundo é determinista. A noção de certeza é uma assimptota, um ideal ao qual apontamos como objectivo mas que não chegamos a alcançar. Nunca teremos a certeza sobre um certo X mas podemos, com esforço e método, chegar a um ponto ao qual afirmamos X muito para lá da dúvida razoável. Este tipo de certeza ocorre no corpo de conhecimento de disciplinas como a física, a química ou a biologia. E a maioria desse conhecimento aponta para um mundo determinista. Os poucos casos na teoria clássica que parecem indeterministas, como as singularidades nuas entre outras situações patológicas, estão tão afastadas do nosso universo local (assumindo que realmente existem), são tão pouco relevantes no nosso dia-a-dia, que não encerram força argumentativa na discussão da cognição humana. Situações potencialmente locais, como o choque simultâneo de três corpos, se bem que não deterministas no contexto clássico, são eventos de probabilidade negligenciável (correspondem a conjuntos de eventos de medida nula).

O último reduto de indeterminismo parece ser a teoria quântica. Não na dinâmica resultante das suas equações, que é totalmente determinista, mas no acto de interferência ou observação. A interpretação de Copenhaga é manifestamente não determinista mas admiti-la levanta demasiados problemas sendo alvo de muita controvérsia desde o início da sua formulação. Já a interpretação de muitos mundos (many-worlds) defende que nada de mais acontece para lá da dinâmica determinista da equação de Schrödinger. Para explicar o aparente não-determinismo resultante do acto de observação, esta interpretação refere apenas que nós vivemos apenas em um de múltiplos ramos da dinâmica quântica. É deixado intocado o determinismo que já se encontrava nas equações, sacrificando para isso a nossa capacidade última de observação, uma perspectiva menos antropocêntrica e mais racional que a interpretação de Copenhaga. Mas, mesmo assumindo a interpretação de Copenhaga, é difícil imaginar como um evento não-determinista no mundo sub-atómico possa resgatar um conceito tantos níveis de abstracção acima como é o processo de decisão de uma mente humana (ou seja, como o arbítrio quântico se transforma em arbítrio humano?).

Há também quem argumente de acordo com a ideia que o mundo não pode ser determinista porque isso implicaria o colapso das noções de liberdade e de responsabilidade individual. Mas esta linha argumentativa é um non sequitur. O mundo é o que é. Uma ameaça à civilização, por mais grave ou iminente que seja, não tem qualquer efeito sobre a natureza do mundo externo. E, de qualquer forma, estes importantes conceitos não precisam ser abandonados:

• A liberdade é a possibilidade de termos disponíveis mais escolhas e de agirmos de acordo com a nossa escolha preferencial. Isso não depende do mundo ser determinista: uma pessoa tem opções e age segundo elas, seja o processo de decisão determinista ou não (aliás, um processo demasiado não determinista seria, este sim, uma ameaça a regras sociais estáveis);
• A responsabilidade é um conceito social. Ela é julgada moral e socialmente de acordo com as regras da sociedade em questão. E mais uma vez, isso não depende da natureza ontológica do mundo externo. Depende sim dos diversos modelos - sociais, científicos, éticos, religiosos - que a sociedade partilha e utiliza no seu dia-a-dia. É natural que novo conhecimento seja incorporado na sociedade e altere a sua perspectiva, como a moderna noção de inimputabilidade de certos doentes mentais. Mas, em última análise, as sociedades têm de ser capazes de manter um mecanismo coerente e sustentável de responsabilidade individual, qualquer que seja o conhecimento adquirido. A justiça, tradicionalmente o corpo social que formaliza e gere conflitos de responsabilidade, é um corpo independente. Ela recebe ajuda da ética, da ciência e da lógica, mas não depende delas para se fundar e funcionar.

Temos cada vez melhores modelos sobre o mundo, o cérebro humano e a forma como a mente funciona e interage. Cada vez mais parecem vazias ou incoerentes noções como o livre-arbítrio e o não-determinismo. Cada vez mais as discussões filosóficas nestes temas se parecem com as discussões sobre anjos ou almas da teologia antiga. Este é apenas mais um campo onde as discussões foram esvaziadas de significado pelo progresso do conhecimento humano.

Cegueira & Surdez

(c) Abstruse Goose

Identidade e anonimato

"Opponents of online anonymity often repeat the platitude that “real name” identification promotes civility. While that may be true, it is often at the expense of free expression. Not only does anonymity enable dissidents in oppressive regimes, but it also helps the small-town kid experimenting with his sexuality or the abuse survivor starting a new life.

