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Almost All Answers
Almost All Answers
Almost All Answers
2007
PREFACE
One of most difficult questions for an author - after conceiving its book, evidently
- is to choose a title that is capable to synthecize his main contributions. At the time
that we searched a title for this book, coincided that we studied - in self-taught way -
the history of art and in we discovered the painting “From where we came, what we
are and for where we go”, of Paul Gauguin. We observe that the artists had the
interest on these questions, contrasting with the disinterest, contemporary, on the
part of whom call theirselves as philosophers: certain time, we testify a professor of
Philosophy – at least, he was formally philosopher - that, answered to a pupil, for who
the philosophy had to search to answer the questions as “Who we are”, saying that if
somebody will have doubt on this, would have to look a psychologist. However, for
him, doctor with many others, in more famous universities of world, this question,
proper of philosophy, now, belonged to a science! We do not to think this subject,
here, but we intend to present arguments that will show that we do not have
guarantee of, when going to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, that they will have a
definitive reply on “what we are?”; therefore they just will reproduce the dogmas that
was taught to them. These professionals remember me to confessionals priests or
then those beverages that after opened to seem extraordinary, but they do not pass
of water with sugar! When I sent my thesis on “duration” for doctors in Psychology, I
received bureaucratic answers: or he was specialist in other areas, despite he has
written an article on the perception of time, or, then, he advised to me to read more
articles of Psychology, incapable to present despite contraries arguments of ideas
that I had presented to them.
But, I am not defending that Psychology and, also, Psychiatry are useless areas
of knowledge; what we are saying is that, today, they had lost the focus: or they
argue using false beliefs (when they say that the sex is for backwards of all our
actions), or they only see solution for our problems giving drugs to its patients. What
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the neuron lacks to them is a look more detailed for inside of mind human being with
more advanced technologies to know neuron until knowing accurately where they are
our problematic memories, as it makes the telescope Hubble with the galaxies!
The Philosophy that was forgotten is that one where the masters stimulated the
disciples to have proper ideas and arguments and not this sad monologous that it
practises today. It was forgotten, also, that the exercise of Philosophy is only capable
to extend our capacity of perception, when is awake in us the satisfaction to look
answers to the causes of our actions and the facts of world. Current education forgot
this: teachers demand that the pupils “save” the teses of ancient philosophers and do
not doubt their truths, repeating the existing and barren theses, as parrots, opposing
the well-known phrase of Aristotle: “the truth was above of friendship”! They are
friends of philosophy, sympathetical of teses and the thinkers, but they are not friends
of wisdom and the search for the truth; they believe already to have discovered it.
They look at only for the past, as somebody that drive a car only looking at for
behind. But who will write the future theories? What it happens is that wrong people -
that possess, as we will see more ahead, neuron connections that lead them to
make, fastly, part of a group, a philosophical school, accepting the theses as
definitive truths, without any critical sense - are occupying the place of people
adjusted for the function! Well appropriate the critics of Jean Piaget in book:
“Problems of philosophy”, when he relembered the malaise that he felt in the
metaphysics classes that they did not lead to no conclusion, because there is in the
French universities (and, also, in Brazil) a “gerontocracy” that chooses who goes to
substitute a professor to the eves of retirement, but, also, we add, who choose those
that more resembles to his masters for obtaining a vacant in some research! It was
because of this sad picture, that we do not carry through after-graduation in
Philosophy - nor master, nor doctorade. And without master title we was four years
unemployed since we left to university untill to be admitted in a public high school.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where the form is thought to be superior to the
parts, a book is measured for its layer and the people, for their headings, not for the
effective knowledge! The burocracy, also, is another plague that makes us to feel
inside labyrinth without Ariadne’s thread and despite we did all right, they will find
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some mistake, because they didn’t give all information needed: people who nothing
more make that following what someone said to them; i paid R$140 reais ($70
dollars) to register me as publisher to get the “ISBN” of my two most important works:
this book and “Course of thematic Philosophy” to put them in the Internet, in the site
of google, because I do not have money to publish them and no publishing company
it is interested. And after to send a letter to Brazilian Nacional Library i discovered
that it lacks some information and they just come back to me the fiches of registration
(called, too, as “forms” in english). Maybe they say that they are the best and most
dedicated professionals. We answer that those that conceived the poisons used in
the gas chambers, in World War II, also were the best pupils. It is necessary to have
care with those that always obey! We believe that the economically successful people
are the ones that have the empty mind, as the blank sheet of paper, of John Locke,
on which are easily print the orders of the others. Of our part, we find many obstacles
when we prefer not to imitate the others, but, this not worries us, because the life is
not a race of 100 meters and nor gains who arrives first!
How they can call Philosophy, an activity that, imitating sciences, made a
mistake: became specialized? All the object of Philosophy will be reached from partial
views? Negative. As any one knows, the all is not the addition of parts; nor it is
bigger, only different. Diogenes de Sinope punished a disciple, because he accepted
the argument of master and he did not develop its proper one; this is the true
philosophy! Today, if a student did something, they would be receive sholarships in a
strange country! Today, those that call themselves “philosophers” are only translater
of ancient languages!
Do reader desires a criterion to distinguish who is or is not a philosopher? Asks
to a person who call himself a philosopher if he is specialist in some subject, and if he
knows more about a subject than about many others. If his answer is yes, then he is
not a philosopher. The philosopher has an ample, superficial, vision of life. It is
enough for a philosopher to know that there are three oceans in the planet; but do not
interest to know their depth of each one, which chains are the hot and cold, what
animals and vegetables live in each place! The philosophy is similar to the army of
the Cavalry, whose motto, we believe has been given for the other armies, is “fast
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and badly did”, an error, because it carries through one important task to recognize
for the first time the land and the enemy, what, for the Philosophy, consists of
formulating hypotheses for the other “armies”, that is, sciences.
We need, however, to be intent to the limits of Philosophy: David Hume, in his
“moral Essays” wrote that the Philosophy takes the people diminish our sensibility,
because when they have diminished our vices, would diminish, also, our virtues. In
his words: “when the nervous terminations are destroyed, they are destroyed
together with the pain feeling, also, of pleasure”. It is necessary that to clarify that
does not have sensitivity destruction properly, but a predominance of a subtler type of
sensitivity in detriment of that most common one. More: the lackness of sensibility
that is attributed to the philosophy is, in reality, caused by the series of experiences
that we live and that they become our perception more ample, keep us far from the
daily life. When I was a child I received much attention from my family and when my
brother was born I did feel rejected (What pass inside a child mind!) , then I keep
myself away from people and, I believe, my perception became more abstract than
sensorial one. It is clear that this behavior can be strengthened by the philosophy,
especially when it become our only reason of living. Therefore, we must remember
Nietzsche for who, in the measure that we extinguish our doubts and our searches for
the causes of things, then, it would be the time to forget them and, then, we mus to
start, finally, to live our lives.
Finally, we want to explain why we change the title of this book from “Who we
are?” for “myths of time, of ego and the laws”: because the new title presents more
clearly the objectives of this book, while the first one seems to limit the reflection only
on the ego. Finally, we desire that this work not only represents a substantial addition
to existing philosophical doctrines and, exactly, a clear overcoming of most ofm, but,
still, a declaration of independence of Philosophy of Brazil and a definitive evidence
that the pseudo-philosophers (necrophilos and neofobics) that many new
philosophical doctrines will arise to perfect the old ones.
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INDEX
INTRODUCTION
1) THE PHYSIOLOGY OF TIME
§1. Is the time an external cause?
§2. Slow or short time and long or fast time.
§3. Does time flows?
§4. The separation between time and movements.
§5. The contradiction of Aristotle’s thesis of time.
§6. Two meanings of time.
§7. The origin of duration in the memory.
§8. The duration definition. But, if brain doesn’t feel pain...
§9. Some times we do not perceive duration - or time.
§10. What is speed?
§11. There always is a pre existing condition that cause the duration.
§12. The definition of neurology for “duration”.
§13. Is duration of sensation equal to the sensation of duration?
§14. What pain is. And about the saints, heroes, yogis and geniuses.
§15. Which is biggest pain: the short / fast or long /the slow one?
§16. The memory does not keep duration.
§17. The duration is similar to the secondary qualities of Locke.
§18. Slow/long duration is not the addition of many fast/short duration.
§19. Do past, present and futures events exist?
§20. Why do not we know the future?
§21. The time is not a series of “nows”. And is it a fourth dimension?
§22. The time travels? And the passage of time in the massive bodies.
§23. Where are our last ages. And about to live forever.
§24. What is there inside people’s mind ?
§25. About the sky and the hell.
§26. A localization for the conscience?
§27. The animals and the embryos also perceive time.
§28. Time, a collective neurosis?
§29. Time and music.
§30. The mind and the presumption of a “neutral state”.
§31. Duration and the measure of space - short and long. The illusion of
“simultaneity” and our contribution to the quantum mechanics.
§32. The imitation and the unsatisfaction as cause of good and bad
actions. And the Talion law.
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§38. Is the soul the cause of life? And do soul progress?
§39. The nonsense of a separate consciousness.
§40. The consciousness differs from the ego. And do the subjectivity
exist?
§41. What do occurs in the impact of sensations on the consciousness?
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§71. The morality in the animals and our care about them. And the
mineralism.
8
§108. The physiological and the cultural beauties. Hume and the enemies.
§109. The development of aesthetic sense.
§110. Is there rationality in the beauty? The beauty: a mystical experience?
§111. The propensity to the art, the Philosophy and the architecture.
§112. Why do we want to surpass the nature?
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INTRODUCTION
We will look for in the present work to present our philosophical ideas to the
reader in a way that becomes more easy the access as possible. Therefore, we
decide to imitate the style of philosopher Berkeley where his ideas are presented in
short paragraphs and, thus, it makes possible to the reader a more easy identification
of treat subjects. Also we imitate Nietzsche, when placing titles on each paragraphs,
for the same previous reason, to facilitate the reading. In this book, we desire to
expose the natural development of our reflection, without being too much long, from
the inquiry of following subjects: time, in its two meanings, of a succession passed
events and future and of duration, after, the senses of aesthetic and moral, later the
myth of free-will, what is the conscienciousness, the illusion of “ego”, the thesis of
perception degrees, what is the rationality, for what we relate when we use the word
“freedom”, if there is a human happiness; a revision of concept of democracy, the
illusion of system of laws and the necessity to rethink the judiciary power, through the
promotion of direct elections.
Before choosing for the construction of this work, we think about possiblity to
write three separated books - the Myth of time, the Myth of Ego and the Myth of Laws
- written in 2000, 2001 and 2002, but not published, despite we had looked for
publishing companies. However, we decide that there are good reasons to prevent to
make what some men made and make: to spread children for the world, in so great
number that they finish their lifes not recognizing them. Or still, to present untied
ideas, spread for different works, as if the arguments jumped of one for another one,
in a chaotic state. Also, for respect to the reader, we do not want to monopolize all
their attention in our ideas, even because the biggest satisfaction in philosophing
inhabits not in reach an answer but to investigate and to be surprised at the
discoveries.
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1) THE PHYSIOLOGY OF TIME.
Nine in ten scientists will say that time is the cause of order of world or the
cause of all events that exist in the world. That belief is so deep in our minds that
none would disagree. But, it is necessarily in moments like this that the critical sense
dies. In title of this chapter we suggest that the time - in its two main senses means:
(a) a serie of passed, present and future events; e, (b) duration (lenght), that is not
more than a product of our mind, not existing as something real, but only inside of us.
We will prove it in the next paragraphs.
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as we can read in the book: One brief history of time. What is our reply to this
answer? Who defends that the time is an external cause of universe, they would have
to go out of universe for prove or reject this thesis, what so far did not happen. Before
considering a thesis where we do not have means to verify - something strange for
scientists -, why not to observe this question for other perspectives?
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§4. The separation between time and movements.
We believe that is the moment to consider the separation of millenarian “society”
between the time and the movements that we observe in the world. When our clocks
- that they just reproduce the terrestrial movement or almost that, therefore each four
years we have to add one day more - are divided in equal parts and give to these
parts the name of time - or duration -, are forcibly and without evidence, estimating
that inherent to the movement and its parts, have, also, the time, as “siameses twins”,
connected beetwin itself for a natural or divine force. Why we must accept this? It
would be the same that to divide a cluster of bananas in twenty and four parts and to
find in each part one another fruit, as apples or pears! For more nonsense that this
example is, it discloses that the co-presence of time in each movement of each
portion of substance in the world, included ourselves, results of a false belief. Nobody
never saw this time that all assumes “glue” to all the movements that we observe. It
would not be in the moment to we start to think that what we call “time” is inside and
aren’t out of our minds? In our agreement, the supposed objective existence of time
is supported by mere opinions.
Two lines of argument to show to the separation between time and movement
are the following ones:
(a) sometimes we perceive time, even because when an object is stopped. An
interesting objection was made certain time for us and resembles to thesis of William
James in his book “Principles of Psychology”: despite that we don’t perceive
movements, still thus, our eyes move or internal organs are in continuous movement.
In part it seems correct, but the perception ofse movements would not make to
appear a perception of time, as something that disappears, irreversible, in a past
behind us. Is it a pulsation of heart that disappears in some place of past? If we did
not know of our mortality, we could not, ofse movements, to infer time. It’s ok, a
doctor measures the number of pulsations of a patient and compares with clock; but,
here he is estimating that the clocks measure time, what, to be correct, it would need
to prove these “siameses twins”;
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(b) some times we can perceive movements without time perception. In pleasant
experiences, we can completely lose any notion of a time passage. We will see, more
ahead, with more details these questions.
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Let us catch the colors yellow and blue: the simultaneous perception ofm, keeps
the essence of each one? Evidently that not; blue and yellow, seen together,
produces the perception of green color, a mixture or composition of two first colors.
And to perceive at the same time a bitter and a candy flavors? Impossible,
except if we perceive one and later the other, exactly because the regions of the
tongue where they are perceived are different. And the eyeglasses of third
dimension, where there are two lenses, blue and a other red: we think that we see
the images of each eye together, but they present one after the other! The fixed or
cellular telephones are another good example of that it seems that two people can
speak at the same time, what it does not occur; in the case of fixed telephone, each
person uses the line for time, in the case of cellular one, has two distinct signals, one
for each person.
It has, still, one another problem, still on the perception of time: when Aristotle
defends that when we perceive movement, perceives time, he conduces us to believe
that two perceptions are, or simultaneous, or successive. If simultaneous, we fall
again into the difficulty displayed in the previous paragraph. If successive, then it
refutes the belief that it is central, of that the time and the movement is non-
separable. The same problem was raised in century XVIII, for David Hume: when we
hear five musical notes, what is the duration ofse notes, one sixth sensation? John
Locke, a little before, defended the belief of that the duration results of succession of
our ideas and, therefore, an internal operation in the mind. Moreover, for where of
five senses stimuli enters the duration in our mind, understood as something
external? Reply: for none ofm. This question sends us in return to the Aristotle,
because his definition of time as “measured of movement” leads the same lockean
explanation. Nicholas de Cusa, medieval thinker, as well as us, as presently we
make, interpreted in the same way the aristotelian definition: measure is a product of
intellect and, thus, the time is subjective, different of real time that Aristotle defended!
15
is only possible of being made, because we understand to be time and movements
something independent: we can think about a sequence of events with a total
duration or about an isolated event, with its respective duration. Let us see the term
“duration” with more detail.
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instantaneous and, only later, from the following sensations, the duration perception
will appear in us. It is clear that in these two last thinkers do not have any reference
to the memory. Therefore, a practical experience was decisive: our curiosity was
awaked when we saw one same movie for the second time and we perceive that in
the second time the movie seemed to us faster than the first one. For that, it was
clear that the memory was involved in the sprouting of duration!
We reject immediately, for being so little credible, thesis like Plato, that we
relember those experiences lived before the soul coming to the body, in the divine
world or, still, of Saint the Augustin, that the memory is one of faculties of soul,
exactly because has difficulty to conciliate two natures, a supposedly divine one and
to another, human being. What it would bind them, if they are as water and oil? Then,
for our surprise, we recommence the inquiry on what it is the duration. For this, we
compare the memory with an organ of body, as the stomach. What does it happen in
its functioning? When we have hunger, we can feed little, equal or beyond to the
capacity that the stomach allows. It is clear that we can increase its capacity, in
function of its elasticity, but this does not occurs in immediate way. What it interests
at the moment is to know if the comparison with the memory could be useful.
As memory has a capacity, except if we think it is infinite, thesis that our daily life
would refute as absurd, ahead of many mnemonic problems that we have, we would
need to know why “duration” occurs inside of memory. If in the stomach it has the
three described situations before, also, in the physic organ responsible for the
memory must occur the same situation: depending on the amount of foods - lesser,
equal or bigger that the capacity of stomach - we would continue or not to feel
hunger. Already in the memory, the food is substituted by sensations. And, in the
relation among the retention of these sensations and the capacity of memory to hold
back them is that - we speculate - the phenomenon of “duration” would appear. Thus,
in we step by step approach to the following reply: if the amount or quality of
sensations was insufficient to recognize the object that affects our perception, a pain
in the memory would persist (not is brain, because it doesn’t feel anything); if the
amount or quality was identical, pain would cease and a pleasure - as it happens with
the stomach - would appear; or, finally, if the amount or quality was superior to the
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capacity, another pain will appear - as, also, it occurs in the stomach, when we feel it
“heavy”, after to consume much amount of foods.
Another example that sample that the duration arise inside of our mind: how do
we know that we will have time (duration) enough when we go to cross the street and
to prevent to be run over by an car that comes in our direction? It is not because we
know the final duration of movement of car, but because the series of images of
vehicle that we perceive, the duration of movement of car appears in us and, then,
we compare with the duration of our movement that, if lesser than our legs’ speed
and duration of our movement, we will decide to cross the street.
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necessary in the objectives of experience” (Analytical of Principles, Chap. II, section
II). In another stretch: “between two moments it always has a time” (Second
Analogy).
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§11. There always is a pre existing condition that cause the duration.
It matters to explain why for some people an experience can be ackward,
whereas, for others, the same experience can be pleasant. We do not have, still,
here, the means for a complete reply, because it depends on one another line of
inquiry: of degrees with which our perception apprehends the world around us. But,
what we can advance, can be compared with a game called “seven errors”, where
two photos are presented and we ask for someone to identify the differences
between them. We ask: why some people identify more easily the differences and
others delay more or, still, nor arrive to identify an error at least? Our reply consists
saying that some people - for some types of experience – have inside thei memory a
pre condition that became them able to perceive details that others are not. Let us
imagine a game where the photos are of painting of Rafael, the school of Atenas: a
philosopher or an artist will be able to feel themselves motivated more to identify to
the differences than another person whose subject does not mean nothing to him.
Returning to our lives, we will be able to recognize moments where an
experience does not say nothing to us and it seems, or chaotic, or monotonous. In
these cases, a duration provoked for this experience will appear in our mind, that, as
we before saw, are nothing more than a pain in the memory. For this reason, we can’t
accept the false belief that the duration is property of events that we perceive, but,
that it is born inside of our minds. And this because it is necessary, as we saw in the
previous paragraph, that occurs in us an emotional envolvement for that appears the
duration. It cannot have an independent duration of our minds. A butterfly lives seven
days. How much lasts for it the proper existence? And for us when lasts seventy
years and how much they last for a eternal being, if it exist? By the way, years, are
only returns that the Earth gives around of sun. How much a life lasts, will depend on
one another question: for who?
