J. M. Oliveira

In the visual representation of ontologies, in particular of part-whole relationships, it is customary to use graph theory as the representational background. We claim here that the standard graph-based approach has a number of limitations, and we propose instead a new representation of part-whole structures for ontologies, and describe the results of experiments designed to show the effectiveness of this new proposal especially as concerns reduction of visual complexity. The proposal is developed to serve visualization of ontologies conformant to the Basic Formal Ontology. But it can be used also for more general applications, particularly in the biomedical domain.

In the graphical representation of ontologies, it is customary to use graph theory as the representational background. We claim here that the standard graph-based approach has a number of limitations. We focus here on a problem in the graph-based representation of ontologies in complex domains such as biomedical, engineering and manufacturing: lack of mereotopological representation. Based on such limitation, we proposed a diagrammatic way to represent an entity’s structure and various forms of mereotopological relationships between the entities.

Discrepancies between animal and human responding on standard schedules of reinforcement have been explained by reference to the human capacity for language and consequent formulation of self-instructions. As a result, schedule responding has been causally attributed to private events. However, the operations that individuals are assumed to carry out in the formulation of self-instructions cannot be described other than intentionally and this raises important issues of explanation for an extensional behavioral science. It is argued that radical behaviorism is ultimately dependent upon intentional explanation; moreover, the ascription of causality to the intentional terms on which radical behaviorism is dependent leads to the necessity of incorporating cognitive explanation into opérant psychology. Extensions of radical behaviorist explanation beyond accounts of contingency-shaped behavior cannot avoid the use of intentional terms

It is assumed that social bonds in humans have consequences for virtually all aspects of behavior. Social touch-based contact, particularly hand caressing, plays an important role in social bonding. Pre-programmed neural circuits likely support actions (or predispositions to act) towards caressing contacts. We searched for pre-set motor substrates towards caressing by exposing volunteers to bonding cues and having them gently stroke a very soft cloth, a caress-like movement. The bonding cues were pictures with interacting dyads and the control pictures presented non-interacting dyads. We focused on the readiness potential, an electroencephalographic marker of motor preparation that precedes movement execution. The amplitude of the readiness potential preceding the grasping of pleasant emotional-laden stimuli was previously shown to be reduced compared with neutral ones. Fingers flexor electromyography measured action output. The rationale here is that stroking the soft cloth when previously exposed to bonding cues, a compatible context, would result in smaller amplitudes of readiness potentials, as compared to the context with no such cues. Exposure to the bonding pictures increased subjective feelings of sociability and decreased feelings of isolation. Participants who more frequently engage in mutual caress/groom a “significant other” in daily life initiated the motor preparation earlier, reinforcing the caress-like nature of the task. As hypothesized, readiness potentials preceding the caressing of the soft cloth were significantly reduced under exposure to bonding as compared to control pictures. Furthermore, an increased fingers flexor electromyographic activity was identified under exposure to the former as compared to the latter pictures. The facilitatory effects are likely due to the recruitment of pre-set cortical motor repertoires related to caress-like movements, emphasizing the distinctiveness of neural signatures for caress-like movements.

O objetivo deste artigo é investigar quais são as bases ontológicas da ética do futuro, tendo como leitmotiv o conceito de reciprocidade ou, sendo mais preciso, justamente a sua prescindibilidade no âmbito ético, a qual repercute como necessidade ontológica de fundamentação. Partiremos de uma análise do próprio conceito de “ética do futuro” para, explicitar, na sequência, por que, com Jonas, o futuro se torna objeto ético e como ele exige a prescindibilidade da reciprocidade. A partir daí, pretendemos mostrar que a fundamentação ontológica da ética é o caminho de solução para o problema da ausência de reciprocidade e de que modo ela se constitui como crítica àquilo que Jonas chama de dois dogmas da filosofia: “nenhuma verdade metafísica” e “nenhum caminho do é para o deve” (PR, p. 95). Por isso, finalmente, tentaremos mostrar que é contra esses dogmas que se ergue a proposta jonasiana, fundamentada numa metafísica racional que nada mais é do que uma ontologia biológica.

Psychological interpretations of intelligence have varied considerably. Theoretical approaches have differed, among other things, with respect to the number, type, and level of abilities implied by the concept. Recent investigations have suggested, moreover, that people's conception of intelligence is, at least in part, culturally determined, depending upon one's country of origin or ethnic group. In the present paper, we suggest that this theoretical and cultural relativity of the concept is related to the logic of its use in ordinary language. An analysis of the use of intelligence in ordinary language indicated that the concept has an adverbial function, which characterizes an action as successful or well executed under certain conditions. In addition to this, the concept is used at different levels, functioning as an adverbial summary of an individual's actions in general or specific abilities. This adverbial function may be related to the theoretical relativity of intelligence found in psychology, since the concept may be used at various different levels of analysis. Considering that each culture or group may adopt different criteria to identify successful actions, the cultural relativity of intelligence is compatible with its use in ordinary language.