Internet intermediaries offer tools that allow users to maintain civility without sacrificing anonymity. On social networks, users can moderate offensive comments or block users who are harassing them. Newspapers can institute systems for flagging inappropriate comments.

Concerns about cyber-bullying and other online crimes shouldn’t be dismissed, but law enforcement already has tools to identify anonymous criminals. [...] We should not be willing to sacrifice free expression for the possibility of civility, especially not when there are more effective alternatives." Eva Galperin, Jillian C. York @ DeepLinks

Selecção Natural

Uma citação de Richard Dawkins retirada do livro "The God Delusion" que resume o essencial da selecção natural, do ponto de vista genético:

In its most general form, natural selection must choose between alternative replicators. A replicator is a piece of coded information that makes exact copies of itself, along with occasional inexact copies or 'mutations'. The point about this is the Darwinian one. Those varieties of replicator that happen to be good at getting copied become more numerous at the expense of alternative replicators that are bad at getting copied. That, at its most rudimentary, is natural selection. The archetypal replicator is a gene, a stretch of DNA that is duplicated, nearly always with extreme accuracy, through an indefinite number of generations. [...] In the world of genes, the occasional flaws in replication (mutations) see to it that the gene pool contains alternative variants of any given gene - 'alleles' - which may therefore be seen as competing with each other. Competing for what? For the particular chromosomal slot or 'locus' that belongs to that set of alleles. And how do they compete? Not by direct molecule-to-molecule combat but by proxy. The proxies are their 'phenotypic traits' - things like length or fur colour: manifestations of genes fleshed out as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry or behaviour. A gene's fate is normally bound up with the bodies in which it successively sits. To the extent that it influences those bodies, it affects its own chances of surviving in the gene pool. As the generations go by, genes increase or decrease in frequency in the gene pool by virtue of their phenotypic proxies.

[...]

For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways .First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. [...] The other respect in which genes are not independent [...] concerns embryology which - the fact is often mis-understood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish. Genes, then, co-operate in cartels to build bodies, and that is one of the important principles of embryology. It is tempting to say that natural selection favours cartels of genes in a kind of group selection between alternative cartels. That is confusion. What really happens is that the other genes of the gene pool constitute a major part of the environment in which each gene is selected versus its alleles. Because each is selected to be successful in the presence of the others - which are also being selected in a similar way - cartels of co-operating genes emerge.

[...]

Different kinds of gene cartel emerge in different gene pools. Carnivore gene pools have genes that program prey-detecting sense organs, prey-catching claws, carnassial teeth, meat-digesting enzymes and many other genes, all fine-tuned to co-operate with each other. At the same time, in herbivore gene pools, different sets of mutually compatible genes are favoured for their co-operation with each other. We are familiar with the idea that a gene is favoured for the compatibility of its phenotype with the external environment of the species: desert, woodland or whatever it is. The point I am now making is that it is also favoured for its compatibility with the other genes of its particular gene pool. A carnivore gene would not survive in a herbivore gene pool, and vice versa. In the long gene's-eye-view, the gene pool of the species - the set of genes that are shuffled and reshuffled by sexual reproduction - constitutes the genetic environment in which each gene is selected for its capacity to co-operate.

Limitações da Lei (parte III)

[W]hile unjust laws and changes in law may be legal or valid by virtue of both acceptance and preexisting rules of change, legitimacy may be lost or diminished by an unjust change of law that lessens the people's ability to change the law in the future. In this sense the people's acceptance is a source of authority with continuing omnipotence both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively, the people and the laws are powerless to limit irrevocably the power of acceptance to validate law. Normatively, an unjust legal impediment to the people's continuing power to change law weakens the legitimacy of the system of law to that extent. [pg.105]

[...]

Frederic Coudert argues that the danger of an unwritten constitution is abuse of power by an ineffectively limited government, that the dangers of a written constitution are rigidity and violence triggered by slow and difficult change, and that our system of judicial amendment allows us to escape both dangers. C.P. Patterson believes the power of judicial amendment does not provide the best of both worlds, as Coudert argued, but gives the Supreme Court "the same relation to our Constitution that the English Parliament has to the English Constitution. [pg.200]

[...]