Surprise us finding in the edition of day twelve of January of 2002, of newspaper
“Folha of São Paulo”, an article of doctor Dráuzio Varella, on the compulsory
pleasure of people addicted to drugs. In this article, he makes the following story: “all
time that the brain is submitted the loaded repetitive stimulations of emotional
content, the circuits of involved neurons in its conduction, modify themselves to try to
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perpetuate the gotten sensation of pleasure”. Let us observe the presence of terms
on which our thesis comes approaching: “repetitive stimulatons”, “emotional content”
and “sensation of pleasure”. Mr. Varella adds that the knowledge of this mechanism
is sufficiently old; is called “neuroadaptation”. The involved chemical substance is
called “dopamina”; it is a cause of new linkings among the neurons. Thus, when we
look at the face of woman that we love, for example and, therefore, we receive a
series of images or repetitive sensations, what - for everything what we said before,
they would make to appear pain in the memory -, something occurs surprising: the
image stirs up us to a pleasure by means of “neuroadaptation”, holding back the
sensations, without any pain comes to appear. It is possible to think about one
another explanation: that the pain located in the memory is weak or is eclipsarred by
the pleasure to touch the skin of woman that we love or smells her hair. High involved
degrees of acuidade in these last pleasures, would hinder or diminish the intensity of
that specifically mental pain, the duration!
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and the old people perceive differently the “passage of time” - or duration. We do not
agree to him, because the young also feels duration long, when live deeply
monotonous experiences.
Seem to us that he came close to the problem solution when he observed that
oldest people, for not living not much new experiences, they would tend to perceive
them with a longer duration. However, what he did not explain is that thre are a great
number of seemed experiences, that overlap - in the memory - on those already
lived. W. James seems to say that while we are affected by an object we would not
perceive time, when a sensation only leaves its impression, as shades, behind itself?
The same researcher believes that the young people only have - in general, he adds
- the perception of a short time. But, would the difference between the systems
nervous of young and of oldest explain the different perceptions of duration? We
believe not, because we know how much, also, the teenagers become bored with
monotonous situations and, of another part, oldest can, too, perceive an experience
as short duration! Therefore, It does not make sense to limit the short duration as well
as the long one to a specific ages.
§14. What pain is. And about the saints, heroes, yogis and geniuses.
We do not desire to stop here our inquiry, because it would be like to leave an
incomplete task. Why, then, we feel pain? This question does not accept an obvious
reply, as the one that says that the brain when receiving the provoked electric
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stimulaton, for example, one cut in the skin, this sensation goes up for the system of
nerves until the brain; from there, another stimulaton - now a reply - return with an
order for let us move away from the source of cut. Everything this seems clear and
unquestioned. Nor we intend to deny that we feel pain. What we want is to find the
cause of pain. Perhaps we had to detail the question: Why the brain commands to
take off the finger from the fire? It has some innate idea that we bring with us before
being born? If there is, where it would be, in the soul or the DNA? Is it a preservation
instinct? If it is, why this instinct exists? The error that the philosophers had incurred -
in all the history of Philosophy, into the inquiry of what pain is, as to think that it is a
divine work, “annexed in us for God for our preservation” - as made John Locke, in
the Essays on the human agreement (book II, Chapter. IV, 17 and VII, 4) - was
caused by the fact to try to understand and to define pain as if it was an only same
thing. However, in our bodies we do not go to find the only one only pain, but, many,
that have - it is truth - something in common, but do not constitute the only pain,
because they result of specific necessities, of specific organs and not a something
spiritual, transcendental.
Why we feel pain and what is it? It was the reading of dialogue of Plato,
“Philebo”, that alerted us for this question, when he asks of where comes the memory
that makes us to extinguish a necessity and to return to the state in which again in we
feel us complete - “of where it comes the knowledge, not of lack, but of completude”.
Our reply to this question is the following one: when we are in the uterus our mind
already registers the sensations and it knows the completude state, being unaware of
necessities as to the related to hunger, fear, cold, etc. Thus, the mind would register
these sensations and it takes them as standards, as something daily, constant. Later,
out of uterus, the experiences lived in the exterior world that to present distinct
characteristics of that we still find in the fetal state, will produce answers - since a
simple agitation until a more aggressive behavior - that it will aim to reestablish the
state previous, intrauterine.
Some observations seem to indicate that we are in the certain way are related
the experiences and stories of three types of people: saints, heroes, yogis and, with
certain restrictions, also, those that – na illusion - are called genius. In these cases,
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we observe a certain lack of sensibility to pain, as well as, a distance of reality, what
gives to them an exempt perception of what is around! It is not enough, however, the
feeling of completude or order (fetal) to explain such cases; we need the thesis of
perception degrees, that we will see more ahead.
What we can advance here is that as much more our perceptions are next - not
spacially, inside of brain, but, in similarity, to the neuron structures - to the acquired
perceptions in the fetal life, less will perceive pain, this because pain is a reaction to
the difference between the memory of fetal state of completude and a present
perception - that it involves a bigger degree of acuity. Thus, saints, heroes, yogis and
genius are, clearly, people who see things that the others do not see, fact that do not
make them beings the holy ghosts, but disclose that the remaining portion of
humanity has a similar problem to the people that have myopia, a myopia of
perception, because they aren’t able to see more far!
§15. Which is biggest pain (mental): the short / fast or long /the slow?
A very sad fact occurred: an accident of helicopter with two Brazilian
personalities, where one ofm disappeared in the sea and the rescue of its corpse
seemed impossible. We notice that, for the family of that person, it was preferable to
have the dead body of its relative than to lose it for the sea. Seem us evident that, if it
dealt with our relative, our reaction would be the same. However, to philosophy
requires a distance to understand what is deeper in the essence of things and the
beings. We had understood that the pain of absence is - in general - always bigger
that the pain of presence of that corpse. We dedicate, then, attention to this fact: the
short pain is more intense than long pain, that is, not seeing the body was more tragic
- evidently, beyond the suffering of familiar for the death - than its image in a coffin,
with flowers and being able, thus, to carry through a last homage and a worthy burial.
But, why short pain is more intense than the long one? We believe that this is
caused by the fact of that the memory of embryo had more contact with experiences
of long duration, repeated, and, therefore, more resistant to the future experiences of
long duration and untill he not to see them as painful in contrast with those
experiences of short duration that, very probably, the embryo has not had any
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experience or, at least, in lesser amount than the others experiences: pleasants and
those where a long duration appears! Let us observe, yet, that, if the embryo had not
had more perceptions that formed in it the long duration, then we could not
distinguish as painful the short duration and would take both - the shortness as well
as the long one - as identical in relation to intensity of pain’ sensation. However, we
know that, in reality, they are distinct pains and, under our present point of view, this
is the origin of pain sensations, that is, in the maternal womb.
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movements that our mind made to perceive and to memorize such objects. And,
therefore, as well as the thermometer does not measure the heat or the cold, also the
clocks do not measure the duration, only compare movements. In addition: when we
see a clock we just see the movement of hands of clock, not duration.
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sensorial organs, of memory and perception. It will fit, therefore, to the culture of a
people and its historians systemize in a perspective the individual perceptions and
stories.
Something similar occurs with who thinks, as Burnyeat, that who studies the
time already would estimate its existence when it gains money for a reserch for the
period of one year to search the subject. However, what it means one year? One
comes back complete of planet around sun and, because of its inclination, a
projection toward the space ahead. Thus, we understand that “one year” does not
denote time, but a certain number of kilometers ahead of point where we are. Evident
that in that position all the substance will modify its position in the space not only the
Earth.
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see the future, it could be involved a extra-sensorial perception, where external
stimuli - distinct of sensations - could be recognized, for similarity, inside of our
minds. One is not about one sixth sensorial agency, but an internal perception, as the
thoughts that appear in our mind. This is not impossible, because being the skull
done of calcium and, knowing the calcium is a metal, then does not have limit of
capacity to receive electrochemical, external stimuli. Beside that, we believe that we
are able to povoke interferences in electric equipment and livings beings.
Heidegger was who that gave more value to the future than to the past,
therefore, for him, the essence of human being is always for being constructed by
ourselves, what makes us to direct our attention for what will come, the future. The
future, for me, is like a sunrise, full of promises, because the past quickly becomes
repeated, monotonous and, mentally painful, because as we are ownership of an
ample perception, we perceive little details of things and faster we become bored with
our experiences. And the past? It is passed! People who I knew in the past: i see
them at a distance, as if i saw ghosts, espirits, whose existence are possible if they
have meat and bone – you already see something just with form, not corporeal
substance?
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to extend this perception for us, perishable and temporal beings, is exaggeration.
Better it would be to have denied, not only the existence of past and the future, but,
also, of one of “now”: this could be possible if they denied the existence of this
“dimension” called time and to unmask it showing that it does not pass of space
under the perspective of that someone that observes the uninterrupted flow of stimuli,
reaching our sensorial organs and disappearing - literally - behind our coasts or going
to stop behind there, in the memory.
Let us see with more attention this last question: it is the past behind us or the
objects that testified those events that had occurred? Certainly that second is the
correct anwer. Therefore, the events that we try and those older occurrences same
centuries ago, we can’t properly “locate” these events, but the place where they had
occurred, or more necessarily, the place where the substance of universe was
organized in a peculiar and distinct way. Therefore, we reject the thesis of Saint
Augustin of whom the past is what is in our memory. The certainty is to say that what
is memorized are only tracks, vestiges of what it happened. It is, thus, more easy to
understand that the events that had constituted the fall of Roman empire, for
example, do not have to be found in our memory, but in vestiges as the Roman
Coliseu and in the defense that in certain position, there backwards in the sidereal
space - covered for the planet -, the substance found organized in one mood that
only thus the events had been able to occur!
We were awaked for the impossibility of time to be a series of “nows”, after to
read in the work “the being and the nothing”, where Jean-Paul Sartre - that had
studied with the phenomenologists philosophers - recognized that a “series of nows” -
atemporal - cannot generate a time perception. An experience that understands a
series of “nows” would be the equivalent only to look at a first sensation that we
receive from each object: i see the picture in the wall, when i turn my head, i see the
floor, then, i quickly turn the head for the left and see the door, without seeing any
image twice. It is this that constitutes a series of “nows”, without to comet the error to
identify and to define the “now” as temporal thing! When Hegel made that dialectical
exercise - at a first moment, brilliant - to write in a piece of paper “now” is a sunny
day, valid at that moment, and, later, it will leave of being when the night to arrive and
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to reread the piece - even so it seems extraordinary -, makes to appear more doubts
of what answers, because:
(1) we will be able to ask if all the time that is a sunny day, during every
following days until the end of universe and the piece of paper is in accordance with
the sun - or, at least, the clarity in the sky - what we observe outside of window, then,
will be the same “now”? Negative, they will be distinct moments, but it is exactly to
this error that Hegel induces the reader in his book “Phenomenology of Spirit”;
(2) the philosopher defends that the divisions of hours, minutes, seconds, are
“nows” and, at the same time, defends that “now” intuitivo, that is, an abstraction of
our minds. We know that the seconds can be divided in infinite parts, but we are not
capable to perceive bilions of parts of seconds, for example!
On the time to be one fourth dimension beside of three space dimensions: a
physicist gave the example of two people who mark a meeting. The three space
dimensions will not be enough, but, also, we will need a exact hour. However, when
we say three hours at afternoon, we are to refer to a space dimension, because
“three hours” mean a position in the according to meridian of Greenwich, the east or
west, that is, in a position that is the 45 degrees of distance from the place where we
are, when there is noon or midnight.
I changed e-mails with a physicist on subject of the time and the gravity. He
presented as main argument that “if it (the time) did not exist, everything would
happen of a only one time, at the same time (birth, death). It could not exist cause
and consequence. The grandson would have died at the same moment that the born
grandfather, etc”. However, what we defend is that the duration is a mental sensation,
but from there it does not follow that everything happens in an only instant. First:
when we deny the existence of the time, we don’t defend the real existence of a
instant, notion theological and, for us, a name for when our perception receive some
external estimuli, a mere mental abstration.
And in those researches that seems to show that an electron occupies many
places at the same time, did they occur when the time leaves to exist? Then it does
not have relation between time and instantaneous or who defends such thesis has
that to admit that for backwards of the time there is the instant! It is opportune to
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explain our reasoning: we did not say that “If there is “A” (time) then has B
(simultaneity)” and occurring a “B”, then will not occur one “A”, because it is possible
that the sentence is true if there is a “B” and one “A”. It is the same that to say “All
man is mortal”, “That is mortal”, then “That is a man”, because nor everything who is
mortal is human. But, if we understand that the relation is of disjunction (or A, or B),
then se there is “B”, there won’t be one “A” or vice versa and, still, we can see the
relation as all the times (A1, A2, A3, etc) or the simultaneous events (B1, B2, B3,
etc). There is another possibility in the disjunction: that “A” and “B” are both true and,
because they coexist!
§22. The time travels? And the passage of time in the massive bodies.
To come back in the time, would be enough a machine? Not. For us it would be
necessary to have an energy or force of size of that it created the universe, so that it
is possible to modify the current position since of each miniature portion of matter
until great conglomerates of galaxies and black holes. Let us see this question at
greater detail: let us assume that we want to come back to the yesterday. What will
be necessary? To stop the movement of Earth and to reput it in the position that it
was in the previous day. But is that enough? All the substance, all the beings and all
the physical objects, would not have to be reput in the space where they found
yesterday? Each ingested food would not have to be reput in its original position?
And each present bacterium in the air and each molecule of present air in the
atmosphere? But and the planets, the sun and the galaxy, how much space had
covered since the yesterday?
And histories of travels in the time only using of thought? A myth, because we
will see more ahead than the thought is physiological (§39). And experiences where
few seconds in this world would be equivalent the hours or days in another one? As
the duration sensation depends on our brain and the amount of lived sensations, the
thesis alone would be possible if we perceived millions of images and very fast
sounds, but, in this way, we would not understand that experience.
Finally, although we reject the time existence and we reject that near of
massive bodies (planets, stars, etc) time’s passage is more slow, we don’t reject,
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however, the whole theory, because we can rewrite it thus: “the movements occurs
more slowly for bodies that move in high speed”, because, let’s image somebody in a
centrifugal machine, trying to move itself: everything becomes more difficult and
everything becomes more delayed! Simple, as life must be!
§23. Where are our last ages. And about to live forever.
Will they be our first years of life and all the others for which we pass, in some
place in the past? We could come back until them with a machine of time? Not. Let’s
compare us as a building in construction, where each floor will correspond to each
one of already reached years of life. How could this building whole if each one of
floors that compose it disappeared? Impossible. If the previous ages were not
contained inside of us, as could have the current age? If to each year that was added
to our previous age, the previous one disappeared in a mysterious place that they call
“past”, then we would not leave the first year! If each new cell that substituted the
previous one - how gave its origin -, was condemned to go for the past, then we
would be only unicellular beings!
And why we grow, we ripen, we age and we die? It is that when we grow more
cells are born in relation than die, we arrive at the apex (the adult phase) where the
number of cells that are born is identical to that cells that die, having, therefore, a
stagnation and a stop of growth. Later, a bigger number of cells die in relation to the
number of that they are born, causing the aging that, when natural, is caused by
insufficience quantitative of cells that they would have to keep the body organs work.
One question makes necessary: we could live forever? It has two possibilities:
(1) that the cells are always born in bigger amount that the ones that dies, but thus
we would be beings that would grow in height and width and would reach, perhaps, to
the sixty years the size of a mountain without stopping; or, (2) that we stimulate the
birth of cells (in each organ of body) in the same number of that ones that die and,
thus, we would keep us, adults, even so stagnated, without growing but, also, without
aging. It won’t cause surprise to us if the science one day discovering that the first
forms of live choose to put a limit for their own life to avoid to be destroied when they
reach a big size!
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§24. What is there inside people’s mind ?
We saw that the short and the long duration are not in objects or movements,
but appear inside of us. Thus, a good way to know the feeling of somebody regarding
one determined experience, that is, if liked or not of, for example, to go to the cinema,
one dinner, of our company, etc, without inquiring directly is to ask to which the
perception of time that elapsed of this experience: slow / fast or long / short? There
are three possible answers: (1) not to perceive the duration - when the person lives
deeply a pleasant experience; (2) duration fast - when the experience passed more
fast than it was expected or it was pleasant, but finished. It can be a positive
situation, when it stimulate us to want repeting it again; (3) long duration - the worse
reply, because it means that the experience was ackward.
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It would be the conscience between the senses organs and the memory? There
is an other possibility: we can speculate that, when we are waked up, those
sensations - internal - that they are kept in the memory are dimmed for the intensity
of external sensations; however, when we sleep (or our attention isn’t turn for the
external world), external sensations almost diminish or cease and are detached those
sensations that are in the memory. Thus, the conscience could be behind the
memory, not, in its front! We had thought that the science of Neurology had identified
to the localization of consciousness in the lobe frontal or cortex cerebral. Seem us
that what they call consciousness is not properly a focal point to which sensations
converge to, but, so only, the region where it would be “ego” or where the image of
our body would be memorized. We do not want to decide this question, to only play
some combustive in the fire, that is, to mantain the discussion. It is one of most
complex question. It could have many “focal points”, one for each region of brain or
one for each direction, for example.
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could modify the time, why would not modify in its own benefit, that is, short duration
for ackward experiences and long duration for pleasant experiences? That neurosis
or restrained desire - to use the Psychoanalytic language - all the humanity has in
common, that it makes all us to modify the time in a neurotic way? Let us imagine a
public attending a lecture on an ackward subject that is pleasant for some and not for
others. Between the first group, will not appear perception of time, whereas for the
second one, will appear a perception of long time. Thus, it does not proceed that let
us participate of a “collective neurosis”, therefore, if this was truth, would have
simultaneously to perceive identical perceptions in identical experiences.
Certain time somebody assumed the following explanation: the souls, before
come for the bodies, would protest against this experience; thus, our neurosis would
be explained from the restrained desire of souls not to want to come to this corporeal
world. Even because existed soul - thesis that we reject - nor all the souls would be
rebellious, some are kind and justs. These last souls, therefore, would not participate
of “collective neurosis of time”: they would accept the experience! We saw here until
the incoherence of thesis of that a psychic time; in truth, it only has a time, that one
that the mind produces.
Even for they that believe that a external time exists and is modified by the mind,
is necessary that they offer to us answers to the two questions: (1) of what material
this time is made that can be modified by the mind; (2) what kind of mental operation
could to compress or to prolongate the time? When the mind prolongating it, would it
add more time and from which place it would take off more time?
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“a”, as well as, the difference in the pronunciation - open or closed; (3°) when we hear
the sound that we ourselves pronounce we must have conscious that it had -
previously - a series of unconscious movements, that prepare the best
communication of what it is in our memory.
§31. Duration and the measure of space - short and long. The illusion of
“simultaneity” and our contribution to the quantum mechanics.