Learning in virtual environments is an ethical experience. This research aimed to understand the ethical experience of a virtual learning environment from the perspective of university students and their teachers. The participants were 205 higher education students from different Spanish-speaking countries (Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain) and 30 teachers who acted as tutors in virtual education. The study used a design-based research method and quantitative instruments for the collection of empirical data. The data analysis showed that students and teachers perceive responsibility, commitment, and respect as values inherent to virtual education, and may have a moderately different ethical experience based on these values. With this research, we intend to contribute to a better understanding of the coexistence of human beings in virtual learning environments. We argue that it is necessary to question or rethink the pedagogical paradigms that guide virtual education, endowing them with humanity, and recognizing their ethical dimension as funda-mental.

The studies presented here apply the concept of entitativity in order to understand how belonging to a particular geographical area – neighborhood - can determine the way others organize information and form impressions about area’s residents. In order to achieve this objective, three studies were carried out. The first study aims to verify if a neighborhood varies in terms of perceived entitativity, and identify the physical and social characteristics of the neighborhoods that are more strongly associated with the perception of entitativity. The Study 2 and 3 used an experimental paradigm to explore how people’s perceptions of neighborhoods’ entitativity influenced their impressions of residents. To activate stereotypes, Study 2 used the name of real neighborhoods, and Study 3 employed only a set of pictures of unknown neighborhoods. The results show that the neighborhoods vary significantly with the regard to the perception of entitativity, and a set of physical attributes of place were strongly related with entitativity. The results showed that, independent of stimuli, the neighborhoods perceived as highly entitative, the supposed residents were subject to more extreme and quicker trait judgments, supported by greater confidence on the part of perceivers. Study 3 also reported that in highly entitative neighborhoods, the perceivers transferred more traits from the group to individual members. These results provide strong evidence that physical structure of neighborhoods imply different entitatity judgments that influences the way in which residents are perceived.

Revient-il à l'anthropologue de décider de la qualité «indigène» d'un individu ou d'une collectivité, ou encore des limites du territoire qui lui est attribué (ou reconnu) par l'État? En termes épistémologiques et éthiques, s'agit-il d'une tâche qui lui incombe? L'objectif de ce texte est de discuter la manière dont ces questions se posent aux anthropologues brésiliens, dans le contexte actuel. Partagé entre les discours indianiste et indigéniste, entre romantisme et médiation politique, l'anthropologue cherche à définir une posture appropriée en situation d'expertise (à distinguer de la situation ethnographique), qui puisse sauvegarder la qualité scientifique de son travail, tout en répondant aux attentes et aux demandes propres à ce contexte.

The aim of this paper is to present a reflection on the idea of religiousness or religious sentiment in Benjamin Constant de Rebecque and the importance of this in free societies. For the author, the religious sentiment avoids the evils of selfishness and individualism and, at the same time, the dangers of political despotism and religious. In this sense, religion is seen as necessary to free societies. However, it must be separated from the priestly factions. Constant presents a strategy of fusing a perspective of Enlightenment - with the concepts of progress and civilization - with aspects of the thought of Edmund Burke who advocated a more local interest. Thus, the "Greeks" - an "ideal type" avant la lettre - are presented with real people in history, which can help to think of our civilization. An "intermediate political principle", avoiding the excesses of philosophical abstraction.

Although same-sex couples and their offspring have been legitimised in many European countries, heteronormativity is still embedded in institutions and practices, thereby continuing to affect the daily lives of LGBT individuals. Italy represents a clear example of the hegemonic power of heteronormativity because of the fierce opposition to recognising lesbian and gay parenthood among many parts of society. This paper focuses on the peculiarities of the Italian scenario with the aim of highlighting how heteronormativity works in contemporary neoliberal contexts. By drawing on queer and feminist perspectives, the article also analyses how LGBT equal rights demands can contribute, to some extent, to reinforcing heteronormativity. Implications concerning strategies for challenging the regime of normality and queering kinship are discussed.