One might argue that actual legal systems depend on, or inevitably embrace, at least a few principles of "natural law" or morality, and that the latter are absolutely immutable. For example, one might argue that not even revolution can change the rule that the people have a right to revolt, that promises should be kept, that self-defense excuses homicide, and so on. [nt.1, sec.8]

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)

Limitações da Lei (parte II)

I am intrigued by the idea that the manifestation of consent sufficient to adopt a constitution in the first place is the most that can be expected in order to provide continuing authority to that constitution. This means that if amendment is more difficult than the original ratification, then the constitution has lost some degree of authority or legitimacy. The authority of a constitution over generations of citizens who did not ratify it would diminish roughly to the extent that the difficulty they face in amendment exceeds the difficulty of the original ratification. For such citizens, legitimate amendment would be more difficult than a revolution or discontinuity that would establish a new constitution with equal or greater legitimacy than their ancestors had in adopting the old one. If amendment becomes impossible after the first generation, because there is no AC or because courts or tyrants invalidate all attempts under it, then authority under the consent theory would drop to about zero plus any surcharge which citizens accord to rules of law, qua rules of law, before deciding to disobey.

[...]

One of the most important distinctions relating to the paradox of self-amendment and the paradox of omnipotence is borrowed from Hart's discussion of the omnipotent sovereign. An omnipotent parliament, he says, may limit its power to make law, without paradox, if its omnipotence is "self-embracing", and may not do so, at least without paradox, if its omnipotence is "continuing". Self-embracing omnipotence is unlimited power to make law, including power to affect that power. It may be used against itself and lost or limited irremediably. Continuing omnipotence is unlimited power to make law, but not including power to limit that power, thereby insuring that the omnipotence of the entity continues. Self-embracing omnipotence is unlimited but limitable power; continuing omnipotence is limited only to insure that it is (otherwise) illimitable. Self-embracing omnipotence is the power to make law on every subject, and therefore includes laws that diminish this power irremediably, whereas continuing omnipotence is the power to make law at every moment, and therefore excludes laws inconsistent with this very continuity.

[...]

Beings of continuing omnipotence are doomed to life, power, and even doomed to freedom, while beings of self-embracing omnipotence are free to resign, abdicate, and self-destruct. Pliny the Elder said mortals were freer than the gods because mortals could commit suicide. He obviously thought that divine freedom was continuing, and that continuing freedom was inferior to self-embracing freedom. [...] When John Stuart Mill said, "[i]t is not freedom to be allowed to alienate [one's] freedom," he was defining freedom to be a continuing power, and his disagreement with those who would permit people to sell themselves into slavery, become drug addicts, or otherwise freely choose unfreedom, is not so much on the desirability of these acts as on the logic of self-application.

The distinction is very useful, and by extension we may speak of self-embracing and continuing powers to amend. Self-embracing amendment power may amend, limit, or repeal itself, irremediably, while continuing amendment power may not apply to itself, at least to diminish itself irrevocably.

Continuing omnipotence and amendment power are not maximally omnipotent, for there is one family of things they cannot do, namely, limit themselves, violate their immutable limitation and continuity, bind themselves for the future, and so on. But this should not lead us to think that continuing omnipotence and amendment power can augment themselves. For the only way to do that is (1) to repeal their limitation and become self-embracing, or (2) to become capable of repealing their limitation, which is already to be self-embracing. But these would contradict their continuing character and are impermissible for them. That is why this is the paradox of self-amendment, not merely the paradox of self-limitation. Because continuing omnipotence and amendment power can only affect themselves in ways that neither limit nor augment themselves irrevocably, they are restricted to relatively trivial acts of self-amendment. For example, an AC of continuing omnipotence could rearrange and renumber the articles of the constitution, including itself, without affecting the extent of its power.

While continuing omnipotence cannot become self-embracing, the converse is not true. Self-embracing omnipotence can become continuing omnipotence and may even become "partipotence" or of merely finite power.

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)

Limitações da Lei (parte I)

Central to many theories of democracy is the view that law is legitimate only when endorsed by the consent of the governed. If this is not to be a hollow slogan, we must have some idea of where to look for the consent, or dissent, of the people to their form of government. One of the most important and indicative manifestations of consent is the people's willingness to use the mechanisms of legal change, especially the supreme power of constitutional amendment. Non-use of the power might reveal a certain contentment with the unamended constitution, and use of it might reveal a certain contentment with the established channels of change and the current form of the constitution. But clearly the inference from use and non-use of the amendment power to consent is only valid if certain conditions are met. For an onerous or unfair procedure could thwart amendment long after desire for change became widespread and intense. An amending procedure that was undemanding for a privileged class might result in frequent use that did not reflect the desires of the larger public. Hence, use and non-use of the amending power will not really indicate consent unless the procedure is fair and neither too difficult nor too easy. But to change the fairness and difficulty of the amending procedure are virtually the only reasons to amend the amendment clause. Hence, self-amendment will almost always affect our ability to assess the people's consent to be governed by their constitution and the people's power to alter legal conditions to meet their consent.