When we were in the classroom, i repair that our notion of space is different
when the room is empty and when it is full. Why? Appealing to our thesis of duration,
we can evidence that when we pass the eyes for the room, we hold back the images
of people one after other. A bigger number of perceived external elements will require
greater “work” of memory, provoking pain for excess of sensations. Another time,
after to repaint the walls of building, before dirty and peeled, we perceived that the
distance between us and the wall it seemed to have diminished! As in the example of
room, the cause inhabits in the fact of that before we needed to hold back a bigger
number of stimuli and this generated long duration - pain for excess of sensations -,
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whereas, after the painting, we hold back, little sensations. Of this it follows two
conclusions: (a) that has it good reasons to believe that the space is an illusion; (b)
that is not in the distance that it creates the difference, but difference that creates the
distance!
When we were child we live the following experiences: we open a hole in the
wall of apartment where we lived to see if what same thing that was of other side of
wall was similar to that we saw for the window. Another time, we play a ball of soccer
of fifth floor to see if it, beating in the soil, would return to us. The child, thus, by
chance acquires the space knowledge, when interacting with the world. Everything
indicates that the senses - internal - of space and the time are not as Kant believed,
“previous forms” anterior to our sensitivity and anterior of our experiences, but
posterior - and never simultaneous -, because does not have concurrence in no part
of universe, as we saw before in the paragraph §5. When the people say, for
example, that a soccer teams is simultaneously competing in two championships,
they do not say that the eleven players are playing in two fields at the same time. And
when we see two letters, as “A” and “B”, we see them simultaneously? Not, because
if this occurred we would see something completely strange, that is, two symbols,
ranks one on the other, not representing nothing.
Consequently, cause us the queerness that scientists want - and they do not
obtain - to measure the position and the speed of an electron, simultaneously. How
do they could? They are surprised that the atom, sometimes seems solid, sometimes
wave, but is only wave that we see for all the part. When my window was almost
closed, noticed that a ray of sun, beat in the surface of a cup and created an image of
that surface in the wall: it remembered electricity, as rays in movement and was only
the visible surface that hid something more underneath. Thus, when they say that our
observation become atom dense, we cannot compare this with the influence
(gravitational) that the moon exerts on the tides of oceans? And on the effect to
happen before the cause? Maybe we see only the crest of waves and we do not see
that in its lower parts they connect themselves and are subtle causes that produce
the effect, before seeing the crests that connecting each other?
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We find in the quantum physics the belief of that something can be in some
places at the same time, but, before, with Galileo, there already is the belief that two
objects, independent of weight or mass, fall at the same time! How to know? One
only fall time? They would not be disdaining millionth or we bilions parts of seconds
or, worse, that the time is potentially divisible to the infinite? And the clocks used in
the experience: they measure the time identically? We know that between two
subatoms particles of mass very seemed does not have force of gravity between
them. Why? Perhaps because they have similar masses; if one had lesser mass,
would be affected by the other. It is not around of sun that the Eath turns? And why a
satellite fall on the planet and not the moon?
§32. The imitation and the unsatisfaction as cause of good and bad
actions. And the Talion law.
In the measure where we show that in the memory exists pain, we can say, also,
that this pain will be able to contribute to provoke, in us, a reaction. If, until then, we
don’t have an alternative or alternatives predominating, we will appeal to the imitation
of people. It is certain that the imitation is in the cause of most of our actions - good
or bad. We believe that the famous “law of talion” is related to the imitation of
behavior of other, in the absence of internal moral principles; of ownership of intense
image of violent scene, that remains in the mind of victim or ofir relatives, it will
determine its reaction. It occurs, also, that somebody can plan an bad action, but in
this in case here is yet a hability of planning how will be done the reaction.
But, there is one another factor: an increasing disposal in us not satisfying more
with what we have - a pain for the monotony. Certain time, we play a water cup on a
dry seedbed of garden. Not satisfied, we play a bucket of twenty liters of water!
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2) WHAT IS THE CONSCIOUSNESS?
We only can call pseudo-philosophers those people whom for all questions
answers with innumerable classifications, as the ones that when being asked on what
consciousness is they answer: it is phenomenological consciousness, consciousness
of access, self consciousness, flow of consciousness, moral conscience, etc. They
nothing more gives that particular examples when they would have to offer a
definition, an abstract idea from the observed particular facts. As Socrates said: they
give us one swarm of bees, but they do not explain us what bee is and make this,
unhappyly, on all the philosophical subjects! And why? Because they are not
philosophers, they only seem to be!
Let us start - dialectically - accepting that the intellect is the divine element in us
or that let us be a thing - a compound of human being and the holy ghost - that
possesss the monopoly of thought. We go to assume everything this. What it elapses
of acceptance of this thesis? What it elapses is that if there is a God and if the
intellect - or soul - is an divine element, it follows that everything what exists is equally
divine, as for example, the substance of that we are made. A leg - or any another part
of body -, is so divine as our mind. Otherwise, of where it would come the substance
if it was not part of “divine meat”? From another God? Then we would have that to
start to defend politeism. Saint Augustin opposed that the substance was divine: how
we could step on and eat God? Any way, if we accepted what he wrote we would be
still eating part of one second deity. The disdain to the substance led for the religions
is nonsense, not only Christian, but, also, the Hindu: one day, the dog of my family
rubbed the face on one thing that was in decomposition in the soil; for us, it smelled
the rotten one, one I smell chaotic, perhaps because it had a mixture of smells there
that, under the point of view of developed canine nose, was very pleasant, what
induces it to want spreads it in its body!
There is one old medieval philosophical sentence, of aristotelian origin, that says
“from the nothing, nothing it comes”, what conduces us to affirm categorically that, or
each piece of substance has conscience - even because the most insignificant
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portion -, or nothing is conscious, but this is not possible, what takes us to a similar
argument to “cogito” of Renné Descartes: we cannot think that we do not think, we
cannot doubt that we doubt, nor that we do not have any consciousness, because we
already will be conscientious of our body, thoughts, feelings, doubts, etc. It is useful
to remember Will Durant who, in its work “Mansion of Philosophy”, wrote that, to enter
in contact with the the holy ghost, is “to feel the world our return where the divine
substance takes the most diverse forms”.
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(some it seems a net forming figures of losangos, some seems a point moving away
in a road) can be the image of consciousness. Someone will say that they are only
indications of electricity in the nerves of eyes… We thought once, but we find the
challenge gigantic, if it would be possible to measure the diameter of conscience,
from in the distance maximum that our sight could reach and understanding the mind
as lenses that converge the luminous stimuli, sonorous, etc.
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Of our part, two can be the causes for this only consciousness to break itself up:
or It searchs to live the experience of to be perishable - mortal -, or our mind is very
limited to understand that what is perceived by us as broken up, under the point of
view of a more complex being is, in truth, an identical and perpetual totality. We are
not likeable to this last thesis, originated in Heraclitus (Greece, century V a.C. ) and,
later, supported for Hegel. One strong indication of that the existencial sense of life -
taken in its totality and not under the point of view of individuals - is to contemplate
and to try the life mortal, still inhabits in the fact of that our mind is structuralized to
always know new objects and beings, or, to learn new knowledge and getting great
satisfaction and pleasure with this, whereas to recognize same objects and the same
beings it does not originate the same satisfaction and, very frequently, it makes to
appear pain. Who will disagree that the first experiences have a superior flavor in
opposition to the following ones and that they will not be happened again in a similar
way. The discoveries related to the sexuality are among those more intenses.
Because thinkers as Freud, had established, erroneously, our sexual choices. It
occurs that the rememberances of first food and the first drink are very there behind,
among the oldest rememberances. On experiences the social acts, as to make a
speech in public, the public reaction do not depend exclusively on us and, next to it,
have great amount of anxiety that eclipsars the pleasure that comes to appear. And,
therefore, the sex and the hunger are seen as stronger necessities, even so are only
more immediate (they appear first).
By the way, the error of Freud was to accept without questioning the opinion of
poet Schiller who said that two things moved us: the hunger and the love, preferring
the father of psychoanalysis to believe that this last feeling was stronger and that he
would be behind on to a supposed “perpetuation of species”. We want to leave clear
that we do not monopolize the sense of life in the desire to know, that is, in the
philosophical and scientific reflection; we extend it, also, in the relative desire the two
other parts of soul: the concupiscível part - to know new people and to have new
relationships, to eat different foods, to prove different juices, etc, and the irascible one
- to know and to be known by new people, to receive prizes, etc, lived - it is good for
leaving clearly - in a balanced way. Moreover, already they had observed that a
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person or an animal, when castrated, loses interest in sex? How so fragile structures
could determine all our choices?
§36. We are many, not only a person? Is there a conflict inside us?
Let us speculate: we hear to say in a scientific news article that to each six years
our cells are substituted. Thus, being the life expectancy, on average, of seventy and
two years - we are saying of south region of Brazil and the countries of hemisphere
north - and, if to each six years our cells are substituted, it follows that during all the
life, approximately twelve times, we are completely new, that is, we are not one “I”, a
John, a Mary, a Heloise, a Socrates, but, yes, twelve John, twelve Mary, twelve
Heloise, twelve Socrates - which ofse twelve individuals have soul and deserve the
eternity? It is opportune to cite Empedocles: “I already was boy, I already was girl,
shrub and in the dumb sea, I already was fish”. The correct would be to say: “this, the
universe, already was boy, girl, ...”. This means that the substance that composes us
is perpetual and is part of a series of transformations. We are a broken up
consciousness, that combines and dissolve itself.
I read that 5 billion years ahead Milky Way will join with the Andromeda and i felt
sadness for not being here to see it; but, this “me” is just a combination (with millions
of variations throughout a life) of the universe that won’t be there, yes, but this
universe, what we really are, it will contemplate that event.
Nor it makes sense to think that we are many “some thing” that remains the
same, despite for some time, because each molecule of oxygen that enters change
what we are and makes already us different and, because this, the more correct is to
say that it does not have real separation between this “I” and the atmosphere or the
remaining portion of world, for example - where starts one and finishes the other? It
had a philosophy professor that inventedd the expression “birtree” (arvorinho in
portuguese, from “árvore”, tree, and “passarinho”, little bird) to relate what we see
when we look at a bird put in a tree. Our example seems better: “atmansphere”.
This is the moment to stop for asking us if what we call “consciousness” cannot
be, in truth, many one, that is, a series of points - focus - that receive the sensations
proceeding from each sensorial organ? Who knows one day somebody carries
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through a research to discover some electric chain of brain for the senses, to know,
for example, if an image that we remember come from memory to senses, in a
inverse direction. There are, however, arguments that would object our thesis: (1)
Aristotle and Descartes understood that all the sensations are tactile forms and,
because would have something of common among them and, perhaps, an only
consciousness; and, (2) when we associate a name to an object, must have a linking
inside of mind between the memorized image and the noise, as if a bridge was
constructed between two roads!
David Hume was first thinker to justify that “I” (self) is not more than an illusion, a
“series of isolated perceptions” of pain or pleasure, love or hatred, etc. It is not rare to
find certain decisions incredible that we took years ago in our lives, such are our
discontinuity. Hume related the false belief in one “I” to an operation of imagination or
the memory. A repainted old boat, he wrote, will look the same when it was bought,
years ago. It was of Hume, by the way, the thesis of that when we sleep we are
“insensitive” to ourselves. An experience that we live and that was definitive to reject
the existence of a “ego” was when we paid attention that our arms and our legs they
had grown, without we had note thisduring the process!
A good solution for the question why we see us and the world as something
continuous is to think that our consciousness as a lens, to which images and other
sensations converge and, therefore, it is hindered to see, for example, the
discontinuity of stimuli and the itself that is not the same one, once that the cells of
brain also go being substituted with the age. Didn’t the reader already perceive that
we can perceive, as a video camera, distant images with focus, while next objects is
out of focus and, sometimes perceiving next objects with clearness, whereas we lose
the focus in that they are distant? We cannot forget that the memory plays basic role
in the construction of a continuous series of our perceptions and, therefore, it assists
the percipient system (neurons) in the sprouting of idea of that we are one
“permanent I”; if we did not have memory, everything we would be always new, we
would walk - or perhaps we would crawl - in direction the new stimuli, without
constructing nothing, learning nothing.
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In century twentieth, Freud in his work “Five lessons of Psychoanalysis”, before
opting to the thesis that we know – that believes to exist an ego in us -, told that the
minds of his patients seemed “many mental groupings, independent, without one
knows nothing of others”, that is, many “egos” inside of each “ego”! Without speaking,
in another contribution of science: the one that observed that in people whose
cerebral hemispheres have been separated, them they behave as two independent
consciousness!
The platonic question that Descartes tried to decide, of that it did not have an
internal conflict in us between reason and passions, did not get success however,
because it recognized that the will was many times led (brusquely) to make what the
body wanted. How do we solve? Not affirming the existence of many consciousness,
but of many memories of lived experiences that are inside of us compared with
similar memories and these series of rememberances they will influence our future
actions. Let’s imagine that each one of this series has a own intensity, as running of
one hundred meters, where one ofm will leave winner. It occurs that they are not
fighting to hinder that the other is successful; but, the victory of one ofm will provoke
as effect the appearance of a similar behavior the certain last experiences
(emotionally) more intense.
Reading Skinner, Science and human behavior (section II, Chapter X), that
remembered to a very interesting theory of William James and C.G.Lange: we do not
feel the interior cause of our emotions. Why!? Because they simply are perceived by
us when they appear ahead of us! Even because we realize that that Plato called “the
soul talking to itself”, that is, our internal reflections, still thus, appear ready to our
perception. Irving Copi, in his “Introduction to the Logic”, remembered the reply of a
child when he said that it was important to think our arguments before speaking: the
child answered that this is impossible, once that it only knew what thought after to
hear her speaking! Another example: when we laugh of what we speak, this happens
because we are surprised by something new that we did not wait!
A good model of what we are: hurricane. What is it? Nothing beyond the result
of meeting of two forces or two chains of wind - hot, an ascending one, and another
cold, descendant. For where it passes, they go being substituted original molecules
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for others differents ones. Its life, as ours, will be limited in function of its capacity of
resistance. What differs it form us, however, is that in its center it does not have
nothing; inside of us, we believe, exist a consciousness, as an elementary particle of
substance on which colide the continuous flow of sensations! Another model of what
we are: waves of an ocean. This example shows how much he is meaningless to ask
if we are eternal. How Hume and others had thought that only waves existed, without
an ocean? How Kant could believe that individuals exist (singular beings), without at
least proving this, aiming at only to facilitate its work to identify inside of mind the
forms (categories)? Would not he (wisdow of of Könisberg) have used the empirists
beliefs as a mean for an end? Yes!
Finally it is opportune to remember the thesis of Jean-Paul Sartre and Voltaire:
The first thinker wrote in the work “Being and nothingness” (page 198) on the
definition of perpetual life: the “eternity that we look for isn’t the infinite duration, but
the absolute rest of the consciousness with himself”. Already Voltaire wrote that if we
ask for the dead people if they want to come back to live, he will answer negatively.
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foods – for with its burning we are able to move us. So great is the importance of
senses organs that Aristotle in his work “On sleep”, speculated that we sleep to
preserve the sensorial system; of the opposite, its uninterrupted use would destroy
them! Another strong indication of that sensitivity is the first form of animation: the
apparent coincidence between the period where sensitivity becomes functionary in
the embryos and the moment from which the same embryo could survive outside of
uterus: after second trimester. And those people who suffer serious burnings for the
body, would not have its possibilities of increased life, if we kept them - periodically -
with the open eyes or stimulating their sensory organs?
If it was not thus, how to explain the soul? A thing that occupies the same place
than the body, thesis that Aristotle rejected? A soul whose nature is distinct of body,
as water and oil, but that it would interact with it? A nonsense!
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thesis always seemed strange to us, because everything that we learn was resulted
of an arduous study.
And, in addition, why we would have five senses to perceive the world if we
must renounce to them in the name of an introspection? If this was truth, then the
existence of five senses is a false track, work of a deceptive god! This critics can be
used, too, for oriental religions, as Budism. Beyond that, we call in our aid, the
principle developed by William of Ockham (the Ockham’s Razor) – “between two
hypotheses” we must to choose the simplest one, because all things in nature works
thus.
Recently we read the notice of suicide of a young woman of 30 years, who wrote
the following ticket: “If i will come in coma, does not let those machines in me,
because there will only be the body. Because the soul was stolen me”. A nihilist
example, would say Nietzsche, of whom, unsatisfied with this life, believed to exist
one another one. Deceit caused for the false belief in the separation of body and
what they call “soul”. Until when we will accept this?
Frequently we think that the body differs from the mind when we say that the
body wanted to make something that the mind did not want; but this must to the fact
that what we call body to correspond the perceptions that we are accustomed to
follow in opposition to that present perception, that it differs in degree of accuity. And
do the people who say to hear spirits? A good reply is that one given by Aristotle in
his work “On the prophecies”: why God (or other spirits) would communicate with
most ignorant and not with whom they are wiser? Let’s adds yet: (1) spirits would be
pure form, but if the form is nothing more than when our mind lost of focus some
material bodies and just see its external limits?; (2) if the thought, attributed as
capacity of soul, is physiological? ; and, (3) if the life (or soul) to depend on the
constant flow of sensations interiorized in us? What arguments will remain for those
people that believe in souls out of bodies? None.
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who survives to the death with all human memories; (2) the consciousness is not
distinct of body, but an intent portion of body; (3) to be a human being is to have a
certain appearance given for an amount of substance; (4) when he wrote in the work
“To be and moving” that the consciousness “goes on when we breathe the
chloroform” do not make sense, because when we sleep there is a consciousness
that it contemplates, despite only our dreams; (5) it does not have why to identify
conscience with thought, for the same reason that, when we dream, we have
conscience, but we do not think conscientiously!
Nobody better that Bekhterev, as showed Vigotski in “Theory and Method in
Psychology”, was capable to define the thought so well: an inhibited reaction. This
makes sense: we were used to be censured because we spoke so low that only we
listen ourselves. It does not remain doubt that the thought is physiological and that is
a belief that Freud proved, maybe he didn’t have paid attention, when he showed that
most part of human actions is involuntary (unconscious), as well as, we add, most
part of times that we breathe, the breath is involuntary! Still on the thesis of
Bekhterev: it has a inquiet and interesting conclusion that we can reach, which is of
that also the images that we perceive in the brain they are sensations that if they
were strong enough, could exteriorizing untill… to be seen for the other people or to
materialize, what could explain observed events, as objects that catch fire
spontaneously and move alone – called “telecinesis”.