Em sua célebre obra The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt adverte que o perdão sempre fora tradicionalmente admitido no âmbito dos espaços religiosos e, por essa razão, teve sua aplicabilidade desprezada no campo dos assuntos políticos. Na teoria da ação, Arendt enfatiza a teia das relações humanas que se faz presente na vivência do domínio público por meio do discurso e da ação conjunta. No curso da manifestação política em espaços de aparência, ocorrem atos que, uma vez praticados, passam por consequências caracterizadas pela imprevisibilidade e irreversibilidade. Trata-se de consequências que podem permitir a ruptura da teia das relações humanas. O perdão, historicamente concebido sob o viés religioso, aparece nas análises arendtianas como instrumento a ser utilizado para manter vivas as atividades de manifestações políticas próprias dos espaços públicos de liberdade. Verifica-se que o uso do perdão ocorre no sentido de impedir a permanência de rupturas registradas no domínio público. Nesse sentido, o perdão é interpretado como elemento político a ser utilizado para superar divisões no seio do espaço público. Ou seja, na perspectiva arendtiana, o perdão existe para manter o curso da caminhada da ação política pautado em atos e palavras. Podemos salientar que a chave de leitura apresentada por Arendt garante ao perdão a relevância necessária para a efetivação da ação – uma das atividades fundamentais da condição humana na modernidade – permeada pela imprevisibilidade e irreversibilidade.

Proximity and interpersonal contact are prominent components of social connection. Giving affective touch to others is fundamental for human bonding. This brief report presents preliminary results from a pilot study. It explores if exposure to bonding scenes impacts the activity of specific muscles related to physical interaction. Fingers flexion is a very important component when performing most actions of affectionate contact. We explored the visuo-motor affective interplay by priming participants with bonding scenes and assessing the electromyographic activity of the fingers flexor muscle, in the absence of any overt movements. Photographs of dyads in social interaction and of the same dyads not interacting were employed. We examined the effects upon the electromyographical activity: during the passive exposure to pictures, and during picture offset and when expecting the signal to perform a fingers flexion task. Interacting dyads compared to matched non-interacting dyads increased electromyographic activity of the fingers flexor muscle in both contexts. Specific capture of visual bonding cues at the level of visual cortex had been described in the literature. Here we showed that the neural processing of visual bonding cues reaches the fingers flexor muscle. Besides, previous visualization of bonding cues enhanced background electromyographic activity during motor preparation to perform the fingers flexion task, which might reflect a sustained leakage of central motor activity downstream leading to increase in firing of the respective motor neurons. These data suggest, at the effector level, an implicit visuo-motor connection in which social interaction cues evoke intrinsic dispositions toward affectionate social behavior.

Despite the public availability of legal documents, there is a need for finding specific information contained in them, such as paragraphs, clauses, items and so on. With such support, users could find more specific information than only finding whole legal documents. Some research efforts have been made in this area, but there is still a lot to be done to have legal information available more easily to be found. Thus, due to the large number of published legal documents and the high degree of connectivity, simple access to the document is not enough. It is necessary to recover the related legal framework for a specific need. In other words, the retrieval of the set of legal documents and their parts related to a specific subject is necessary. Therefore, in this work, we present a proposal of a RDF-based graph to represent and search parts of legal documents, as the output of a set of terms that represents the pursued legal information. Such a proposal is well-grounded on an ontological view, which makes possible to describe the general structure of a legal system and the structure of legal documents, providing this way the grounds for the implementation of the proposed RDF graph in terms of the meaning of their parts and relationships. We posed several queries to retrieve parts of legal documents related to sets of words and the results were significant.

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Partindo da interpretação do niilismo como negação da vida, pretende-se demonstrar, neste texto, como a exortação de Zaratustra de “fidelidade à terra”, pode ser compreendida como uma forma de enfrentamento do niilismo na obra de F. Nietzsche. Para tanto, parte-se de uma análise intratextual da relação entre niilismo e gnosticismo na obra do filósofo alemão no intuito de demonstrar como o personagem histórico fundador do zoroastrismo se apresenta por meio de uma moral dualista cujas premissas gnósticas levam ao niilismo como negação do mundo e, a partir daí, como o personagem literário criado por Nietzsche se efetiva como em contraposição a essa perspectiva, por meio de um novo vínculo entre ser humano e mundo. Dessa forma, pretendemos demonstrar que, com sua exortação, o Zaratustra de Nietzsche se tornou aquele que autossuprime a moralidade fundada por seu homônimo histórico e conduziu à transvaloração dos valores por meio da criação de novas virtudes.

Cet article est destiné à analyser la procédure éthique proposée par Hans Jonas sous le distique de l’heuristique de la crainte. Pour ce faire, on analysera le rôle que cette notion joue en tant qu’alternative à l’utopisme de la technique. Elle ne paralyse pas l’action mais se présente comme la recherche d’une orientation morale de l’action en vue du bien. En tant qu’alternative au formalisme des éthiques traditionnelles, l’heuristique de la crainte sera abordée à partir de trois dimensions : la compétence d’imaginer, la faculté de ressentir et la capacité de diriger éthiquement l’action. Ces dimensions montrent l’importance stratégique de ce concept dans le cadre de la proposition éthique du principe responsabilité.