[...]

Our Lockean ears resonate with the proposition that the people are sovereign and that they are bound to obey their laws by contract principles. Yet the paradox of omnipotence arises in another form if the first generation of sovereign people can bind its successors. The adoption of a constitution with an amendment clause [AC] is a revocable act, because the AC permits piecemeal change and wholesale replacement. As long as the establishment of the constitution is revocable by later generations, and the method of amendment is fair, then the first generation is not oppressively binding its successors. But if the method of amendment is not fair, or is too difficult, then the constitution inherited by future generations does oppress and is partially illegitimate. The Lockean consent theory is strengthened as a normative theory of justice, and protected from the paradox of omnipotence, if we insist that the legitimacy of law requires the continuing consent of the governed, not just the consent of the founding generation. [nt.11,pg.379]

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)

Evidências

Prioridades

O direito à propriedade é visto por John Locke como o direito natural ao seu uso e à sua defesa contra qualquer interferência imoral ou ilegal, sendo modernamente interpretada como uma liberdade negativa(*). Isto implica a existência de uma estrutura que legisle, regule e resolva conflitos relacionados, sendo legitimada, como David Hume argumentou, pela defesa deste importante direito natural. Mas o direito à propriedade actual inclui também a transferência da propriedade para terceiros. Este direito conexo, socialmente relevante, não se encaixa no domínio da não-interferência mas do privilégio, devendo ser, por isso, interpretado como liberdade positiva. A remoção deste privilégio aproximar-nos-ia da antiga noção da terra enquanto domínio público, onde cada pessoa ou família possuía um direito igualitário a uma sua porção e ao fruto do seu trabalho (muito perto, ironicamente, do slogan “a terra a quem a trabalha”). A referida estrutura, legitimada pela responsabilidade de fazer respeitar o direito natural à propriedade, ao aceitar e gerir transferências de propriedade está a aplicar o seu poder coercivo para lá do domínio natural, minando, assim, a sua própria legitimidade. Esta dificuldade é um argumento contra a prioridade máxima e não partilhada do conceito de direito natural, assumida como axioma por muitas das linhagens de pensamento liberal.

(*) Isaiah Berlin propôs a diferenciação entre liberdades negativas, i.e., direitos de não interferência, e liberdades positivas, i.e., direitos a certos benefícios.

Força

As convicções são inimigos mais perigosos da verdade do que as mentiras -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Redistribuição

Vejamos uma citação do livro de Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution (1952), sobre a questão da distribuição de rendimentos:

Our examination of the redistributionist ideal in theory and practice has led us gradually away from our initial contrast between rich and poor toward quite another contrast - that between individuals on the one hand, and the State and minor corporate bodies on the other.

Pure redistribution would merely transfer income from the richer to the poorer. This could conceivably be achieved by a simple reverse-tax or subsidy handed to the recipients of lower incomes from the proceeds of a special tax on higher incomes. But this is not the proce-dure which has prevailed. The State sets up as trustee for the lower-income group and doles out services and benefits. In order to avoid the creation of a "protected class," a discrimination fatal to political equality, the tendency has been to extend the benefits and services upward to all members of society, to cheapen food and rents for the rich as well as the poor, to assist the well-to-do in illness equally with the needy. The cost of such services has soared in England [seguem estatísticas para a Inglaterra de 1950]. In fact, the public authorities, so that they may give to all, must take from all. And from the study made by the E.C.A. mission to the United Kingdom, it appears that lower-income families taken as a whole pay more into the exchequer than they draw from it.

No caso de Portugal actual, o peso recai principalmente na classe média. Vejamos um comentário [1] de Francisco Rocha Antunes à seguinte nota do Ministério das Finanças [2] sobre o IRS de 2006:

6. Quadro 37 – Total das Declarações com IRS Liquidado por Escalões de Rendimento Número de Agregados

O total de agregados com IRS Liquidado corresponde a cerca de 46% do total de agregados com rendimento bruto declarado. Daquele total de agregados, cerca de 28% apresentam rendimentos brutos até 13.500 Euros, enquanto que 70% declararam rendimentos brutos superiores àquele montante mas inferiores a 100.000 Euros.

7. Quadro 40 – IRS por Escalões de Rendimento Bruto Valores Liquidados

Da conjugação dos quadros 31, 37 e 40 retiram-se as seguintes conclusões:

- Para mais de metade dos agregados não é apurado qualquer valor de IRS;

- Para os agregados com IRS Liquidado:

- Com rendimento bruto até 13.500€ (28%), o montante de imposto é de apenas 2,5% do valor total do IRS Liquidado em 2006;

- Com rendimento bruto entre 13.500€ e 100.000€ (70%), o montante de imposto é de 70,4% do valor total do IRS Liquidado em 2006;

- Com rendimento bruto superior a 100.000€, (2%), o montante de imposto é de 27,1% do valor total do IRS Liquidado em 2006.