As much Henry Bergson, how much the defenders of dual existence of soul and
body, had been, are and will continue being responsible for spreading the notion of a
consciousness that he does not need a body: they invented, thus, the consciousness
- or soul - “gaseous” in opposition to a solid body. Many films of fiction have worked
with the thesis of this “gaseous” or “energy” consciousness. They give as certain -
without being certain - the transference of consciousness from a body for another one
or, then, on the transference of memory of one mind or brain to another one. Would
they transfer, also, the degrees of detail of perception? Difficult, because these are
different and are modified to each individual experience! They are not rational
arguments; they are insane one, fruits of laziness to think and the deepest and
natural ignorance! And as a gaseous thing, as the wind, could intervene with the
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substance, unless it had the force of an hurricane, but, also, a complete absence of
intelligence. And the consciousness as energy of the eastern religions? This thesis
contradicts itself when it defends that we are one part of something bigger, but we
remain, as part, identical one in successive lives. However, it does not have in the
world energy that remains the same one when it enters in contact with other
energies; not even in the first life we would remain the same. And if everything are
energy, why to distinguish the body from the spirit? And why the body dies and the
spirit would remain? A nonsense!
§40. The consciousness differs from the ego. And do the subjectivity exist?
At the time that we read the “Meditations” , of Descartes, we observe that we
could not have his certainty: to be one “I” that thinks, because we observe that, when
sleeping, they cease our voluntary acts (those acts that we made a mistake to believe
to be effect of an internal cause called “will”, that would not be affected by none
another cause) and has space the involuntary ones. By the way, must be a causal
relation between the sprouting of automatic acts and the sleep, otherwise if not, when
we sleep we would stop to breathe and we would die.
Still on we are or not “a thing that thinks”: John Locke noticed that we would be,
then, two souls, when waked up and when we sleep; but, he does not have thoughts
when we sleep? Or we must call “thoughts”, only those volunteers ones? Already the
poet Fernando Pessoa wrote “i am not thinking nothing”, what show us that we are
not a thing that that always thinks or thought (voluntary) is not uninterrupted, rare
original manifestation in Literature, erroneously said as twin sister of Philosophy,
when it is only one distant cousin or a sister adopted for some. The true sisters of
Philosophy are the plastic arts and music.
But, it is enough that the senses are awaken so that voluntary capacity
reappears! Which was the magic? When the senses are fully opened - in the truth,
they never are totally closed, therefore, we believe, we would die -, the world it
constitutes in the strongest stimuli to our consciousness. When the senses are almost
closed, the strongest stimuli are those that are in our mind and they will lead us to
observe the internal experiences that we call dreams or, exactly awaken, losses of
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“consciousness”. Despite that, in dream, we live experiences with our own image, this
elapses of memory of images that we have of our body, our voice, etc. Once, we
were sleeping, when we were waked up by our own voice calling our name!
Then, what is the ego? There are three alternatives: (a) it corresponds to a point
in the head, where a vital principle exists; (b) it is in the same place that the body,
thesis used to explain, also, the soul; or (c) it is the image or images that we
memorize of own body on which we speak, as well as, of experiences of body with
the remain of bodies of world. Thomas Hobbes said this. When we say “I make this”,
we are in relating to the fact that “this body makes this”. Schopenhauer found odd the
fact of that “I”, as someone that observes was contained in our proposals or was
object of thought. Wittgenstein, in century twentieh, observed that use of proname “I”,
when we say that “I feel migraine”, was redundant, what it confirms, in our
agreement, that “I” is equivalent to the image of body. We cannot disdain that these
images constitute in intense experiences and, still, that “we are” a sufficiently intent
portion of world, what characterize us - effectively - as some thing. Something similar
occurs when we feel that a multitude seems to be one alone body, when we say the
“human being mass” or the “social body”, even so evidently they are not properly no
alive entity.
One proves that the existence of an internal consciousness does not demand
the existence, also, of a “internal ego”, is that children as those wolf child, of India did
behave as wild beasts. When we are conscious that we are conscientious of any
object, happens that we see the image of this more immediate part of body and
spacelly away from the others bodies touching an object any.
After what we said, it makes still sense to believe in subjectivity and, also, the
dualism between subjective and objective? We believe not. Except when our senses
are partially closed, because in this case the internal images flow disorderedly, in
contrast with the continuous images (persistent) that we receive from the world and
which we attribute existence, reality. The mere fact of we have a portion of our bodies
interiorized, does not mean, therefore, that we are subjective. Is a volcano subjective,
because it has communication with the atmosphere and, still, with the layers deepest
of land? Evident not. Why, then they say this about human mind? Who know us
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better: when we perceive us for the side of inside or for the out one? Would not we
have to substitute the analysis of a psico-any-one for auto-analysis, taught people to
understand the method and the used instruments?
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Of everything what we said, we cannot affirm nothing in definitive on the
consciousness, except that (a) it does not think, (b) it is not distinct of matter, (c) it is
not active, but passive or contemplative, because it is not a physiological operation
and (d) it is not physiological, because a physiological operation is, in the most part of
times, involuntary, but, also, volunteer; the breath, for example, we can control, but
we do not control to be or not conscientious: we remember the experiment carried
through for Henry Bergson (work: “The creative evolution”: p.275), when reflecting on
the nothing, he considered to eliminate all the sensations until eliminating its own
consciousness: “I continue here with the organic sensations that arrive me of
periphery… How to eliminate myself?”, therefore, in the instant where a
consciousness extinguishes itself, another one already takes its place!
And a master of ioga (that it means “union between the man and the deity”): he
would reach a state where he did not perceive nothing around him or, as they say “a
pure consciousness”? But, How he would perceive that he does not perceive more
nothing? Impossible, because this already involves some level of perception! Then, is
the meditation useless? Not! We become philosophers or yogis studying philosophy
or meditation. It is the same that to raise weight: we become strongest when
repeating exercises, but, before, it is necessary that we already possess some force!
The contribution of meditation is to train the breath and the cardiac beatings, and,
thus, we control our irritation! And we choose to control the breath, because we do
not like the out of control, to be led for the “emotional river rapids”! The philosophy is
a meditation of open eyes that pronounce sounds, the words, that they relate to the
images of beings, objects and experiences. It seems apparently an opposing way to
the meditation by means of silence, but that it has left of one same hypothesis: of that
everything is part of one same thing. As well as the philosopher, also who practices
meditation places in the fetal position and looks an environment without noises, like
that where, we assume, our ample perception is based and organized in a way where
it perceives diverse elements in harmony, without none prevails on excessively. The
only essential difference is that for us the harmony is in construction and fits to the
individuals realized it ; whereas, for them, the harmony is ready and is guilt of
individuals if they do not perceive it, prisoners its egoistic necessities…
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3) THE PERCEPTION DEGREES.
Once, when we went up the stairs in the university, we saw two professors
obstructing the passage (i think that it is the only thing that they know do!). We try to
cross the barrier for a small space that had there, but do not got it. Then, we only
lean the hand in the coasts of one ofm to ask for passage and, for our surprise and of
that man, he gave a jump and go to stop in the other side of stairs to the side of man
with whom he was talking. This history could pass unobserved, but it shows clearly
how much our actions depend on the detailing degree that the world printed in us: it
sees that they are so was concentrated in the colloquy with his friend and, therefore,
its degree of attention - of detail of his perception - in relation what the other said to
him, that its reaction followed that one exactly way - or degree of perception - and
because that it was fast!
Another common experience is to put the finger in a hot liquid and to take it off
quickly. Here we can observe that the pain feeling is very closed related to the thesis
that we go to display in this chapter, of degrees of detail of our perception, ways
through which we give to passage to the reactions - slow or fast. Traditionally, such
reactions, are said instinctive. But, we believe that they have its origin in a not
correspondence between a present situation and our fetals memories.
We believe that the obesity and the anorexy, also depend on the degrees of
perception that predominate in us, as well as, that the sexual habits as the explosive
growth of population - with families of many children - either caused by people who
have perceptions, or ample, or detailed, resulting impulsive actions and little reflexive
activity, as to foresee the worst future life of its descendants.
The diagnostic given to some children of whom they have “attention deficit
syndrome” or are “hyperactivity”, in our opinion only means that they – adults, too -
have a predominantly ample perception. Because that one gives they, in extreme
cases, drugs: so that its perceptions become acute, intent to the details, what, in
principle would seem nonsense, because that they are known by its natural
stimulation or agitation. They are not sick, but different. But, there is a second kind:
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when the child already has an acute perception and in this case a remedy stimulant
alone would complicate more the situation.
By the way, those drawings of psychological school of “Gestalt” that show, under
a perspective that we adopt, or the image of one lady, or of a vase - among many
other drawings created to show that the mind is not a blank sheet of paper, as they
thought the empirists thinkers -, nothing more evidences that the fact of that the
human perception has a great diversity of degrees. The explanation of our actions
does not differ from that one of empirists, only became more complex, because the
mental functioning is complex.
What we intend to show in this chapter is that what we call perception power it
consists of thousand, perhaps millions, of structures - as nets - inside of our brain,
capable to memorize experiences and, depending on the proximity or the distance
between “us” of this net, what it will be memorized, it will be with more or less details.
Also it is important to say that we could not assume that the perception constitutes
only in an only structure that, sometimes extends, sometimes retracts, because while
we were trying something with which we have ability, the perception would catch
many details, but, when we tried something new, so that, then, our perception left to
catch details of this experience! But, this seems impossible, unless that we believe
that the perception possesss a will independent of our own will! It is interesting to
remember that for Aristotle a virtuous person is the one that possesss a “disposal”,
term that he defined in the book “delta” of “the Metaphysical” as an arrangement of a
thing with its parts, idea that is similar to our present thesis, even so we don’t know it
he related it to something properly physical.
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cause a certain euphoria, however temporary. Freud, in his last work “Compendium
of Psychoanalysis”, said that the end of psychoanalysis will come from the sprouting
of medicines that resolve the neurosis that, in the psychoanalysis sessions, cost
much money and delay much time. We do not agree with it: it is possible to have
remedies that undo the neurological arrangements of our perception, but the
“reordenation” ofse structures cannot be made, except for the own person, in the
interaction with the other people! This everything can be summarized in famous
sentence of Tales and Socrates: know yourself!
It is opportune to observe that the depression is not a state that we must have
aversion, except if the situation is not desired for the person. Because it can be
understood, also, in its linguistic meaning: of point, physically, more deep inside of
us, where our feeling of order (of fetal harmony) finds with an ample degree of
perception, that gives to us a sensation of lack of disturbance or “ataraxia” of old
stoics and epicurists philosophers. Depression could be understood, thus, as a
mental state identical to what the altruistic people is these last ones worry more about
to the other people that themselves, even so the first group that ask constantly on its
utility in the world, does not have disposal enough to act! It is evident that it is more
easy to define as abnormal those that they differ from the multitude or from the
“cattle”; we remember a book of Brazilian writer called Machado de Assis, i believe to
be the “Alienist”, where a scientist opens a hospice to deal with the people who are or
very agitated, or very quiet, that is, the abnormal people. He finishes recognizing that
they did not have any problem and decide to intern those that seem to be normal.
Finally, he recognize that none of those two groups deserves to be in a hospice
and… he decides that the only patient must be himself.
But how to leave the depression or the altruism as we find more correct to call?
Remedies? Perhaps they speed up new linkings among neurons. But and the events
(painful, unhappy) that they had made to reduce the cerebral connections? From our
part, we are making, in the last ten years, an effort to come back to feel the material
world around us: we come back to watch for soccer, to interact with people, until I
was run over, accidentally, perhaps a work of our unconscious! I have made a effort,
not yet enough, for joining - mental - forces to open my school of Philosophy,
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registering me as independent teacher, to register a trend mark, to rent a commercial
room, to buy furniture and to make communication of it. I do not know if it willl get it!
We know that to come back to have a more acute perception it will be difficult, even
so still we believe that the disposal of structures that base our capacity of perception
is cyclical – we were born with an ample one, that become acute, returns to the
ample and, if we have a long life, them it will be started again. But, let us sincere, who
wants a perception that we had in the adolescence, when we worried in buying many
clothes, to go the parties, to be the center of attentions, etc, an egoistic vision of
world?
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perception related to see heights as fear sources or, more necessarily, to that
memory that kept an ackward scene.
One day a neighbor cried out with a my relative and as he already have had
some time a behavior without of politeness, we beat in his face what, surprising me,
because we perceived the scene in slow motion. While we saw that movement of
closed fist we did can to think a complete phrase - “not, in the nose not”, because he
would provoke bleed, even so, we believe that everything has not lasted a fraction of
second! How was it possible? Perhaps, because our perception has become more
acute and we did can perceive the thought words in a normal speedy.
It is opportune to remember something that we listen once, on the explanation of
science for the attention’s lack, that is, for the occasions where we don’t to perceive
certain things, as when the husbands do not see that the wife changed the hair, what
in our opinion discloses love’s lack, for the scientists is seen as normal: they say the
“blindness of attention” does not depend on the will, to what we agree, because there
isn’t this that we call free will. They say more: that they do not know because two
people can have different capacities of attention. Our present work has the reply that
they look for!
Still: when we were in the college a colleague called our attention for the way as
we wrote: the words were written with force, dark and in a geometric way that were
spread by the notebook and not, as the others make, a line after the other. And this
because our perception, we believe, is much ample, we perceives better what
stronger and it is detached, as if we had difficulty to perceive in another way. It seems
contradictory that a person thus rejects coarse pleasures, as food and promiscuity,
but perhaps it is because something internal (my ideas) call more our attention that
those external somethings!
§44. On the solitude, the pardon, the treason and the love.
Sartre wrote in his work “the age of Reason”: “if you are alone is because you
decided because… because you are proud”. Nor always. We can explain the
solitude, as well as, its extremity, the easiness in the sociability, also, from the
detailing degrees that the intense experiences - pleasant or painful - print in our
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minds. A solitary person is that one that is incapable to establish relations, because it
has an amount of questions that represent doubts: questioning on the diverse
choices that it will have to make, what includes the behavior that will have to
represent to be accepted in a group, without counting the frustrations, someone will
prefer the isolation.
And the pardon? In opposition of what we hear, it is more easy to pardon.
Difficult is to remain without pardoning, affirming a belief that we understand to be the
correct one. The pardon is the most easy attitude, once that an ackward event - after
to be extinct - will have place only in the memory and, moreover, is always different to
each space that we cover in our lives. Why is to pardon good for the health? It solves
a species of short circuit in us, something that congests other thoughts.
It was very curious to read in the “Treat on the women”, of Schopenhauer and in
the “Civilization and its discontents” (chapter VI), of Sigmund Freud, the predominant
opinion among philosophers, religious and scientists, that there is an instinct in the
human being who guarantees the reproduction of species. We neither know what sex
is or how sexual organs work until we use them. What there is, yes, a desire to
imitate other people; when one has son, the others also desires the same. Beyond
that, we are vain that the reproduction (with or without sex), means accurately what
term says: “reproduction”, a repeated production, an activity that an individual (and
not a species) carries through to perpetuate itself. It does not seem to be coincidence
that this occurs when we reach the maturity and after to acquire a knowledge of world
and everything around us to leave of being newness! Two thinkers see in our aid: (1)
Aristotle, who said that the parents see theirselves in their children; and, (2)
Nietzsche whom in his last writings, dated of 1885-1889, wrote that the sexual
reproduction is the “true accomplishment of individual”, rejecting that in the name of a
species each one of us would open hand of its own interests! We suggest, yet, a
hypothesis on the origin of the sex: the bacteria as all the livings beings want to
expand its borders and trying to make this, repeated times, it streched itself to point
when occur a rupture, dividing itself in two parts. As everything that is repeated,
becomes automatic, this process passed to be remade without end.
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It awake our attention to the opinions of Schopenhauer and Hegel for whom the
women did not have a disposal for the Philosophy and Sciences. For Schopenhauer
the women were made more to take care of children, because they looked more like
them. Already Hegel, in the work “Philosophy of Right” (§166), wrote that the women
were, for its sexual characteristic, destined to watch over for its families and that this
had to a “rational base”, that is, to the fact of that they of course are not made for
activities that involve a universal perspective as the philosophy and sciences. We
agree in part to them: (1°) because they had not been allowed these activities. The
Brazilian writer Maria Lacerda de Moura - contemporary of poet Olavo Bilac - arrives
to recognize, in the work “the woman is a depraved” (1924) that the women had
become “infantilized”, for a species of natural selection, but that, if stimulated at the
thought of universal ideas, then they would arrive at the same condition of those men
- very little, it is truth - who philosophy; (2°) therefore, we believe, that the women
have more pleasure with the facts of daily life than the men do.
Sigmund Freud supplied us with a good argument to justify this thesis: the
woman and the man have in the mother first “loving object” and, only after the four or
five years, the woman substitutes its “maternal object” for the paternal one. However,
this affects the way decisively how the men and the women see the world, where the
sex, for the masculine sex, is learned simultaneously with the necessities as thristy
and hunger - therefore, the men tend to treat the sex, as they were feeling hunger.
For the women, the sex is related - first - with the necessity to establish social
relations and,so, to accept the old theories, not conceiving new ones.
Returning to the reading of “Treated on the woman”, of Schopenhauer, we read
that he had affirmed that men and women choose a partner with those characteristics
that lack to them, as when a man or a woman of high stature chooses somebody of
low stature. But, this nor always occurs. There are who not looks for nobody, there
are who looks for somebody similar and, still, who looks for - as Schopenhauer
thought - somebody with characteristics that lacks to him or her - when a tall man
looks a woman of lesser stature or vice versa -, to prevent critics from the others
people for him had made a choice that is different that of average of society. The
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difference inhabits in the layers of perception: deeper until most recent – since the
celibacy until one with wich we look different people to love!
What is the difference between passion and love? We think that the thesis of
perception degrees could help in the distinction: passion is when we take the other as
mean of satisfaction of our necessities and love is when we see another person as a
distinct being, as a siginification in itself. While somebody gotten passionate
perceives the other as the mere addition of its parts or a part specifically, who loves
perceives the totality of other.
The choice of certain person seems to be more difficult for the men: in general,
we tend to choose the first person who appears ahead of our eyes. But, we must be
intent for the fact of that for a marriage we must search somebody to love not only for
the sexual desire, the passion. We think that the sensations are different: when we
love, we feel a cold and sometimes a cold sweat in the body and when it is only
sexual desire, we behavior as we were in fornt of a food dish! In a similar way that it
is suggested the people not to go with empty stomach to the supermarket, we don’t
must to go to know a woman being with much sexual desire. If the reader to allow a
joke of bad taste: why men value the women who speak little? Why food does not
speak!
In return our inquiry, we believe that when an man live intense emotional
experiences with older women in childhood, he will prefer women of same age and
experience that him. But, if he lived experiences with young women, will not hesitate
in thinking or same trair his wife, when these already will not have a body as that one
that she had in the first years of relationship! Because we see this frantic race in
search of potion of youth, that strains the wrinkled skin and returns – an illusion – to
the years of youth. Men who had had experience with older women than them, he
recognize the beauty of experience and accept the marks in the skin that years
provoke as signals of that the person lived much e well! Of course that we are not
talking about to the people who are not worried about its health and that they do not
pass of lazy!
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Certain time a psychologist said that the affection was a delayed concept; seem
us the opposite: it is an expression that aims to reproduce the fetal condition when
we were protected and immersed in the amniotic liquid.
What do sex appeared first? How is in the bible, the woman descending from
the man or as it sees science, the man from the woman? We believe that the sex
appeared thus in the first forms of life: a being tried to insert its material in another
one and after insistences the second had to accept a part of this material and reject
another one. Because the sexs must not have appeared for mutual agreement. The
reply approaches with the one of Church, but it happen because the natural egoism
and not for a presumption love act.
