Este ensaio tem como objetivo problematizar o papel da internet como agente de difusão de informação, ferramenta produtora de conhecimento e cultura. Os processos participativos em rede, as comunidades virtuais, colocam em evidência as tensões entre um antigo modelo calcado em estruturas de poderes centralizados, e a emergência de uma ordem dispersiva e fragmentária na dinâmica social. É nesse contexto que surgem as polêmicas em torno do Marco Civil da Internet, nosso objeto de estudo. A instauração do Marco Civil, deu (...) lugar à concepção e busca de regulação da internet como patrimônio coletivo. Nosso objetivo é analisar o Marco Civil, no quadro das politicas de promoção do acesso à internet, através de um diálogo entre comunicação, ética e filosofia, questionando seus princípios fundamentais quanto ao pluralismo e a diversidade cultural, a fim de produzir uma reflexão fundamentada sobre os eixos reguladores deste projeto de Lei. (shrink)

Ion Soteropoulos reconciles the contradiction between the finite and infinite and transforms this reconciliation into the founding principle of motion. This book will appeal to readers interested in the logical mechanics of the physical universe, the hidden powers of our finite brain, and the utility of robots in the future.

Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning explores how we create our cultural assumptions about personhood, culture and nature.

The concept of lifeworld as posited by Husserl and developed by Schutz reveals key aspects of human social life. What happens when organized forces of human control tear lifeworlds apart? Gebser warned that without a transformation of consciousness humans would destroy their world. Habermas pointed out that humans were destroying lifeworlds with little awareness of the consequences due to the predominance of rational/legal thinking, thus creating “Deathworlds”. Transformative Phenomenology has become a community-of-practice that is an antidote to Deathworld-Making. Transformative phenomenology (...) includes hermeneutics, somatics and leregogic practices and phenomenologists trained in this way exhibit ten qualities of being. We offer the Rising Sun project, a phenomenologically based social innovation, as a case example. The call to maintain and restore lifeworlds is the call to oneness and peace. In the era of growing Deathworlds, we, phenomenologists, are urged to respond and contribute to this call. (shrink)

In this paper, we shall use the perspectival view on justice in an attempt to accommodate the transcendent view on justice with the adversarial practice of justice. Its main idea is that, before seeing justice as administration, it has to be seen in itself. The first section of the paper discusses the meaning of justice from a phenomenological point of view, which enables us to envision justice as transcendent. The second section of the paper describes the pluri-perspectivism of law and (...) justice on the procedural level. Through a series of reflections upon the procedural aspects as they are operating in the Romanian judiciary, we show how the plurality of perspectives tends to converge and finds its resolution in the rule of law and Modern democracy. (shrink)

This paper explores how allegory served as a subtle yet powerful form of criticism in Romanian cinema during the 1980s, under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s authoritarian regime. The research focuses on selected films by directors such as Dan Pița, Alexandru Tatos, and Copel Moscu, who used metaphorical and indirect approaches to criticise the oppressive social and political climate. Through detailed content analysis, the study reveals how these filmmakers circumvented strict censorship by embedding criticism of societal conditions and governmental control in their works. (...) The paper also discusses the production and distribution challenges faced by these films, emphasising the filmmakers’ resistance to the regime’s constraints and their efforts to depict the harsh realities of life in socialist Romania. Ultimately, the paper contributes to the understanding of how Romanian artists used cinema as a medium of resistance and cultural expression in a repressive political environment. (shrink)

Reseña de Nys, T., Denier, Y., Vandevelde, T. (eds.): 2007, Autonomy and Paternalism. Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Health Care. Lovaina: Peeters.