Eu sei que esta coisa dos números assusta muita gente mas tem a vantagem de ser uma descrição, não uma opinião. Resumindo: de 4.371.037 agregados familiares identificados pelas Finanças em 2006, 2.360.360 não pagaram nada de IRS. Nada é mesmo isso, zero. O Estado arrecadou nesse ano 7.671.000.000 € de IRS. Do total de 2.010.677 agregados que de facto pagaram IRS, 562.990 tiveram um rendimento anual bruto até 13.500€ e pagaram 2,5 % do valor do IRS liquidado, ou seja, 340€ de IRS efectivamente entregue por agregado. No escalão dos agregados que tiveram um rendimento bruto entre 13.500€ e os 100.000€ estavam 1.407.474 famílias que pagaram, em média, 3.836€ de IRS por ano cada uma. Por fim, com um rendimento bruto superior a 100.000€, estiveram 40.213 famílias que pagaram em média, cada uma, 51.695€ de IRS nesse ano.

É por isto que não me parece que a solução seja aumentar os impostos aos que ganham mais. A redistribuição do rendimento já é maciça. [Francisco Rocha Antunes, Junho de 2009]

Mas a verdade é que continua a aumentar. Se compararmos a participação dos agregados familiares a partir de 40k€/ano (i.e., a partir de três mil euros/mês/família de rendimento bruto), em 2005 era de 69.4% do IRS colectado (para 17% dos agregados), em 2006 era 70.8% (18.4% dos agregados), em 2007 era 71.9% (19.1%), em 2008 era 73% (20.4%), subindo para os 74% em 2009 (21.4%). Ficamos à espera dos dados de 2010 e 2011 para verificar se esta tendência se mantém.

Fontes:

IRS 2005-2006

IRS 2006-2008 [cf. quadros 37 & 40]

IRS 2007-2009 [idem]

Ferramentas cognitivas

A Estatística e a Economia são disciplinas muito subvalorizadas no nosso ensino. A Estatística lida com o inevitável da evidência finita e de qualidade variável. Por exemplo, ela diz-nos que a certeza e a impossibilidade são conceitos ideais que podemos apenas aproximar. A Economia ganha a sua razão de ser porque os recursos são finitos e as decisões de os usar acarretam custos e riscos nem sempre evidentes. Por exemplo, ela diz-nos ser impossível erradicar totalmente um problema social pelos limites económicos dos ganhos decrescentes. Este tipo de ideias são importantes na educação de cidadãos aptos a usar os seus direitos económicos e políticos na consolidação de uma sociedade cívica como a nossa.

Uma causa ou um sintoma?

Excertos do prefácio de John Gray ao livro de Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution

Bertrand de Jouvenel's study in the ethics of redistribution is distinctive, in the first instance, because it focuses precisely on the morality of redistribution and not on its side effects on incentives. This is to say that de Jouvenel's critique embodies a fundamental challenge to the values expressed in redistributionist thought which in no way depends upon an instrumental or utilitarian assessment of the consequences of redistributionist policy. De Jouvenel is concerned with the impact on individual liberty and on cultural life of redistribution rather than with its effects on productivity. His study is significant for another reason, which is that he is careful to distinguish redistributionism from other, superficially similar doctrines. Thus, he shows clearly how it differs from agrarian egalitarianism, which aims to equalize a resource - land - but does not seek to control the distribution of its product. [...] De Jouvenel makes another fundamental distinction within redistributionism itself. Modern redistributionism encompasses two wholly disparate elements: the belief that government should be centrally involved in the relief of poverty, and the belief that economic inequality is itself unjust or evil. These two beliefs have indeed been conflated in the increasing acceptance of the view that it is the responsibility of government to ensure rising popular living standards. A further move in the direction of egalitarian redistributionism is taken when to the proposal that government supply a subsistence floor beneath which no one may fall is added the proposal that there be instituted a ceiling beyond which no one may rise. [...] He further notes that a policy of redistribution is bound to discriminate against minorities, since it will inevitably favor the preferences and interests of the majority [...]

For de Jouvenel, however, the most profound result of redistributionist policy is the impetus it gives to the baleful process of centralization. [...] De Jouvenel goes on to speculate that the underlying causal process may go in the opposite direction: Redistributionist policy may be an incident in a process of centralization that has acquired a momentum of its own.