And which sex will remain? We hear that chromosome “y” is diminishing and is
speculated on its disappearance, what they conclude that only they will remain the
women. Seem us the one big mistake, because a moment would arrive where it
would have beings with one alone “x”: they would be unable to make sex or, as we
believe, in contrast, asexual, multiplying alone by means of making copies of itself? If
this will be truth, without attracting itself by the body of another one, still it would feel
friendship or love for the ideas and the mind of others? Yes.
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ways in these structures of perception, more sensations will pass for it and more
easily they will be perceived by our conscience. They will flow so intensely as a river
that - without finding any resistance -, it finds easily some ways for where to pass.
Most important is that our own actions are not, as most believe, the expression of
restrained desires. It does not have as to satisfy a desire that cannot be satisfied,
does not have force enough to be satisfied, but, so only the next desires that are
similar to that one. Conclusion: the past does not return!
About title of this §45: we believe that the correct one would be to say not
“unconscious” desires, but conscientious desires “diminished” or a lesser degree of
conscience, because when, for example, an experienced driver changes the marches
of its car, makes this unconsciously, without conscience? He is obvious that not!
And the dreams? We agree to the thesis of Hobbes, in his Leviatan (chapter II)
dated of century XVI, that the dreams are caused by internal and external
disturbances of body. When we sleep and feel some heat it will appear pleasant
dreams; already, when we feel very cold, nightmares. Sometimes, different of what
Hobbes thought, we live deeply nightmares, exactly when we sleep with many
blankets. It does not have a simple cause for each kind of dream. But, in any way,
without a external cause, it does not have dreams - nor good, nor bad. It is clearly
that these causes will affect the internal perceptions - or what Freud called
“restrained desires” - and this must to the fact that once the external stimulati leave of
being strongest – because the five senses are almost closed - then, the internal ones
are the strongest candidates to reveal and to affect the consciousness. To say,
therefore, that the moral rules - of external world - castrates all of us, hindering the
manifestation them restrained desires is a great mistake, because the causes are
physical, even so we do not reject that there is an negative experience - or
“restrained”, in the freudian term. Here Freud distinguishs of Darwin: it is a natural law
of strongest stimuli on the others. We believe that most part of what Freud called
“repressive moral” is, in true, a impression (a opinion, a momentaneous censorship)
that someone with strong personality causes on the others!
There is something that intrigued us: how the dreams have an order, as were a
complete history or a real experience? And why we do not perceive the construction
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of this imaginary history? We only can explain thus: our capacity to think has aversion
to the fragmented images more fast than consciousness can perceive, so, it overlap
an image to others, one focused on the others witout focus, as the diverse films of a
film, what Hume called similarity and contiguity, to explain as the ideas are connected
in the mind. Thus, the dreams show with more clarity what it happens when we think
(waked up): a series of images goes succeeding others, as when, for example, ahead
of a sequence “1,2,3 and 5”, the memory appeals to the previous rememberance,
suggesting the addition of number 4.
Another way to see this question: the images and the memories that chaotically
go appearing inside of our mind organize as parts of a school of samba of Brazilian
carnival one behind the other. What it determines this order? The fact of that the
sensations of exterior world have more force on internal perceptions and, therefore,
not only prevents that they are disclosed, but, also, it selects them and in it becomes
us conscientious of some ofm.
And how our perception constructs images as of winged horse, for example, if
many thinkers believe that it is the consciousness just is able to unifies the
sensations? Unless the consciousness also separates images, as of wing, and it glue
it with the one of horse! Thus, the conscience does not unify nothing, it only
contemplates the real world and the mental world around us!
Still: it is necessary that we say that the dreams are involuntary thoughts that
develop when we sleep, but, also, when we are waked up we continues having
involuntary thoughts and we aren’t conscious ofm, except when they appear us for
intuition, that is, immediately, or when a present thought sends to the rememberance
of an old one. It occurs, thus, in the mind somewhat similar with what it happens with
the light of sun dims and hinders us to see the light of stars; but, they are there and
they come in our we direction even so they are not sufficient strong tobe perceived by
us!
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similar among themselves would help us to become more acute our perception, as if
we played finer nets each time, on the limits of that it is, for us, observed. By the way,
it is opportune to clarify that the thesis that the cause and effect are subjective ideas
and that it results of repeated observation of facts, is originally of Paschal; in his
“Thoughts” (nº 91) he wrote: “it is part of nature human to believe that, after repeated
experiences in which one exactly effect is observed, must have a necessity - as when
we imagine that “tomorrow it will be day”. This belief in the existence of necessities,
can be denied by facts - “not rare” - naturally contrary them”.
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apartment and for decades the floor was substituted recurrently without definitive
solution.
Other time when i saw the image of my daughter’s dog in the mirror it seemed
me longer than I found that it was, because when we see images in a distant mirror
our mind was not prepared to perceive something familiar. This test, also, that the
mind intervenes with what is seen, beyond that we can think without error that what
the mind receives is a handful of points of exterior world, but has something there
and from this something true we apprehend some thing, a layer, a degree. This
experience seem us very similar to the Kantian thesis of hands in the mirror.
There is something more to say: that the truth seems to be a average between
the opinions, taking care of distinguishing when it depends on a simple opinion,
feeling, or a specialized judgment or a average of both. We would have to add to the
definition of Aristotle for whom the truth is “to say what is of what is and to say what
isn’t of what isn’t”… if all people not to agree, even so exist here a risk of slowness in
the decisions and to have that to conciliate an opinion of an intelligent person and of
a donkey one!
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contradiction if we believed that from something too much small, something could
appear gigantic.
In the Renaissance, the most famous example of preconception against the
sensations, can be found in the Galileo’s Inquisition Tribunal when the judges denied
to see in the scientist telescope because they don’t believe in senses, but just in
reason. Galileu, himself, attributed to the senses the error when we believe that an
object, played of high one of a tower, would fall in straight line on the surface of
Earth, when, the correct one is to believe that the fall folloies the movement of planet.
But, here, it is not correct to put sensorial system against the reason, but, yes, in a
degree of perception of world against another one!
We do not agree to Thomas Kuhn and Michael Foucault, who believe that the
progress is not continuous. Both the thinkers have predominantly individualistic and
relativists perceptions and, therefore, believes that the life is made of singular
experiences - typical position of “after-modernists”. Foucault, seen as a God for
some, wrote that the schools are as prisons, but do ask for children what they think
about? In the school time I did not feel as a prisoner, i only feared some more violent
colleagues.
They had taken the term “progress” as a series of rightnesss, that go adding
some to the others. Will not be, also, a progress when we undoes a wall badly done?
Does not use the scientists the common language of mathematics or do they creates
others to each “revolution”? What is there in common between the of Ptolomeu and
of Copernicus systems? They are both perceptions of world, some clearest, other
little, one more detailed, other little. We are “clarified despots”: we accept the theories
until the moment that we verify its imperfections and, not supporting them more, we
look for to develop new theories that complete the gaps.
By the way, let us see a good example of “after modernism”: my brother was
used to take washed place setting off the washing machine and he put then inside of
drawer, caoticamente, in one more faithful expression “after modernist”; tired to order
each place setting with its equal and, more, for not having the habit and the feeling of
order related to the tasks of kitchen, resigned to an organization for seeming to him,
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perhaps, useless or unnecessary. For one after modernist, the world is a great
drawer! Is it useful and beautiful to think like them? Obvious, not.
In return to the central question: there is something that can occur, with more
frequency that we could accept: that the cause of sprouting of a new chain of thought
is the observation of inefficacy and arrogance of people who form the current chain of
thought. This would justify, for example, why new theories are born without at least
answering to all the questions the one purpose to answer! It is evident that the
leaders of new theories are people who do not leave themselves to lead - as the
great mass - for the feeling of a group, or as Nietzsche said, of cattle. Therefore,
even so the majority is “son of its time”, in the expression of Hegel, has important
exceptions that are parents of following time.
Finally, there is a progress of thought, if we understand it as a sum of new
perspectives and knowledges derived from the former, what includes a moral
progress: fifity years ago to here we have laws for animal protection, something
unbelievable centuries ago!
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identify new imperfections! What it happened with our idea of circle? Let us not be
pessimistic, saying that it is useless, therefore, as well as the the idea of “utopy”
defined by the writer Eduardo Galeano, the idea of circle, put us in movement, made
us to develop technologies and, these, had facilitated to the life of all the people. It is
evident that there isn’t how to communicate the idea of a circle, except from a mind
for another one, but not for the voice or graphical symbols!
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Let’s observe day-by-day how many the expressions, as slangs, for example,
appear and are incorporated the official language! But, it is necessary to notice that
what has of generality (universal) is the perception degree and it is only this that we
could say as common in all of us, but not because it is of use of all, but because all
can potentially use.
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From what we said until here, we are certain that the reason is passive - similar
thesis of David Hume -, understood as a certain perception that produces a mental
pleasure or extinguish a mental pain. First: in history of thought the thinkers always
denied that reason was similar to passions, however, how could reason to be active,
if passions are active? Second: we will see later (in chapter 4, “Why we are not free”)
that there isn’t something like “free will”, another signification related to “reason”;
third: it is necessary for all human actions a desire - emotional condition - caused for
an external stimuli that conduces to a perception degree, to memory and to similar
reaction similar or not to anterior experience and for that, we need the acquisition of
contents (knowledge) specific of each human activity.
Does reason change with time? It is not because the fact that the world changes
so drastically that we change too. What it occurs is that our perception changes: our
perception restrict itself to our community and only when this linking is questioned,
we pass in worrying us about the remain of world. Generations had accepted the
existence of slaves as inevitable part of a culture but, so only, until the moment
where, tired to obey a culture, we demand the end of slavery.
We do not still speak on what historically - and equivocally - it was called
faculties of mind, as reason, imagination, understanding and judgment. A
classification like that not survive to the “paradox of third man”, because what it would
establish the connection between the power of knowledge (Kantian thesis) -
composed for the judgment, the reason and the agreement - with the feelings of
pleasure and displeasure or, then, with the power of desire - or will or, still, ofse last
ones each other? Just if there is something in common between these faculties, but,
if to exist, then we do not need to understand them as distinct in reality, only for pure
convention.
Well, don’t let us so intransigents: what we nominate as “perception degree” is
similar with the “kantian understanding”, because it is in it from the sensations stimuli
that appears of perception of forms. Categories as well as the kantians judgments do
not pass of points of a continuous line of possibilities under which the perception
degrees can be structured. The judgment as power that would express our freedom,
is a deceit, because it is the predominance of one category (or degrees of our
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perception) on others, that they will determine (for natural laws) if we will see an
object as singular (Socrates), or a part of a set with other elements (Greek people),
or, still, a term that defines a more ample group (man). And what kantian reason it
means? There are two answers: (1) reason as moral action, when we are of
ownership of sense of order folloied of an ample perception beyond our immediate
needs; or, (2) when there is a correspondence between the degree of details of our
perception and the real degree of something on which we affirm or deny something.
We read in Kuhn that scientific discoveries are accidental. In part, yes, because
we can literally, to stumble in a discovery, as of penicillin when they had left a sample
of bacteria displayed to air. But, if we are not of ownership of a percipient structure
that perceives a specific degree of detail of an object that is in the world, we will not,
discover nothing!
It is opportune to discourse on the utility of method considered for René
Descartes: we believe that to divide an object to get a truth, it is a way (method) to
make a mistake. When we formulate the thesis of that “duration” is pain in the
memory, we do not divide initially the time to arrive at a reply. Nor when we formulate
the thesis that the mind possesss a series of degrees (arrangements) of perception
and that they are not equally available (in act) in all of us, we do not divide the mind
in its parts. What it predominated was the use of “analogies”: when we compare the
memory with the stomach and the mind with a set of nets. Maybe the analogy can be
used in the research with virus and bacteria that cause illnesses: we would not get
conquests if we stopped to try to destroy them similar to what armies make with its
enemies and we start to think about our strategies? Maybe we did not use mcuh
chemistry, but a little of physics? Or thinking “militarily”, we would not have more
advantages if we changed the “battlefield”, taking off microorganisms for out of body
with similar machines to that they make hemodialisis and, so, we bombed them?
The division in parts is a task that precedes to an inquiry, for we reach that
totality that interests us to search. When René Descartes defended that we would
have to identify parts that we knew, implicitly defended the accomplishment of
analogies, because to look for, in each new study, the “parts that we know”, they
really are not known, but, are necessarily identical to those that we know in last
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experiences! We go far: we believe that the inductive method brings in itself the
process to form analogies: when it is said that some people have a common
characteristic and, from this comparison, we arrive at a law, as of Aristotle who said
that “all the men are mortal”.
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passage - of observation of singular facts for universal statements and how a
knowledge is possible is seated on absolute true, rests in understanding this
question: such transition gives itself for overlapping of, at least, two perceptions: one
particular and itself, but wito no focus. When we see the trapezist and we recognize
in it a human form and, after that, we recognize it in other people, then, we arrive at a
valid law for them and, too, for all the other people.
Is there a human species? Aristotle defined “man” as animal rational. Do still
make sense to keep this belief? Not. All the animals are rational, being enough, for
this, to possess memory. Obviously that the humanity notion goes beyond the
ownership of a reason, even therefore, great part of people, is emotional. It inhabits,
before, in the belief that we share one same form. We believe that was the
philosopher Boecio who clarified this myth: if we shared of one same human form, ,
then or it would be distributed - incomplete - in each one of us, or would be entire, but
only in an individual.
Are we human because all of us have a genome with same number of
chromosomes? This makes similar creatures. And if to have the same number of
chromosomes makes us part of a species, then the white rat, the rhesus monkey and
the plant oats are of one same species, because they have 42 chromosomes in its
cells! Unless we had been generated for an only individual.
What is, then, the human form? It is the limit of substance that our mind
perceives, even so this limit could be different - molecular, atomic, etc.
Copleston, in the work “History of philosophy” (vol.III, p.43-4), tells that one
conciliate of catholic church in Vienne, occurred between 1311 and 1312, established
that “the intelective or rational soul of man is “truily and essentially the form of body”.
But, how is the soul existence if what we call “form” does not exist, except as an
erroneous limit perceived for our mind? The theology would not have to try to
philosophy!
We do not invent nothing, we only observe something of common that seem
exist in the people, that is, the likeness that seem exists among the limits ofir bodies.
This is the essence of “inductive method”, erroneously rejected of David Hume and
for Karl Popper. It is clear that we must be intent to know until point we will be able to
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say something of a person, but not of all. There is, evident, a limit to be identified.
The example of white swans of Karl Popper shows us that is not enough the swans to
have similar form, even therefore, it, alone does not give to any certainty about if is
possible or not another color than the white. It is necessary, then, to observe what
factor cause the change in the coloration of feathers, as, for example, the climate, the
feeding, the oxygenation, stress or the genetics. We will delimit, thus, the detail
degree that the problem requires of our attention. It will not have more reason to
leave to elaborate theories that are capable of forecasts with validity of one hundred
percent, abandoning probabilities!
One another way to decide the question of how we pass from the particular facts
for general laws (universal ideas), is if we reject the belief that there is an “ego” (§40)
inside us, then the habit to believe that from similar events must follow similar
consequences, would be a subjective idea, but it discloses something true about
world. But, it would be enough to say that the our understanding (or power of
perception, where the passage is carried through) is an anomaly - distinct of nature -,
so that our certainty collapse. But, who would believe in it?
§53. On the Genetics. Difference between form and limit. Plato and
Kandinsky.
We would like to make some observations and comparisons between our thesis
of degrees of perception and the area of genetics: (1) We are not saying that the
perception degrees are inherited, we are born with ample perception and, it, from
experiences that to live deeply, she will be modified for degrees more detailed e, will
be remained in them or she will return to a ampler degree; (2) many people believe
that the form is inside (potentially) our DNA. We believe not. The gene determine
which proteins will be produced, limiting the type ofm and its amount; thus, the
muscles and the bones are as ducts of plumbings that will limit the amount of
substance that will pass for them. Let us think about a plumbing that has taken water
for the top of a building and let’s ask what will be the form of water that will gush out
there from above? The form will depend on the look of an external person. It is
evident that there is a limit that the water occupies, but “limit” is different of form
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perceived for a person. and each time that the water to gush out will be able to have
different limits, even so it can seem us the same.
It is very curious someone can think that the genes can determine the human
behavior and that we are not more than its container, not very different of the
theologians who think that the body is the receptacle of the soul. Why do not to say
that the genes are the container of atoms and why not to call them “egoistic atoms”?
But, as, we believe, always will be possible to find a lesser particle from another, then
there isn’t a elementary particle and just exist a universe as one one thing.
A great discovery that we made: a thesis of Kandinsky, pioneer of abstract arts:
he said who “the form changes throughout the time, but not its content”, supplying the
arts a clear example of that Plato made a big mistake. We can add: the form is also
the content (§17). How many people died, because some tyrants don’t have any
consideration to individuals and only they support the species (or form). And how
many books had not been published because they had been judged by its form and
not for the content, as it happened when I tried to divulge my ideas after formed in the
course of licentiate in Philosophy (to teach primary and secondary education): my
books were done in an artisan way were envoied for more than twenty brazilian
universities wasn’t put in most of its libraries. Plato opened in the human a crater
separating the form and content, that is, an open and deep wound that goes to take
centuries to heal!
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paragraph 71, we will remember how we become vegetarian, experience that
illustrates well what we said here.
It can occur that somebody that is born with ample perception, keeps it and it
does not modify for other perceptions. And, still, that somebody that imitates or only
follows what others order to him to do, without use of ample perception, also, is
attributed a “force of will”. It is the case those people that awake up early, work hard
during all day and when come back home is yet motivated and full of hope. In these
latter case, the arragments of perception are very similar producing a very intensive
answer; a water flows better for those plumbing that have similar diameter, not in
which the measure changes.
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4) WHY WE ARE NOT FREE
The belief of inside us have a free will is one of biggest myths already created:
or we follow the inclinations related to the necessities of body, or of social needs, or,
still, we aim at to cease the mental pain that, in the chapter on the time, we identify to
exist inside of our memory. Many philosophers had incurred into the illusion of that
our “free will” would have in itself the freedom and the power “to choose or not”
something that presented to it. Thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, passing for Espinosa,
Descartes, Kant, Hegel until the contemporaries, as Sartre and Ponty. In Kant this
belief reaches its apex: the free will could decide between following the moral laws
discoveries for the reason or, then, to choose among others inclinations (all the
corporal passions), these last ones submitted to the natural laws. Why the will -
assuming it as free - still thus would follow the wrong way?
In this chapter we consider to convince the reader that freedom of choices does
not really exist, but, most important, is that we must be tolerant with the other people,
because nobody chooses to be what it is.