O presente artigo analisa a herança heideggeriana do pensamento de Hans Jonas. Para tanto, utiliza-se do conceito de gnosticismo e do trabalho inicial de Jonas que tentou estabelecer um “princípio gnóstico” presente tanto nas mitologias quanto nas filosofias místicas dos primeiros séculos da era cristã. Para tanto, analisa-se a apropriação feita por Jonas do método da analítica existencial heideggeriana e, por outro lado, da crítica do conteúdo filosófico desenvolvido por Heidegger. Evidencia-se, afinal, como o “princípio responsabilidade” pode ser reconhecido como uma alternativa ao princípio da hostilidade e da indiferença, presentes na filosofia gnóstica e na filosofia heideggeriana.

A Coletiva Corpos Insubmissos, grupo de pesquisadoras negras, tem entendido cada vez mais a importância de ocuparmos, de forma insubmissa, os lugares de fala, mas também de escrita, um universo bastante desafiador para nós, mulheres negras. Neste sentido, o texto que apresentamos nesta publicação nasce de uma entrevista-conversa realizada com Jess Oliveira em setembro de 2020. Nesse sentido, partindo da importância política da linguagem, dos diálogos transnacionais e da tradução para pensar a luta anticolonial, a Coletiva, entrevistou-conversou com Jess Oliveira sobre a importância da autodefinição, o papel da linguagem, o processo de tradução e a importância das intelectuais negras na produção de práticas de insubmissão.

Ao tratar da ação do homem contemporâneo no que diz respeito à Revolução Russa, Hannah Arendt elabora abordagens no campo da filosofia política. Trata-se de abordagens que, certamente, podem iluminar o tempo presente, principalmente quando comemoramos o centenário dessa importante ruptura ocorrida em1917. Aautora, em suas análises, procura demonstrar que as experiências dos conselhos na Rússia, configurados em Sovietes, se fortaleceram a partir dos movimentos de 1905 por meio de ondas de greves espontâneas. Arendt faz referência ao caráter republicano dos Sovietes. Ou seja, havia um ideal de fundação de uma república baseada na estrutura organizacional dos Sovietes, traduzidos em espaços de liberdade. A movimentação dos Sovietes e do Partido Bolchevique culminou com a tomada do poder. Os rumos assumidos pelo governo de Lênin abriram precedentes para o desenvolvimento posterior quando o Partido, com toda a sua máquina, se tornaria onipotente. Com a ascensão de Stalin ao poder, instaurou-se o domínio total. Isto é, o totalitarismo alcançou o seu clímax com a perseguição e destruição daqueles que foram considerados inimigos objetivos e com a criação de campos de concentração. Com a ascensão de Nikita Khrushchev ao poder, iniciaram-se alguns sinais de destotalitarização da União Soviética.

Aos quarenta anos do lançamento de Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation, de Hans Jonas, ocorrido em 2019, uma série de eventos acadêmicos comemorativos ocorreram na América Latina, Europa e Estados Unidos da América do Norte. Aqui, no Brasil, aconteceram na PUCPR, PUC-SP e UFPI, organizados pelo GT-Hans Jonas da ANPOF, Centro Hans Jonas Brasil e programas de pós-graduação em Filosofia das universidades envolvidas. Parte dos textos lidos e debatidos durantes os eventos compõem o Dossiê Hans Jonas, que a Aurora apresenta neste número.

Pretende-se, nesse artigo, analisar o conceito de além-do-homem em Nietzsche a partir da ideia de Züchtung, compreendendo-se esta como uma tarefa assumida pela própria filosofia nietzschiana e legada como missão para toda a filosofia. Nesse sentido, inicia-se com uma análise do conceito de Züchtung na obra de Nietzsche, articulando-a às condições próprias para o cultivo e a criação do Übermensch e à efetivação da sua doutrina. A partir daí, avaliar-se-á como a criação de tais condições exige a superação do desgosto para garantir a possibilidade da criação do além-do-homem.

This article discusses the results of an investigation on discourse representation in a corpus of 34 million words constituted by texts in Brazilian Portuguese from two different genres: the research article and the science popularization article. Drawing on a systemic functional grammar perspective of language and pursuing a probabilistic approach, it focuses on the realization of lexicogrammatical systems of direct discourse representation as enacting interpersonal and social relationships. It is argued that the citation practices employed by writers in the genres studied negotiate discursive distance and are influenced by the status culturally and historically ascribed to scientific knowledge.