Desculpas

Quantas decisões peculiares dos nossos maiores políticos, jurados, militares e outras eminências pardas são justificadas com argumentos que a realidade social é complexa, que é sempre preciso considerar inúmeros factores raramente explicitados, que foi tomada a melhor acção possível? Mas quantas destas decisões nasceram, de facto, de redes de preconceitos, favores e pressões que ligam e limitam estas pessoas do poder?

Razão e ETs

Uma citação longa, mas que vale a pena, da novela que inspirou Stalker de Andrey Tarkovskiy:

I must warn you that your question, Richard, comes under the heading of xenology. Xenology: an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. It's based on the false premise that human psychology is applicable to extraterrestrial intelligent beings."

"Why is that false?" Noonan asked.

"Because biologists have already been burned trying to use human psychology on animals. Earth animals, at that."

"Forgive me, but that's an entirely different matter. We're talking about the psychology of rational beings."

"Yes. And everything would be fine if we only knew what reason was."

"Don't we know?" Noonan was surprised.

"Believe it or not, we don't. Usually a trivial definition is used: reason is that part of man's activity that distinguishes him from the animals. You know, an attempt to distinguish the owner from the dog who understands everything but just can't speak. Actually, this trivial definition gives rise to rather more ingenious ones. Based on bitter observation of the above-mentioned human activities. For example: reason is the ability of a living creature to perform unreasonable or unnatural acts."

"Yes, that's about us, about me, and those like me," Noonan agreed bitterly.

"Unfortunately. Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct—precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives."

"Somehow you make it all sound demeaning."

"All right, how about another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Reason is the ability to use the forces of the environment without destroying that environment."

Noonan grimaced and shook his head.

"No, that's not about us. How about this: 'man, as opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable need for knowledge'? I read that somewhere."

"So have I," said Valentine. "But the whole problem with that is that the average man—the one you have in mind when you talk about 'us' and 'not us'—very easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge. I don't believe that need even exists. There is a need to understand, and you don't need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense."

"Hold on," Noonan said. He finished his beer and set the mug noisily on the table. "Don't get off the track. Let's get back to the subject on hand. Man meets an extraterrestrial creature. How do they find out that they are both rational creatures?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Valentine said with great pleasure. "Everything I've read on the subject comes down to a vicious circle. If they are capable of making contact, then they are rational. And vice versa; if they are rational, they are capable of contact. And in general: if an extraterrestrial creature has the honor of possessing human psychology, then it is rational. Like that."

"There you go. And I thought you boys had it all laid out in neat cubbyholes."

"A monkey can put things into cubbyholes," Valentine replied.

"No, wait a minute." For some reason, Noonan felt cheated. "If you don't know simple things like that … All right, the hell with reason. Obviously, it's a real quagmire. OK. But what about the Visitation? What do you think about the Visitation?"

"My pleasure. Imagine a picnic." Noonan shuddered.

"What did you say?"

"A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives , off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow."

"I see. A roadside picnic."

"Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos. And you ask if they will come back."

"Let me have a smoke. Goddamn this pseudoscience! Somehow I imagined it all differently."

"That's your right."

"So does that mean they never even noticed us?"

"Why?"

"Well, anyway, didn't pay any attention to us?"

"You know, I wouldn't be upset if I were you." Noonan inhaled, coughed, and threw away the cigarette.

"I don't care," he said stubbornly. "It can't be. Damn you scientists! Where do you get your contempt for man? Why are you always trying to put mankind down?"

"Wait a minute," Valentine said. "Listen: 'You ask me what makes man great?' " he quoted. " 'That he re-created nature? That he has harnessed cosmic forces? That in a brief time he conquered the planet and opened a window on the universe? No! That, despite all this, he has survived and intends to survive in the future.' "

There was a silence. Noonan was thinking.

"Don't get depressed," Valentine said kindly. "The picnic is my own theory. And not even a theory—just a picture. The serious xenologists are working on much more solid and flattering versions for human vanity. For example, that there has been no Visitation yet, that it is to come. A highly rational culture threw containers with artifacts of its civilization onto Earth. They expect us to study the artifacts, make a giant technological leap, and send a signal in response that will show we are ready for contact. How do you like that one?"

"That's much better," Noonan said. "I see that there are decent people among scientists after all."

"Here's another one. The Visitation has taken place, but it is not over by a long shot. We are in contact even as we speak, but we are not aware of it. The visitors are living in the Zones and carefully observing us and simultaneously preparing us for the 'cruel wonders of the future.' "

"Now that I can understand! At least that explains the mysterious activity in the ruins of the factory. By the way, your picnic doesn't explain it."