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that we can compare our mind with the mechanism that exists in the airplanes: or we
are conscientious and we act voluntarily (to decide among the possible alternatives)
when is necessary to decide on new things and situations, or we follow the
memorized last experiences, as a “automatic pilot”. When, for example, we are hurry
and, in these moments we accustom repeated times to lunch cereals, then, if
tomorrow we will be hurry and to desire to lunch, we won’t stop to think that foods to
choose: it will be cereals… of preference without white sugar! A teacher who says
(repeated times) to a pupil who he is ignorant and that he will never learn nothing is
“programming” or writing in his mind a strong message enough to be remembered
and to predominate as his future choice: all the time that he needs to study, he will
say exactly for himself that he is an ignorant and that he will not learn nothing! The
mistake of Freud and, before, of Nietzsche consisted to believe that the involuntaries
acts would be the instincts revealing itself…
Reading Piaget, we know in a generic way the thesis of mathematic Gödel (or
maybe an interpretation of it) on the impossibility of a machine to foresee any future
fact for its own action, because it could not be capable to know the laws of its own
determinism. We do not agree to this belief, if it is extended to the mind human,
because in us inhabits an ample perception that originates the curiosity for knowing
everything around us and inside us and, thus, we become object of our inquiries.
Would somebody say that is impracticable to know the functioning of breath, because
we breathes?
Certain time, Hegel wrote that the Philosophy is as the owl “minerva” that handle
flight only at night, that is, after the occurrence of facts that it investigates. For us it
seems a sad end of philosophy, because it becomes incapable to anticipate any fact.
However, we can accept what it has of central in this thesis: we are certain that it is
possible to study to ourselves only after the occurrence of our thoughts, because a
contrary decision to that we would go to take, it will seem resultant of a clear
interference. Already if we analyze other people, the distance will allow a impartiality
and, there, the hegelian thesis it becomes useless, because we will be able to know
the choices before them arised!
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Interesting the passage of thought: since the vision that it is an divine element
put inside us untill that it does not pass of a physiological process.
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more worse, feel us alone, this feeling of pain breached those layers of perception
that was capable to perceive with great acuity the face of a brunette woman, but that
if wasn’t present with the same acuity for women with other characteristics. Once
breached that layer, the sensations were directed, now, to the layers next to the order
feeling (fetal perception). Blond women would seem more beautiful, with its color of
hair and skin that are under a more harmonic composition, under the point of view of
one kind of perception, in which the less differentiated or less contrasts somebody
possess, more easily will disclose in us the feeling of beauty.
Fromf what we said before is not followed that we choose a person for her are
brunette or blond obviously. But, certain physical and mental qualities of other person
will be able to affect more or to affect less our choices - since the color and the cut of
hair, the form of walking, ability in expressing, etc -, as we already said, our previous
experiences and the emotional intensity that they arise in us. If do love has reasons
that the reason unknows? Ridicule! However it is not enough to make the right
choice, if for the other person we are not the certain choice for her and this makes us
believe that the success in the marriage seems like a lottery.
How to explain the celibacy? It can result of diverse reasons: (a) few affective
experiences, involving little emotion; (b) indecision on choices especially when
someone is a lover of detail; (c) had a severe education, that disdain the sexuality;
etc. Who possesss an ample degree of perception has an additional problem: he not
only keep a distance of conviviality with the others and he does not understand how
is built a relationship among the people, but, still, he becomes lover of detail in
relation all the involved aspects in a relation, that is, he tends to want answers for all
the doubts that to appear to him and do not take no decision while such answers will
not be gotten. The cause of alteration of common perception for one - predominantly
- ample, does not constitute in illness, but it must, in general, the ackward
experiences that we live with the others or, then, the very solitary life. People can
remain bachelors, for example, because to find a partner requires to establish social
bonds; the marriage has, also, an important social function. Another question on the
celibacy: how to know that something is good or not, as the sexual life, if they do not
neve tried it?
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And the taboos, as the consanguineous marriages? Our ample perception and
that one directed toward the life in society (as looking for employment, to study, to
buy foods, etc, stablishing relations with strange people in contrast that time in which
all these are made inside the family or in small community) constitutes, together, in
an enough force to keep away eventual desires related to our more immediate
necessities. In past made sense to write one commandment to forbid the incest;
today is not, except in isolated groups very poor and without education, condition
where perception can’t be extended.
And the homosexuality? Also it can have origin in diverse reasons:
disillusionment with the opposing sex, decline of physical vigor required in the sex,
more intense experiences with the same sex or awkward one with the opposing sex,
etc. In all the cases, we must be concious that the “structures” - arrangements, nets
or degrees of details - of perception that predominate in these choices are always
those that involve the most intense emotions, of pain or of pleasure. We remember of
a personal experience: when adolescent our voice thickened and we was criticized
for that; the consequence of this was that in the rest of our life we kept the weak
voice of that time and frequently when we use the telephone the people with who we
speak think that they are speaking with one lady. This is extremely ambarassing,
however, it was insufficient for becoming us homosexual, but let us imagine if a
person was called attention on its behavior permanently, what it would occur? We
believe that this could lead - or, at least, to influence strong - to somebody to become
homosexual.
Something else that can be in the origin of homossexualidade: it can be that a
man decides to be in the feminine role (and vice versa) because has little self-
esteem, he feel inferior to the other men and think to be difficult to imitate the
masculine behavior, preferring to imitate the feminine one. Someone can will ask,
with reason: why must imitating? Because the majority of people follows the dictated
behavior as the correct, defined for somebody able to influence the others, what
includes reasons as the reproduction capacity, to generate descendants and to
guarantee the familiar inheritance, only possible among opposing sexs, and the
memories of sex, in the case of man, to be next to the first experiences with the
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opposing sex. The thesis of auto-esteem would also explain the behavior of men who
believe to keep its masculinidade despite they become related sexually with other
men: they believe that this does not modify its masculinidade, however, in the vision
of others, he is also homosexual.
And on the guilt? Sigmund Freud was correct when he observed that the
Christian culture put in each person a feeling of guilt for all the decisions that we take,
because we think that we could to be of ownership of a free will, but this is
impossible: we never see simultaneously the alternatives ahead of us, because if are
together the alternatives would seem mixed, a chaos of images; they appear to be
together, but they occur one after other and we choose the last one that appear!
Thus, we must rethink the “guilt” as an illusion and to live understanding that we
always have only one alternative!
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underground handles, that they make the trams of San Francisco to function”. Making
the had alterations it is thus: “the mind if would resemble the electric handles,
underground, that make the mind to receive and, also, to answer to the stimuli of
world”.
The second thesis in in the work “on the memory”: in it, Aristotle suggests that to
remember, for example, an image or one color of a house that we had observed
before, we must look for in our memory, first, of involved circumstances in that
experience and all that had preceded it untill forgotten experience. This “mnemonic”
resource, that is, to appeal to the next memories that we want to remember is
important, not only because the memories are in a succession order, but because the
degree of detail of our perception of house, does not have to be so different of other
events that had occurred before. Again, the degrees of detail of perception function
as tracks, a time that lead immediately of an experience to the other. This thesis is
equivalent to the one of contiguity of David Hume.
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only points that more detach itself in a continuous line of possibilities. Already Hegel,
believed that these conditions represented a progress of conscience, when they are,
in truth, just of an alteration –progress or retrocession - of power of perception
(understanding, kantian term).
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etc. There, disappointed - we assume that the disillusionment involves pain - she
probably, then, will acquire other perceptions beyond that she already possesss -
ample and particular -, that they are related to the general terms, as species, genus,
groups, etc.
From the reading of Howard Gardner, “Structures of mind”, we raise some
questions:
(a) he looks to offer a classification of intelligences and rejects the classification
of philosopher Paul Hirst (Knowledge and curriculum, 1974), because is a priori work,
without research. But, we do not believe “the a priori” term. All theory consists, in
reality, the practical one that somebody lived and communicated to the others. It is
evident that there is a risk of a philosopher to isolate itself and to think without going
to the world. But, when observing the world, also makes research. The scientists are
proud to make research, but they do not perceive that, as Bergson said, their
hipothesis are given to them from philosophers, even because those that are evident
error!
(b) Gardner criticizes Piaget, because he would have studied only one kind of
intelligence, the logical-mathematics. We disagree with Gardner, because we can
observe development levels from sensorimotor (coordination of senses) until the
abstract level, common in different “intelligences” that he had identified: musical,
linguistical, spacial, corporal, intra and interpersonal. Although we do not know to
play any musical instrument, we can emitting judgment if a music is harmonious,
beautiful. Thus, in the bedding of “intelligences”, it would be a previous intelligence.
By the way, is paradoxical that somebody writes a book on “multiple intelligences”: or
he has all intelligences, what it seems impossible, or he has some another distinct
type of one. Finally, it is necessary that we recognize his merit in disclosing the
discrimination that we make to the people who do not have a raised logical capacity,
restricting “intelligence”, equivocally, to a restricted group of individuals.
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5) MORAL, ETHICS AND HAPPINESS
We must to detach the maken a mistake way that the racionalists thinkers had
taken deluded that the reason could give moral laws to itself. Who more arrived close
to an adequate reply was Hume with his “thesis of the sympathy” for the members of
our species – and, too, for others ones -, but he limited itself to this level of detail and
he don’t go, as our present thesis, intends to go, to the root, to the cause of the moral
feeling. Therefore, if we could synthecize our vision on the philosophy of the Moral,
we would say in a phrase: the history of the moral did not understand the moral of
history!
§61. The moral and ethical feelings. And the customs, the religion and
Jesus.
For backwards of all our actions, always we find the order feeling (fetal
completeness feeling). However, even so it is enough to be a guide of our feelings
and actions, it always is folloied of some degree of perception. Our feeling of order,
when applied to the interpersonal relations it can be called moral or ethical feeling. It
will be moral when our perception to take the entire humanity - or, perhaps, beyond
our respective species - as object of our attention and cares. It will be ethical when
our perception will be restricted to our family or, in the maximum, to our country.
Hobbes looked for to refute any internal moral feeling saying that we made a
joke those people that have physical problems. This can be explained easily: we
have the feeling of that the humanity is a beautiful picture. But, when our immediate
necessities are more intense, we lose of focus the complete picture. Therefore, the
man “is not the wolf of the man”, a always egoistic being. By the way, the previous
expression was used also for Freud, but it is of the roman writer Plauto and was
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taken the context off: he said that nobody loans money to a stranger, unless that we
know him, otherwise, in the opposite, the man will seem a wolf for another man. Who
strap expressions of the original context does not demonstrate to have a narrow
perception of the world?
Already Aristotle and Hegel had preferred to establish their theses on the
moving land of the customs in the measure that we are members of a family and a
society we must from practical experiences to observe which the rules are correct
and which are not. In Aristotle there is a one more component: he believes that the
virtue, the right or good action, is found in a calculation that we make, in a middle
term (possible, according to him, to the majority of the people) between the
insufficient actions and those that are extreme, as when we observe in the others or
in ourselves, the cowardice when running away from something who never would put
us at risk or the madness of wanting to fight against a multitude of enemies. The
aristotelian thesis of the virtue as a middle term has certain similarity with the our
thesis of functioning of the mind, because it places between the experiences that
make to appear short pain (duração curta) and long pain (duração longa) in the
memory.
Why do we consider to follow the customs a moving land? This must to the fact
that customs change and nor always those few people who establish the rules and
impose them on majority of people are worried about the common good, that is, have
an ample perception that it exceeds its more immediate interests. The customs are
conventions of a people, aiming at:
(1) to resist the influence of another culture - that it gradually goes suffocating
the local customs, as the excesses of the North American culture, that awakes
pleasure, but, also, mental pain, because although, frequently, to represent cultural-
scientific progress, its predominance is extreme, hard to be supported - and;
(2) to exert influence, many times unconscious one, as a drunk who wants to
share its joy - on the other cultures. Therefore, much early we left to commemorate
the dates imposed for the customs. In general, nobody knows the reason of such
dates and if they know do not practise it. In the Christmas, we eat until not supporting
more while next to our houses people pass hunger. Few people know that, to the end
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of one year and in the start of another one, the Earth gave a complete return of the
sun or, in the truth, its movement are of spiral kind and, therefore, it does not return to
the starting point, because it advances in the space ahead!
We can’t agree to the thesis of that is acceptable the existence of shocks
among cultures as part of the life of the universe. It is to take much far the belief that
we must follow the nature and its laws, once we emancipate of it when we left nature
and built cities. The most beautiful vision of a harmonious life would inhabit in that
one where each family practised - as part of its custom - a little of each people, in a
way that if could not more distinguish the origin. Let us think about a family whom it
has in house a place for meditation, that is connected to the remaining of the world
instantaneously through Internet, that cultivates medicinal plants, but that, also, it
knows last scientific discoveries. A family who has in itself the past, the present and
the future, in a balanced way. The adjusted life is this, without excesses or lacks.
Hegel, in his “pedagogical speeches” defended that the school has an ethical
task. It seems to mean that the school transmits the customs; however, more ahead,
he discourses on the education of the different philosophical theses on the moral and
is necessarily, for him, the task of the school: to show the plurality of moral theories.
But, what would happen if the school did not exist? Nothing. The children would be
educated at home in the contact with its neighbors, family, etc, and once having
reached certain age, would look to instruction in similar professions of its parents or
neighbors. The school, as seems us evident, cannot be to transmit customs, because
these can be transmitted - naturally - in the daily life and not inside of artificiality of
building. To the school thre is a higher task, the universal concepts, a panoramic
vision of the world, that clearly, exceeds the customs.
The problem that persists in the history of the education of humanity consists
in:
1- to teach that abstracts knowledges come from empirical observations – how
would be useful to us to have understood very early about people’s personalities and
the professions most adjusted to each personality, includind for ourselves!;
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2- to form teachers who are not mere parrots, but they have proper ideas and
stimulate its pupils, also, to have them, exactly that they criticize the dominant
theories.
And the religion? Also it is a custom that instead of only come back toward the
human relations, it is directed to a deity. A priest who believes to be the only person
that is capable to enter in contact with a God, creates a series of convention (one
small ethics according to Hobbes), so that such communication (in the mass, the
baptism, the confession) are made with effectiveness. Is it true? When we confess for
the first time and we ingest a “hostia” we did not feel nothing!
By the way, nor Jesus Christ could be had as perfect example of morality: he ate
fish and vegetables and, therefore, killed livings creature and, moreover, when he
said (in the form of an imperative sentence) to whom wanted to lapidate Mary
Magdalene (as is in the official bible, differently as is in the apocryphus gospels,
where Magdalene is had as the main follower of Christ) that who did not have sins,
then played the first rock, show us, with this, that Jesus had sins, too, because if he
did not, he would have to follow his own rule. Under the form of a silogism is thus:
Premise 1 - who will not have sin, that (then) plays the first rock;
Premise 2 - Jesus does not have sin; and,
Conclusion - Jesus must play the first rock!
Another fact: there is one text in Mattheus (12: 47-50) and John (19: 25) where
Jesus rejects that Mary is his mother when they say to him that Mary wants to speak
with him and he answers that his mother and brothers are his disciples. What does it
means? That the universal love is not the same that the love for individuals.
The catholic roman church took for itself the belief of that it is source of the
moral. But, we show in this book that moral feeling is root in us. They say, still, that
the Pope is symbol of who got to keep distant of the material life. But, he only moved
away from the sexual life and he continues eating and drinking of the best foods and
wines, includind meat of inocent beigs. Or do he and his pairs sleep on the soil, dress
old clothes and eat any meal?
Yet that we agree that monogamy is beautiful and better, that euthanasia and
abortion don’t must be made we can’t simply order people to think like us. It is
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because church is aristocratic institution, it disdain democracy and their behavior with
their followers like father-child. Do we really need that?
Let’s open parenthesis here: what is our theory about if we agree or not to
abortion? As a human being, a being that belongs to a collective, with the ability to
communicate, exchange and build knowledge, we must respect any form of life called
"human" first and, then, other forms of life, even form is an illusion of our minds. But,
can we think differently? Yes, we believe that everything is alive and yet this thesis
can seem an absurd for those who are stuck in customs, we never can not extinguish
the life, only to split into smaller pieces, too, full of life. Which of the two theories do
we choose? The first one, whose rule is: a human being to protect other human
beings, ever!
§62. The moral and ethical actions and feelings. Examples of the
neighbors. Is there a list of virtues?
Why in the time of our grandmothers or greats-grandmother the women had that
to marry virgin? Perhaps their answers were: “the things had been always made in
this way”. Or they would go, still, to answer something as “it was better in that way”, if
opposing what, today, it would not pass, for them, “lack of shame”. Or, it was not
allowed another behavior for them. They will be able, yet, to say that to establish as
rule the virginity until the marriage will guarantee that the husband was not surprised
by a woman with own opinion, that complains if he do not to give pleasure to her or
changes for another one when she don’t accpet her husband with other woman. Any
that was the reply, such custom implied that in the minds of our grandmothers, a
perception was modified, to fulfill the rule, established for somebody and not for same
them.
What it seems clear to us is that nobody must affirm that the bedding of the
moral or the ethics only inhabits in the search for pleasure and to escape to pain
related to the most basic necessities, corporal: our grandmothers and greats-
grandmother had chosen to defend a rule against their corporal necessities, where
the factor that prevailed was not their physical pleasure, by the way, ignored, but the
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acceptance to be mere objects of satisfaction of their husbands, in the maintenance
of the rules with which they were accustomed and in favor of the order in the relations
in family - therefore, a purely mental pleasure.
Another important point: it is not enough to be of ownership of a moral or ethical
feeling for that, alone, it would be the cause of our action. It is necessary that a first
experience is provoked by one another person, as when someone asked for our help.
Let us an personal example: certain day occurred one discussion between two
neighbors for an incompatibility of schedules in the common use of the garage and a
aprouting of accusation that one of them run over the other! What do we made?
Ahead of the threat of one of them to lead to another one to justice court, we prefer to
believe that the fact was invented. Why!? Because we knew one of them and we
knew that she would not make such thing, because she was always an introverted
and very passive person. The first question that in we made them was: why we feel
responsible in defending another person? A physiological (mental) necessity? Before
it, we believe one social necessity: we always establish between our family and of her
one, a reciprocity relation where we wait adequate behaviors and, on the other hand,
we always look for place us to the disposal to help them. If we did not offer us to
assist her, that reciprocal respect would be breached.
What situation would predominate the physiological necessity purely mental in?
For being very rare, we speculate that perhaps it appeared if the discussion if had
carried through between two unknown people; but, we believe that we would not help
none of them except if they asked for help.
It is more easy to see the difference of reaction in simpler experiences: when we
walk in a sidewalk, we stipulate, culturally, to walk of the right side of the sidewalk,
although that we could walk in the left side; what the mental physiology influences is
in the fact that if we walk in the same direction that the other person, will collide and,
also, that all people have right to walk in the sidewalk!
Either perhaps sad, but we have that to recognize that for backwards of the
altruism has the egoism: a purely mental pain that cause in us a moral feeling.
By the way, to live in a building, having that to accept opinions of neighbors to
prevent fight is a test for the canonization and proves of the importance to stimulate
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the people to philosophy for becoming brain faster: in one recent meeting, they had
decided keyed the external doors day and night, but had not perceived that never
more they could to open the door from its apartment through a simple electric signal,
what it makes difficult the life of who lives, for example, in the third floor or higher! In
these meetings, is decided without thinking and for pressure of an ignorant majority
on that they think on the contrary. Fortunately, today the notion of minority come
winning more force in our western society.