Cases of poor care have been documented across the world. Contrary to professional requirements, evidence indicates that these sometimes go unaddressed. For patients, the outcomes of this inaction are invariably negative. Previous work has either focused on why poor care occurs and what might be done to prevent it, or on the reasons why those who are witness to it find it difficult to raise their concerns. Here, we build on this work but specifically foreground the responsibilities of registrants and (...) students who witness poor care. Acknowledging the challenges associated with raising concerns, we make the case that failure to address poor care is a breach of moral expectation, professional requirement and, sometimes, legal frameworks. We argue that reporting will be more likely to take place if those who wish to enter the profession have a realistic view of the challenges they may encounter. When nurses are provided with robust and applied education on ethics, when “real‐world” cases and exemplars are used in practice and when steps are taken to develop and encourage individual moral courage, we may begin to see positive change. Ultimately however, significant change is only likely to take place where practice cultures invite and welcome feedback, promote critical reflection, and where strong, clear leadership support is shown by those in positions of influence across organisations. (shrink)

As an artist I admittedly scrutinize all of the theories related to the arts closely. I do this for a number of reasons. The obvious one is that I have a deeply felt personal relationship with the subject matter. Less obvious is my experience in general. My early research was motivated by a desire to discover the historical circumstances that led to the difficulty in fitting visual art into the discussions I encountered. Generally, it seemed that the dominant framework trivialized (...) what I considered the most important aspects of the creative process. Over time I concluded that developing an interdisciplinary approach offered the best option for expanding views, although it is not an easy task. Establishing areas of commonality across a range of disciplines must somehow accommodate the ways in which each has developed a research agenda that seems to serve its core needs. In consciousness studies, for example, we have a field that relies heavily on scientific research and humanistic methodologies when building the philosophical models scholars use to structure theories. This methodology is not only removed from the nuts and bolts of art, it is also easily manipulated in discourse on art due to the ease with which we can fit aspects of art into the philosophical framework. Clearly this approach fits nicely with philosophically defined concepts such as meaning, emotion, and other elusive modes. In addition, using the well-honed categories aids in bracketing themes such as metaphor, interpretation, subjectivity, language and history. Nonetheless, in reading through the studies, I repeatedly conclude that the voices of practitioners need to be included to a greater degree. (shrink)

This study presents original evidence that abstract and concrete concepts are organized and represented differently in the mind, based on analyses of thousands of concepts in publicly available data sets and computational resources. First, we show that abstract and concrete concepts have differing patterns of association with other concepts. Second, we test recent hypotheses that abstract concepts are organized according to association, whereas concrete concepts are organized according to (semantic) similarity. Third, we present evidence suggesting that concrete representations are more (...) strongly feature-based than abstract concepts. We argue that degree of feature-based structure may fundamentally determine concreteness, and we discuss implications for cognitive and computational models of meaning. (shrink)

This paper attempts at giving a definition of pluralism from a Christian point of view, concerning the construction of a Christian identity of Europe. The sources of the article range from the Economic Chart and the dialogue between Habermas and cardinal Ratzinger, to the beliefs of a Lutheran bishop, to the orthodox ecclesiology of one of the New Testament and to the reconciliation between the Catholics and the Orthodox believers.

My paper tackles the generic relationship between philosophy and law, the necessity of applying philosophy to law, the legitimacy and range of such an approach, the configuration of the way in which philosophy has left its mark in the juridical sphere. It surveys, in a chronological order, as well as in terms of their co-existence, the various stages of the relationship between philosophy and law. 1. Although both have been “within the walls”, law secludes itself, relatively speaking, in “the world (...) taken as a whole”, to shape its own identity, to survive as a self-sufficient, distinct technique (F. Geny), or it does it in a doctrinary way (positivism). 2. The representatives of philosophy in the juridical sphere are doing their best to uphold law’s struggle for knowledge, to have it gain recognition as a “science”, renounce its one-sidedness and harmonize with the others. 3. Juridical norms are not untouchable in relation with philosophy. Philosophy may work within juridical norms if it has an affinity with the content of juridical normativeness and respects its specificity. 4. The conclusion I reach is that we must try to cultivate a joint area bringing together philosophy and law, an area wherein the specific features of the two distinct fields reach a consensus for the sake of the human condition – hic et nunc. Philosophy bestows coherence and casts light on “law for man’s sake”, while the philosophically founded law appears to be the “normative project of the human”, a human practice inextricably connected with other types of practice, with man as a whole. The practical way to fulfil this goal, like the goal itself, will always be liable to criticism and improvement, open to debates and various options in a concrete socio-historical context. (shrink)