"Why doesn't it? One of the girls could have forgotten her favorite wind-up teddy bear on the meadow."

ROADSIDE PICNIC, Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

Balança

O cepticismo é necessário para possibilitar a acumulação coerente de conhecimento. Cepticismo a menos pode levar-nos aos sistemas dogmáticos, edifícios estáveis mas imóveis. Excesso de cepticismo leva-nos ao niilismo, o que não serve de telhado quando começa a chover.

Metáforas

Citações retiradas do livro Metaphors we live by (1981) por George Lakoff e Mark Johnson, sobre a importância da metáfora não só na linguagem, mas no aparelho cognitivo humano.

"The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. [...] The most important claim [...] is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system.

[Chapter 6]

Just as the basic experiences of human spatial orientations give rise to orientational metaphors, so our experiences with physical objects (especially our own bodies) provide the basis for an extraordinarily wide variety of ontological metaphors, that is, ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances. [...] Ontological metaphors are necessary for even attempting to deal rationally with our experiences.

The range of ontological metaphors that we use for such purposes is enormous. [...] Ontological metaphors like [THE MIND IS A MACHINE] are so natural and so pervasive in our thought that they are usually taken as self-evident, direct descriptions of mental phenomena. The fact that they are metaphorical never occurs to most of us. We take statements like "He cracked under pressure" as being directly true or false. [...] We use ontological metaphors to comprehend events, actions, activities, and states. Events and actions are conceptualized metaphorically as objects, activities as substances, states as containers.

[Chapter 7]

Perhaps the most obvious ontological metaphors are those where the physical object is further specified as being a person. This allows us to comprehend a wide variety of experiences with nonhuman entities in terms of human motivations, characteristics, and activities. [...] personification is a general category that covers a very wide range of metaphors, each picking out different aspects of a person or ways of looking at a person. What they all have in common is that they are extensions of ontological metaphors and that they allow us to make sense of phenomena in the world in human terms—terms that we can understand on the basis of our own motivations, goals, actions, and characteristics.

[Chapter 19]

metaphor pervades our normal conceptual system. Because so many of the concepts that are important to us are either abstract or not clearly delineated in our experience (the emotions, ideas, time, etc.), we need to get a grasp on them by means of other concepts that we understand in clearer terms (spatial orientations, objects, etc.). This need leads to metaphorical definition in our conceptual system.

Acumulação

A redundância é necessária para evitar a acumulação de erros. Um sistema sem redundância é eficiente mas instável. Excesso de redundância leva-nos ao pavor da burocracia.

Abuso

As figuras de estilo são abusos de linguagem. Mas sem esses abusos, as pontes que nos ligam aos outros e às coisas seriam impossíveis. A boa educação, no limite, é insustentável.

Efeito corrosivo

"One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless." Sam Harris, Lying

Ponte

Existe uma relação - dinâmica, complexa, intermitente - entre o sistema nervoso humano e a realidade que o limita. A esta relação chamamos 'eu'.

Incrível

Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs from Kevin Karsch on Vimeo.

Guilherme de Ockham

Ockham [...] deplored the inaccuracy of the terms used in philosophy, and spent half his time trying to make them more precise. He resented the Gothic edifice of abstractions- one mounted upon the other like arches in superimposed tiers- that medieval thought had raised. We cannot find in his extant works precisely the famous formula that tradition called "Ockham's razor": entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - entities are not to be multiplied beyond need. But he expressed the principle in other terms again and again: pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate - a plurality (of entities or causes or factors) is not to be posited (or assumed) without necessity; and frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora - it is vain to seek to accomplish or explain by assuming several entities or causes what can be explained by fewer.

The principle was not new; Aquinas had accepted it, Scotus had used it. But in Ockham's hands it became a deadly weapon, cutting away a hundred occult fancies and grandiose abstractions. Applying the principle to epistemology, Ockham judged it needless to assume, as the source and material of knowledge, anything more than sensations. From these arise memory (sensation revived), perception (sensation interpreted through memory), imagination (memories combined), anticipation (memory projected), thought (memories compared), and experience (memories interpreted through thought). "Nothing can be an object of the interior sense" (thought) "without having been an object of the exterior sense" (sensation); here is Locke's empiricism 300 years before Locke.