Is there a list of virtues? Magnanimity, prudence, courage, justice, etc, seems
names that we give to the action that they aim at to restore an previous order, as
when we give back something to somebody that was taken to him or save somebody
in a fire or, still, to modify an previous order (or disorder), when we live in a society
where many earn little and few earn much. All these “swarms” (as Socrates would
say) of virtues correspond to one alone type of action - restoration or alteration. Its
difference depends not on the form, nor on the degree of perception, but on the
content: the courage, involves physical dispute in inferiority situation, justice, in
superiority situation, the magnanimity, is to distribute good for that they do not have
them and every virtues nothing more are that some kind of distribution, of
reordenation of the involved elements. Our reply to the initial question: the list of
virtues is infinite and depends on the capacity to perceive a greater or minor number
of differences and similarities (details)!
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prudence or justice. Or, of one another way, the virtue of justice folloied for prudence
in the case to reject that the Philosophy is an activity, but a passivity.
Already in the work “the Politics”, he wrote that in the active life (in the
businesses or in the war), we must make use of the virtues of the courage and
moderation and in the leiasure, to philosophy (it is not by chance that the
contemplative position, as it sees in the “Thinker”, of Rodin, is very similar to the
embryo’s position). And, he added, as much in the active how much in the leiasure, it
must be present the virtue of justice, understood as the search for a balanced
solution for a conflict and not a simple desire of revenge.
Well, let us leave of side this question without end, worthy for our moments of
rest. What it matters to consider is that when defending the existence of a supreme
happiness, Aristotle established a preconception in relation to the many people who
were not philosophers and citizens of greek city (polis). He, also, did not understand
that nor all the people arrive simultaneously at a ampler perception of its life, of the
universe or of the “polis”, degree that our perception will reach, more early or later.
Thus, each one is happy in his way, or better, in the way as its perception
predominantly is structuralized.
What can make the people in which the predominant degree of perception is the
amplest and, if we are certain, if such degree is that one that leads us to a more
adequate perception of the life? It remains to us to be example for the people,
assisting when they ask for our opinion. And intervening only when their action to
invade the limits of the others. Even because a supreme happiness would have to
consist of the balanced use of our intelective, irascible and concupiscible parts, even
so Aristotle could not defend this, because especially the last part, was not, for him,
so divine how much the first one.
And the happiness, is it our only end? Somebody that has lived predominantly
painful experiences, will be able to search to act aiming at its destruction or of other
people. And if he is ownership of an ample perception, he will be able to conceive
new ways to carry through the destruction. Will not be these people, also happy? We
believe that yes, because they follow those stronger stimuli, repeating experiences
whose degrees of perception (and detail) are strongest. It is clear here, also, that the
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happiness always does not walk side-the-side with the morality. Somebody that eats
much and makes of this a reason of happy, in detriment of healthful life, free of
illnesses, witout respect animals lifes. Another person intent and impressed by ills
that affect who “live to eat”, as Socrates said, will prefer to eat healthful foods in
adjusted amounts, enough to feed themselves and to make other things in the life,
because is more easy to get the satisfaction with little than to have a desire without
end.
We ask, then, are we or not happy? We believe that nobody is always happy,
but is sometimes happy. The happiness, as all feelings, is express in a graduation. All
we experienced will work as colors of a picture whose predominance or balance (in
the vision of the set) will depend on the painter and the ideal (justified for imitated it or
of the others) that he will formulate for himself.
And about resented people, as Nietzsche thought on the inventors of the moral.
We answer that the resentment is a first signal or desire of that exists a “Being”, a
being that express itself as something continuous, permanent; in general, the people
forget what the others made of badly for us, this because we are not really the same
and there is just a weak memory for remember us the last experiences. Moreover, the
weight that fall again on one “resented”, if do not kill him, become him more strong
and more resistant the weighed obstacles, thesis that is similar of the hero of the
tragedies that the proper Nietzsche believed!
Before locking up this stage, we would like to add our discovery on the essence
of what we call historically “pleasure”, important to be capable to differentiate that
when somebody search to its happiness, aims at to well-being and not properly to a
pleasant feeling:
(1°) we are certain of that the pleasure is a rubbish (a by-product, therefore,
accessory) of our actions - being it, also, a subtle type of pain - and, therefore, not
being able to be the good that we search except when it is taken erroneously. We try,
in vain, however, to identify the moment where we arrive at this conclusion. We are
not certain on this. We remember that it was at the time where we read the moral
theory of Moore and it impressed us the insistent distinction that that thinker made
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between the concepts of “good” and “pleasure”, that for him, they are real as the
platonic ideas - one exaggeration in our agreement. Thus, if the good distinguishes
from the pleasure, pleasure is something that it is added, but that it is not necessary,
because superfluous, what it opposes the hundreds of theses written throughout last
the twenty and five centuries!
However, it was not through of Moore that we start to believe that the end that
we search is a neutral state: Plato, in the Philebo dialogue, displayed this, but he
thought that pleasure and pain were corporeal and gods don’t have such
sensations... a mythological explanation. Even because the argument of that is
necessary to have memory before pleasure for that this last one be deeply lived, still
seems very limited to motivate the reader to believe in the superiority of a “neutral
state”.
(2°) Let us see: what it would be the pleasure, then? I believe that in this stage,
it came to our mind the experiences where we feel pleasure and this pleasure was so
intense that it caused us… a pain. Who already did not feel similar experience? To
eat excessively does not provoke pain? Or, then, one intense orgasm leaves - for
fraction of seconds - of being a pleasure sensation and it appears as pain, even so
ephemeral! This, by the way, remembers important Greek philosophers to said that
there was a limit between what is pleasant and what becomes painful: simple
question of a fragile limit. Without speaking in the old practical actions of not to
ejaculate, proroguing, thus, the well-being sensation. Another example, we believe,
more common: when somebody approaches to our feet a bird feathers: in the start
we laugh, but if it reaches a very great intensity, will appear in us one malaise, an
ackward sensation of pain!
If Pleasure is a subtle pain, that kind of pain is it? Another one, beyond mental
pain that we call “duration”? It seemed improbable and nonsense to be speculating
on many other pains, if already it was not enough to offer to the history of the
philosophy a pain that just I had only given account - what we describe for “duration”.
Then, without knowing why reason, we did think about the necessities human as
empty buckets to be filled. The water - or another liquid - could be rank in bigger
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volume, making with that it overflew. Here is the pleasure! In truth, a kind of pain -
short duration - for insufficience of sensations.
(3°) In return to the Moore, we think that another error that he had committed
was to believe that given the perception of that we have a necessity, the memory of
the pleasure would appear in our mind when the necessity is satisfied and, it would
be this, for him, that would put us in movement to cease pain (necessity). Before of
Moore, Kant thought in the same way: in the work “Critical of the practical Reason”
(Prologue, note V, 1788) he wrote that the “feeling of the pleasure” serves as “base of
the determination of the power to desire”, that is, as a carrot that we puts in the front
of the donkey. But, from our discovery, we see that it does not have this task. The
pleasure is a simple rubbish (a residue)! An mistake that had incurred as much Kant
how much Moore, because the own necessity puts us in movement, once it is an
emptiness to be restored. It is evident that we have, yes, the memory of the
completude. But, to assume, that a memory of the pleasure is always for backwards
of our actions is another nonsense! Exactly, therefore, it is enough to think that the
first time that somebody had pleasure, it did not know this sensation, nor had any
memory of pleasure! How we would have knowledge of the pleasure before having
tried it? A nonsense! At last, I think to have finished with the quarrel if the pleasure is
the end that we search; it can’t be. When the endorphin goes off inside of us and the
sensation of pleasure arise, it nothing more is that a subtle pain, of very difficult
perception!
It is opportune to remember a sentence of Kant (Critical of the Practical Reason)
where he wrote that “the man only feels necessities because belongs to the sensible
world”. However, the activity of the apparently pure thought (formal) nothing is - as
we said before - that the image (or another sensation) take it off focus of the “sensible
world”. And in this activity also has mental pain and this pain is the cause of this
activity folloied one perception degree. There are not two worlds; but, only one!
Surprise us to find a thesis of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica: Part
I, question 10, art. 6) of that in the perpetual life (or the “æviternity”, a life that has
start, but does not have end) there is duration, thesis accepted for Kant (duratio
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noumenon) and, thus, if the duration is a pain located in the memory (to see our
thesis in §8), is followed that in the eternity also we will feel pain!
(4°) - Finally, it is necessary to observe that in this present work many stretches
keep the dualism “pleasure in opposition to pain”. It is important to modify such point
of view, once that pain not only is what is positive, real, but, still, that what historically
was called “pleasure” also is a pain, even so of a reduced intensity. After to write
these lines, we read a sentence of the German poet Heiner, who in nineteenth
century wrote, before us, that the pleasure was a pain “extremely candy”.
A made recent research in a Brazilian university showed that in a group that still
made physical exercises that when the endorphin production was inhibited, they did
feel a well-being sensation; this example shows that the pleasure and well-being are
distinct sensations. We cannot forget when we saw, certain time, a youngling dog to
swallow a meat piece great, without chewing it, came to our mind that the pleasure
that it searched did not inhabit more in filling an emptiness, a necessity, but to
perpetuate the sensation of pleasure in eating without stopping. Once that such
action will not lead to well-being, it - and all the ignorant livings beings of the end the
they must search, what includes ourselves, at least, at some moment of our lives -
will look to eat more in an increasing and more destructive way. If you allow the irony:
the dog had become capitalist!
Another example of become attached to material goods in excess: I remember I
was the focus of my parents and relatives from my father, because i was the first
grandchild. After that came the brothers and cousins, I was left aside and it caused in
me a serious emotional problem: I used to for several times to hold the stool. Often I
did not got to hide the stool and then smelled very bad! I vaguely remember that my
parents took me to a hospital to remove the feces because of the amount of time and
quantity that they were inside my intestine don’t permit a normal flux. Because that, I
took the material objects to replace the lost affection. I remember, too, even children,
have disturbed my parents when we spend some days in the house of some relatives
(my mother's brother), because I did not want to borrow my blanket to a cousin.
Certain time, when I accompanied my parents to Rio de Janeiro and we were in a
restaurant we just wanted to eat “guisadinho” (fried ground beef). How do I bother
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them! And even after I was yet grown i involved frequently in fights disagreements
with neighbors, in part because they were boring with their acts, but I believe it was
my way, perhaps, to seek affection from me, to become closer to my parents.
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because as said Epicurus, it does not have unbearable pain. And, he adds, when it is
beyond our capacity the life ceases immediately. A person that is many years old, is
in a stream bed without being able to leave, still thus, could share of experiences with
the people that they are in its return or, only its presence would serve of example, a
stoical resignation and, probably, forgot its physical pain. Any decision favorable to
the euthanasia is taken from an limited and not ample perception. Therefore, we must
always keep the life until natural death and, in this case, it will be as an old friend has
very waited or an emergency exit when all the other doors already had been closed!
Before de Albert Camus (in twentieth century or, as we prefer, in twenty four
century after Socrates), Epicurus (first century after Sócrates) already had said that
two were the problems that took the people to philosophy: the meteors and the death.
But, until the last instant and with the weak breath or gasping the most of us keeps
the hope of that the universe will saves us! It is opportune to explain, still, that it is not
the death that the men fear, nor there is a pulsion (instinct) that it leads many to the
death: we remember that in infancy we were for the first time to a burial and after
closed the coffin, we ask for them to open it and they left that person to leave, as if
that did not have more reason and the trick needed to finish.
And the good and the evil? They are names or qualities that we attribute to the
things that we perceive, things or experiences that present to us as something
harmonic or disharmonous, that is, whose parts lack of proportion, been, thus, only
sensations produced by our mind. Depending on the perspective under which we
perceive an object or an experience we will define what occurred as good or bad.
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enough that he has accepted violent and competitive world where he lives. The “law
of strongest” could be enclosed among the principles of a person, what it includes the
dispute for the survival, despite that put at risk the life of its own relatives and
children. It is clear that we do not agree to the “law of strongest”, but exist people who
make it as an universal principle.
What more surprise us is an important consequence: when we refute the kantian
imperative, we show that does not have formally one evil inside us and that it appears
from the content of the experiences, of disharmonous situations that we live and that
make us to perceive and to act taking them as reference!
Still on drugs: Edward Schur, according to Peter Singer, was who made the
expression “crimes without victims” and is accurately this that occurs, except when
children consume drugs. There is not reason for State to be between the producers
and the adults consumers of drugs. We believe that this occurs because the fact that
the greaters producing are not the countries of the call “first world”; let us see a fact
occurred in the United States, the decade of 30 or 40 of the last century: Al Capone
commanded a net of traffic of… whiskey and drugs! During the prohibition, the prices
were highest, the violence was unbearable and the drink was mixed with harmful
substances to the health beyond those that alcoholic beverage already have. Today,
world lives a new race of the white... gold, the cocaine and other drugs. We can
arrest all the drugs’ dealers, but in the next day they will appear more! And why?
Therefore, unhappyly, there are many people to pay for them! And, more: for having
much money involved, they buy many weapons and these generate much violence.
What would be only one severe problem of health public, becomes, still, a problem of
security public, threat for all people that not has any relation with drugs, that is,
because of one percent of chronic users (adolescent and adult whose families do not
receive affection), we put our life at , that is, of the others ninety and nine percent of
citizens! The States spend millions with arrests, where half is drugs’ dealer. Why
don’t we arrest, also, the consumers? These millions could not be destined the
schools or remedies?
In our opinion, sales of marijuana must be liberated in the same places where
tobacco cigarettes are sold. Already the weighed drugs, would have to be sold in
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specific houses, hindering adolescent to get inside them. In first the six months it
would be a monopoly of the slum quarters and, later, it would better allow to
plantations of Cannabis Sativa, its improvement for the tobacco industries and, to the
pharmaceutical industries, production of drugs as cocaine or, best, researches to
develop superdrugs that do not have the effect of the current drugs. We want to leave
clear that we never consume nothing of these drugs; but we cannot continue seeing
the incapacity and ignorance of the governments in dealing with this question, without
speaking and making nothing!
Two other good arguments to legalize the drugs: the beer and the wine are
drugs, because the alcohol also vitiates and the alcoholic person destroys itself (liver,
heart, brain and sexual life) and to others to around (familiar union and victims of
drunk drivers), but just because it is part of the social life is not forbidden, because
there are campaigns and some help those chronic dependent users, even so many
lives are lost in this battle for convincing them to stop to drink. And although the sales
of beer and wine are allowed, this did not take the societies to the destruction! It is
surprising that the masculine sex (corroborated for doctors) say that the sexual
capacity declines with the age: obvious, they ingest alcohol, they feed badly and they
do not practise exercises.
There is one another aspect: nor all the people - in truth, one very few one - in
which we would include Socrates, Buddha, Christ and Kant - have predominant in
their perceptions, those ample structures, responsible to produce in us a moral action
or according kantian “categorical imperative” under a perspective in which we would
see us not as a central element, but an element in equality of conditions, part of a
universality - the human society or beyond it.
It is interesting to remember David Hume who rejected the formularization of
“principles”, because they would only serve so that the “cheater” - without
abandoning the advantages to continue to live in society - could exceed the limits of
the principles, without being discovered. Of our part, we believe that the only
acceptable principle is that one that says that we do not have to provoke no disorder,
despite if we the objective to establish or to reestablish an order. We prevent
ourselves those tyrants who justify his action and accept as inevitable a certain
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number of deaths. About the implementation of the communism, Stalin, thought thus,
when he ordered to fusillade who thought different of him. Karl Marx, as Engel
counted, had affection for the ideas of Darwin, of the natural election, where
strongest imposes on multitude. When we search a reason for the millions of people
who nazism assassinated, we must search the answer in the darwinian theory of the
natural selection of strongest, a nonsense, because in the nature, one species never
extinct another one. In the book “Descent of the man”, Darwin ask why the human
being help the weakkest individuals, accurately as nazism thought! We could same
believing that the natural selection among species was substituted by one selection
inside the human species (intraespecies selection), because the fact how people are
egoistic and compete to knock down the others, symbolically or physically, but as a
species reallly don’t exist, what exist are individuals that adore to imitate and to
surpass ones to the others, when they could create or do unknown things! By the
way, I do not buy and never I will buy dogs or cats of race, because I don’t agree to
an absurd belief: of that there are beings that are better of others, while I only
observed deficiencies where seemed to have reached the perfection.
And, from where we take this principle of the “order yes, disorder not” off? From
that more raised perception degree - ample -, that we bring with us since the first
moments of life. It is equivalent to the feeling of tranquillity - the “ataraxia” - of the
stoics philosophers. But, this principle isn’t always valid: to react against some error
involves a clear disorder, yes, as to fight againt nazism in second worl war, for
example.
Specially Karl Marx did not perceive that the history of the humanity is not the
“history of the fight of social class”, but, the history of the fight among degrees of
perceptions, degrees that are given and not chosen. The difference, for example, with
that western world treats with the religious questions and how the Middle East do
prove our thesis: they have distinct perceptions on same subject; it is as if they still
lived there, today, in the Medieval Age, time that the occidental people already had
lived between seven hundred to thousand and five hundred years before, because
they have the limited mind about being tolerant and critical to its own religion and of
the others. Although that it was the intellectually advanced France that was forbade,
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recently, the use of religious symbols in schools! Another difference of perception:
Nietzsche observed that it does not have a scarcity in the nature as believed Darwin.
And when Marx said that the spirit doesn’t imposes itself on material, but the
opposite, he didn’t perceive that material conditions depends, yes, on our capacity of
perceive ourselves and the world around us!
There is another principle: “not to kill”. And this justifies, because if somebody
dies, the ample perception - in which we identify the moral feeling - loses one of its
elements perceived and, this generates purely mental pain.
Recently, about January of 2006, we think one third principle: that we must be
made use to dialogue with the others, common act also in the wars and,
understanding that in all the dialogue, we must have a desire that the parts, with,
many times, distinct perspectives, look for to arrive at a middle term. When a
neighbor asked for we locked the two doors of the building, we accepts only to lock
one of them and only at night.
§66. How to teach to be virtuous. The difference between “is” and “must”.
A difficulty raised for Plato in his “Menon” dialogue, when he speculated on
which would be the origin of the virtuous man: if the virtue would be born with the
person or if it is taught to him. He was arrived conclusion that none of the answers
was the correct one. At that time, Socrates defended the idea that the ownership of
the wisdom is the same that to possess the virtue. Later, Aristotle contested him: it is
not enough to know to define a virtue, but to possess it. However, Socrates - that
defended that the life not examined, did not deserve to be lived - would not be left
himself to lead for separately gotten concepts - therefore, theory is the name that we
give to the experience of ourselves or of the others -, but, we believe, he related to
the ownership of a “ample perception” in whose maximum degree under which we
would search the causes of the things and would find the feeling moral.
A happy life, as well as an efficient education, must be a compound - as Plato
well said, in his work “Philebo” - of water and honey, of pains and pleasures, of
challenging and painful experiences, but, also, pleasant ones. But, an education will
not be instructive if it inferiorize the pupils. To educate a person only with
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punishment, will make with that it rebels, or, then, becomes emotionally fragile, with
fear of the world, incapable to search justice, what requires certain force and
courage. It is necessary experimentation of pleasure, for us have some reason to
fight for equality, truth, justice, whose resulted makes to appear us, well-being state.