All that we ever perceive outside ourselves is individual entities- specific persons, places, things, actions, shapes, colors, tastes, odors, pressures, temperatures, sounds; and the words by which we denote these are "words of first intention" or primary intent, directly referring to what we interpret as external realities. By noting and abstracting the common features of similar entities so perceived, we may arrive at general or abstract ideas- man, virtue, height, sweetness, heat, music, eloquence; and the words by which we denote such abstractions are "words of second intention," referring to conceptions derived from perceptions. These "universals" are never experienced in sensation; they are termini, signa, nomina - terms, signs, names - for generalizations extremely useful (and dangerous) in thought or reason, in science, philosophy, and theology; they are not objects existing outside the mind. "Everything outside the mind is singular, numerically one."

Reason is magnificent, but its conclusions have meaning only in so far as they refer to experience- i.e., to the perception of individual entities, or the performance of individual acts; otherwise its conclusions are vain and perhaps deceptive abstractions. How much nonsense is talked or written by mistaking ideas for things, abstractions for realities! Abstract thought fulfills its function only when it leads to specific statements about specific things. From this "nominalism" Ockham moved with devastating recklessness into every field of philosophy and theology. Both metaphysics and science, he announced, are precarious generalizations, since our experience is only of individual entities in a narrowly restricted area and time; it is mere arrogance on our part to assume the universal and eternal validity of the general propositions and "natural laws" that we derive from this tiny sector of reality. Our knowledge is molded and limited by our means and ways of perceiving things (this is Kant before Kant); it is locked up in the prison of our minds, and it must not pretend to be the objective or ultimate truth about anything.

Will Durant - Story of Civilization, vol.06, pp.246-49

Liberalismo

"[Liberalism is] a philosophy that champions the right of individuals – regardless of rank or creed or color – to be free of the choking grip of enforced traditionalism, free of the stupidity of superstition (including the hyper-lethal superstition that is nationalism), and free of the arbitrary will of their ‘betters.’

Classical liberals (and many “conservatives”) champion free markets and private property rights, therefore, not to defend “elite privileges against challenges from below” but out of a sincere conviction that markets and property are necessary for maximum possible freedom and for astonishing material abundance." Don Boudreaux

Pandemónio

(c) Oatmeal [via Aurea Mediocritas]

the only question that really matters

"Apparently praying keeps her calm and happy. It's some kind of ritual for them. It doesn't do any harm. Why don't you go and join them if you're worried?"

Theo said: "I don't think they'd want me."

"I don't know, they might. They might try to convert you. Are you a Christian?"

"No, I'm not a Christian."

"What do you believe, then?"

"Believe about what?"

"The things that religious people think are important. Whether there is a God. How do you explain evil? What happens when we die? Why are we here? How ought we to live our lives?"

Theo said: "The last is the most important, the only question that really matters. You don't have to be religious to believe that. And you don't have to be a Christian to find an answer."

Rolf turned to him and asked, as if he really wanted to know: "But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?"

"That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be."

Rolf gave a short laugh, harsh as a shout. "That's safe enough. No one can argue with that. What does he believe, the Warden of England?"

"I don't know. We never discussed it."

Miriam came over and, sitting with her back against a trunk, stretched out her legs wide, closed her eyes and lifted her face, gently smiling, to the sky, listening but not speaking.

Rolf said: "I used to believe in God and the Devil and then one morning, when I was twelve, I lost my faith. I woke up and found that I didn't believe in any of the things the Christian Brothers had taught me. I thought if that ever happened I'd be too frightened to go on living, but it didn't make any difference. One night I went to bed believing and the next morning I woke up unbelieving. I couldn't even tell God I was sorry, because He wasn't there any more. And yet it didn't really matter. It hasn't mattered ever since."

Miriam said without opening her eyes: "What did you put in His empty place?''

"There wasn't any empty place. That's what I'm telling you."

P.D.James, The Children of Men

Corte

Como na separação da Igreja e do Estado, precisamos da separação das Corporações e do Estado.

Navalha

O conceito de deus inclui um método de explicação do mundo natural (e.g., os mitos da criação). Este método nunca pode ser reconciliado com as metodologias actuais, designadas genericamente por método científico. Se um evento for observado repetidamente e que não possui explicação ou predição possível nas teorias científicas correntes, a única explicação científica para este facto é admitir que essas teorias são incompletas e precisam de reforma ou, raramente, de substituição. Não existe espaço para complementar estes modelos com um deus ex machina. Este argumento é, na essência, baseado na indução de séculos de acumulação de conhecimento científico onde cada evento interpretado como mágico e misterioso ou se encontrou um modelo científico (e.g., a electricidade, as ervas curativas) ou foi eliminado por testes e experiências controladas (e.g., os fantasmas, a premonição). Não existem contra-exemplos desta tendência.