We believe that the reply to the question of Plato, can be answered better thus: we
must stimulate early since the children - and without ceasing, throughout the life - for
the experiences of much affection, but, also, of challenges and restrictions - that, of
course come to occur -, with a predominance of the first ones on the second
experiences.
For all that we wrote, we desagree with Jean-Jacques Rousseau that believed
to teach virtuosity just let child live experiences, isolated from the others children, but
secretly guided for his preceptor, that make events to child learn with them. We think
child will become unprepared for future social relations, one Robinson Crusoe,
example given for proper Rousseau. It is necessary to live strong emotional
experiences to make a strong character, because it is not enough to have an ample
perception (as when we live alone or distant of other); for moral action we need to
have in memory strong memories that will be reproduced latter. The difference
among our child and others will be that he will be more altruistic than them and this
won’t be the best world, because he will be one among many egoist people, but it is
task of education: to educate great human being, one diamond amon ton of sand, as
a work of an artist, not a product left from a mechanical prodution.
Useful to remember to the English thinker Edmund Burke who said that the evil
exists because the good ones allow, even so inhabits here one exaggeration, since
nobody is always good or always badly. What we have inside us they are disposals -
ways to perceive the things our return - and memories of good or bad experiences
that will make us to act in a direction or another one. Plato taught that exactly most
unjust needs to be just with its partners of crime. The following question is: how much
are we good and bad, 80% and 20%, 60%-40%, etc? When a child says, angry, that
it would like that its father was deceased, really wants this, at that moment, but this
desire is weak to become fullfilled itself, for the most part of the cases!
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The scholars of the morality see difficulty in explaining how we pass of
proposals that say that something “is” for “must”, relating to those reasonings
(syllogisms) that they intend to lead the general conclusions related to the principles
of moral action, from particular facts. We believe that the simplest way to explain this
passage consists of saying that “must” is an used term to suggest or to command that
others make despite with sacrifice and immediately what we already made, before,
without any imposition or sacrifice; the difference depends of degree of perception:
accute in the first case and ample, in the second one. Let’s exemplify: for me,
everything what is harmful to the health is dispensable. Once that we understand that
to smoke is harmful to the health, the two proposals will take us to the conclusion that
to smoke is dispensable. The “must” seems to be an annex, or better, an additional
perception: a general law to all or a familiar one, for example, that it is forbidden to
continue making that, that is, destroying itself.
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- than for our lucidity, otherwise, the simple observation of the real world would brake
this desire. In this sad experience, we can observe the illusion of the “ego” that
mysteriously disappears - it would be impossible that “I” decided to destroy “me”,
affirming and denying itself.
It does not remain doubt that it is an act of violence produced for an individual
that lived predominantly disharmonous experiences - painful. Through this, suicidal
only has force to destroy itself; in a bigger degree, would become a psychopath who
kills others. We do not need, however, to see the suicide with a crime, but, certainly,
as Kant said, a suicidal leaves to fulfill a duty: to remain itself alive, because he is
citizen of a society with his obligations in relation to it.
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our eyes does our eyes to close as what occurs in fetal life in presence of amniotic
liquid; and,
(c) cultural - the customs and positive laws. Thus, it is “instinctive” to want to
dominate the world to any cost for itself; it is “fetal” to want the harmony of all the
involved aspects in an experience, before thinking any action. “It is civilized” to make
use - always in bigger amount - of all the technological instruments developed in
society and to follow the customs. It is “fetal” to make as Socrates did, when passing
ahead of luxurious merchandises in the streets of Athens, said: “how many things of
that i do not have need”, because for him the social norms already had lost the
influence on his choices and, thus, he reached what he has of basic in his mind, a
state of almost absolute completeness that needs almost nothing for the preservation
of the life.
We are convinced that only in “fetal” sphere inhabits the harmony that we will
only find divided, in the spheres “instinctive” and “cultural”. It was not by chance that -
intuitively - Hegel believed that the absolute (God or the universe) was a synthesis of
the nature and the spirit or - as we said before - of the spheres of the “instinct” and
the “civilization”. For that thinker, the absolute was reached by means of the
internalization of the natural sphere in the spiritual one, through a - not destructive -
suppression. Finally, it is surprising to find expressions as “in deep that person is
good”, as if we knew that there is something of more basic inside us, the moral
sense.
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Let’s exemplify: when a man passes for a woman, in general, he looks at her,
respectfully; already two or more men when they pass for this same woman probably
would make tricks, whistle and, in some cases and depending on the place and the
hour of the day, worse things would pass for their heads! But, how to explain that a
alone person does not have what only appears in group? It must have something, at
least, in power, something of worse and that only later it will germinate? A radical
evil? It is not necessary to appeal to this belief. The question is simple: being in the
presence of a group, modifies the perception degree, making with that the people feel
motivated to satisfy its more individual necessities. But, nor we could think that evil
inhabits in following the strongest stimuli, because the nature does not give us
alternatives: it remains to follow such stimuli.
Did not reader already repair the pleasure in the face of that he bakes a meat,
without giving account of the corpse that is ahead him? However, close to the death,
all of us we become saints, angels, heroes. It is evident that when to be stimulated to
reflection and practical philosophical, we will have good possibility to understand
causes that are for backwards of our actions and, then, to conciliate “animal” with
“deity” that the world became us (or the dove and the serpent, according to Hume,
despite, as others thinkers, he believed that they were innate in us), getting a balance
between our egoistic necessities and altruist ones.
Remembering again Rousseau: he said that the young human would must to
remain themselve good as the nature made them. In part it makes sense if to observe
that in the children there is a predominance of the ample perception that goes being
reduced with the addition (and overload) of many useless knowledge; but, he would
not must to call this condition as “natural”, because we know that the animals kill
others, in natural state.
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that it is: “one that imposes on the rest people”. And on this would have to agree
Darwin, Nieztsche and, too, the nazists. Then, that Afro-American athlete who gained
a competion in olimpic games - and Hitler not gave prize to him - was, also, a strong.
And, also, the religions are strong, because they impose on that people that do not
have or believe in moral values or who has its own values. That man that Nietzsche
considered as “strong” is not really strong - except in what it makes better - but, in
true, he is weak, if we observe that it is nothing than an exception and whose
existence is ephemeral.
And this strong characteristic that detaches, depends, as we saw before, in the
chapter on “Degrees of Perception”, of many experiences that involve a certain
emotional intensity, and, for that reason, it provokes in our mind an alteration in the
way to perceive the world our return. If we limit the “strongest” to the muscular
capacity, then the leadership of the nations would have to be at the hands of the
fighters of free fight, what is a joke! We do not have doubt that, treating to human
beings, the term “strong” cannot be mentioned only to the muscular capacity, but,
specially to the capacity thinking. Thus, strongs will be those that to detach
themselves for one or more factors, as beauty, persuasion, wisdom, physical force
applied to some objective, wealth, etc.
When we say that strongest leave descending, are we relating for what? The
capable to reproduce? This is obvious, if did not reproduced it would not leave
descending. That most beautiful people have greater possibility to leave descending,
we agree. But what kind of power do they have beyond their the own image? And in
matter of reproduction is the poorest layer of population than have more children:
what force do they have that moves them to put in the world beings that they will not
be able to take care? Only the force of the ignorance! It is evident that we give more
attention to the strongest stimuli, but this does not want to say that the external
appearances are always decisive, because of ownership of a ampler perception loses
the interest in the world and concentrate in the “force” of the abstract concepts
(differently of the animals, that is stimulated more for the satisfaction of the hunger
and the sexual desire, this last characteristic that Darwinand Freud prioritized) and
under the point of view of other, that is, of the majority, we seem weak.
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Perhaps the challenge of the education is, as Jean-Jacques thought Rousseau,
to form men in an ample sense, capable to have interesting for everything, despite
superficially, what it will make them morally complete and not citizens to fill vacant,
specialists in some function, incomplete beings.
And this, for him, was done in the interaction with the nature, what would
become us strongs and would prepare us for a world in constant change (he wrote
this in eighteenth century!), different of what Darwin thought, who saw the strong as a
ready element, given for the paternal and maternal descendant. By the way, the
strong under the rousseaunian point of view, being that one that can everything or,
nothing needs or has few necessities and, therefore, he does not practise the evil,
thesis also defended by René Descartes. This reached force is resulted of a painful
learning, whose effect will not be of becoming somebody arrogant and violent, but
somebody that knows to moderate the necessities of the body in favor the mind!
We understood what Rousseau wanted to say when we were run over by a
motorbicycle: the impact provoked in our arm a swell of size of an egg in the local
impact, what makes our imagination have induced us to believe that the bone is
broken, but did not have reason to see in that a tragedy; it wasn’t the swell that
ached, but the imagination of a possible effect, extended beyond what it was real
and, thus, through we start to see the body not as center of our life, but a small part.
And this is the force that we conquer: the wisdom and not a material force! By the
way, we order the motorcyclist go away, because it would not make sense punish him
or to conduce him to a law process; nothing of this it would educate him, except, as
Rousseau suggests, our example to go alone to the hospital to examine the arm,
although the pain! I gave account that i am Emilio of Rousseau, even so i want to be
the superman of Nietzsche, perhaps one is the continuation of the other!
Another example: we believe that we must, sporadically, not to do a meal (a
short abstinence of food), therefore, thus, when feeling the empty stomach, we will
understand the necessity that we feel, the hunger, and how much it must satisfy it
without excesses, differently of most of the people who eat in excess, without giving
account that the body will not digest completely the meal!
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§71. The morality in the animals and our care about them. And the
mineralism.
Certain time occurred that we need to take a shoe off the mouth of the dog. It
was, then, a fierce battle. We had that to place the dog on a table to remove more
easily the object of its mouth. Something unexpected occurred: our cat came help us:
it set on the two back legs and started, with one of them, to beat in the dog! Thus, if
we accept definition of moral as a feeling that appears and aims to harmonize the
behavior of the beings, we can affirm that the intervention of the cat nothing more
was than a moral action. But, why do we distinguish the domestic animals from the
savages? will can be possible have morality among them, inside their species?
Perhaps yes and, in this case, we had to call ethics, not moral. Aristotle thought like
us: he believed that animals have costums, too. But, hardly between species. Now,
when the animals are domesticated, we will observe moral acts - before only
attributed to human being. It is not rare to see a cat suckling a dog or vice versa. Is
these world chaotic when the proper nature is modified so drastically? Not, simply,
because in the life with human people, the animals do not need to fight for their life
and - because of this - to have a very acute perception!
It comes growing the movement of defense of the others animals, traditionally
calls of “inferiors”. This movement leads in such a way to the sprouting of the
vegetarianism, how much to the prohibition of the use of animals in scientific
experiences. This because does not have justification to limit the morality to the
human species, because there is not a human species and, also, because all being
who possesss memory has a internalized in its mind a moral sense!
What do differs us from the other animals and vegetables in? Plato already had
perceived, second Diogenes Laertius tells in “Life of eminent philosophers”, that also
the animals perceive form of the similarity, what it would make they live in group.
Thus, the animals have the abstraction capacity, a primitive “us”. Primitive, because it
seems that its capacity of organizing do not advance - as in us, “human beings” - until
the limit to modify the nature, constructing cities and specializing themselves in tasks.
We had thought about the possibility of that the perception in the animals functioned
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as an umbrella that is opened until a limit without being totally. But, if this was truth,
would not observe - as frequently we observe - moral acts, when, for example, a dog
defends its owner, nor they would be worried in constructing its nests in geometrical
form. Or when our cat did pronounce a sigh when we said that it would not go to
leave in a certain night or, still, when it touched in the keys that were in the door, as it
knew that with it that the door opens. In any way, we believe as acceptable the thesis
that it starts to become strong in Biology and, yet, of the common sense of that the
animals have an intelligence, but with a infantile mental age and that they do not very
exceed this condition.
We believe that it is not opposed to our thesis of the perception degrees, that
there are knowledges that was discovered for Neurology on the most primitive layers
of the brain that would be involved in acts called instinctive. This would prove what
we saw saying: such layers would give us and also to the animals, an limited vision of
the world our return and would determine “egoist” acts, as the satisfaction of our
physiological necessities.
In return to the initial question: we remember that we realized two attempts to
become vegetarians. In the first one, the new diet lasted one year. In second, we are
until today, since year 2002. In both periods, the cause of the change of alimentary
habit inhabited in the reading of stories of maltreatment of the animals that emotioned
us – it is like to concentration camps of nazism. Another reason, not less important, is
related to the extreme expense in grains, water and space and the damages on
nature, as extreme emission of carbonic dioxid in the criation of millions of cows.
But, if the movement of the vegetarians seems to recognize that all the livings
creatures must be respected, rejecting that we feed us with oxen, swines and
chickens, still thus, why would have to kill the plants? Because are not they animal?
Because do they not have consciousness? Who can prove that they do not have it?
Thus, they would remain minerals, as only acceptable food source. It does not seem
that a rock has consciousness, in the sense that we attribute the capacity to perceive
the world its return. But we know of researches with plants and their reactions when
displayed the fire, for example, they react to the imminence to be burnt, same before
being it really. We are not speaking, is necessary that we distinguishes, of those
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plants that close its leves after the touch of a finger, because this reaction depends
on a external pressure. Perhaps it has not taken much time for happening an
alteration in the way to see this question and that world starts to produce synthetic
proteins from minerals. We read an article on the artificially production of aminoacids;
however, it seems that its consumption is useless to form muscles. Someone could to
say that it does not have difference between the protein that comes from soy of that it
comes from minerals, except that the last one will be more expensive. But, we are not
searching difference in the form, but in moral aspects!
It can be one excess for those that are accustomed to eat extreme amounts of
meat and they do not see enough reason to open hand of this pleasure. It is truth.
They had not found reason to leave to make this, as to have a good health, to reduce
bad fat in the blood and to diminish the weight, because meat causes cancer and
makes us to swell. Perhaps if they visited a slaughter house, they changed its
alimentary habit. Anna Kingsford wrote that she did not understand how we can
serving dead bodies for our friends, educated and refined people.
In 2006, we read in the Internet a text of John McCarthy and, we believe that we
must attribute the expression “mineralism” to him, even so we thought to be its
inventor. John believes that people must substitute vegetal foods for minerals, but as
until that moment was not produced mineral foods thus, he tells that some people
had died for trying to eat only salt! He suggests, also, two moral principles: (1) to eat
native fruits and to plant its seeds and (2) to eat animals that eat plants without
seeds, as punishment for them, what seems us very strange, since that is something
natural for the animals! In a site in Internet, we read something yet more stranger:
people who define as “mineralians” say to be possible to eat glycerin!
Recently, we try to organize a diet based on minerals: we start to ingest
synthetic vitamins (, B1, B2, B3, B12, B5, B6, C, D3, and, K) and minerals (calcium,
magnesium, zinc, iron, manganese, copper, molybdenum, chromium, silicon, iodine,
boron, selenium, most satisfy 100% of the daily necessity), everything congregated in
an only pill, aiming at to substitute the vegetable consumption, especially those that
violently is pulled out of the soil, but we did feel a sensation that is between the
headache and a vertigo and we abandon those pills.
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We remember, too, our dificult to explain my family that i am not kill myself with
those pills and i had good intention. And, most important, to feed just with pills can be
only a provisory feeding, because even so they are functional to take the nutrients
until the cells of the body, however they have horrible taste, they are not aesthetically
appreciable and they finish with the meals that the beyond the nutrition function, also
is a social moment where the people find themselves. Perhaps one day we can eat a
mineralist food that is very seemed to the Japanese one (beautiful and healthful,
except there is a excess of soy sauce that has much sodium), that have solid, liquid
and like-paste food and can also use hashi, rods of bamboo, used in place of the
knife and yoke, that, for them, remember weapons.
About protein and carbohidrato, we prefer the vegetable sources: we are buying
protein extracted from soy (50g or one cup of tea satisfies about 52% of the daily
necessities). Beyond that we buy two other products: (a) “Taffman E”, made up of
vitamins, B1, B2, B6, B12 (not found in plants in enough amount), and, nicotinamida
and pantotenato of calcium, but that backwards in the composition products as honey
of bee, guaraná, grass-candy, cravo-of -indian, ginger and cinnamon; (b) seeds of
Quinoa (From Bolivia) rich in vitamins, iron and others minerals; (c) we do not forget
the we are 70% water, a mineral! By the way, we suggest a water’s diet, always that
we feel hungry for candies or beverages: we must to drink three or four cups of water
for our desire to be extincted. It is useful, too, because our body needs water!
But, we do not give up: we will order letters to the government, the universities
and the companies to produce foods from Co2 of the atmosphere. A product that we
desire to try is the nitric oxide, a gas that widens the arteries allowing that more
nutrient they arrive until the cells!
On the health: I do not consult doctors frequently, because I believe that most of
the specialists nothing discovered alone, only memorized techniques that another
person discovered. All sciences nothing more are that a bedspread of remnants,
where each one of them is a theory that an individual (more curious and courageous)
discovered and taught to the others. Let us see some of its practical: Why to give
points if we can cauterize a wound? Certain time a veterinary doctor when removing
a tumor of my dog, that had breached, made it to lose much blood, what it took it to
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the loss of defenses and the death. And if she had cauterized the part of the skin that
bound the tumor (external) to the body, despite it has left of the cancer remained
there inside, it still could live a little more, even so already had 17 years! The
educational system very specialized makes them to have fear or shame to dialogue!
My critical extends to all the specialists: will they be experts really of some thing? Or
everything what do they know had taken loaned by some illuminated genius, that is,
of a dedicated generalist? Of this follows another nonsense: the monopoly of the
specialists for discoveries that had not been made by them and that must be
available for all people. Yet, why to pay for a knowledge learned in one or two
lessons, what frequently happens in universities, temples of divine windom, as said
Hegel or temple of parrots?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was certain when criticizing the medicine, because he
saw in it a element that become individuals weak, treating the patients as children
and pardoning their excesses or lacks: to ive the life with no rules, because your body
destroyed they will always have a treatment to save them! But, astonish the reader,
we read in a book of Bioethics that the doctor can’t have own ideas! It must “apply
the particular cases, the laws discovered for other people”! How nonsense world!
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6) SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENTS.
§73. The origin of the governments and the leaders. Is there a monopoly of
the force?
How do we explain the origin of the States? Different of the origin of the
societies. Hegel, in our agreement, was correct to identify an importance - for him,
gigantic – of what he called “souls of the world”, leaderships that transform the world
its return and that they lead the people for social changes. Thus if they were not
these leaderships the human societies would remain passive ahead of attacks of
other ones. What it will make with that the attacked societies leave this sad condition
is the vision one or more leaders. Why? Because there are people that learn how
other people behavior and use this knowledge to manipulate them or to free them.
The leaders are, thus, as cement that keeps the united bricks, forming a strong work:
the country.
Inside of certain limits, Hobbes was certain when he observed a central paper of
the sovereign linking all citzens. However, the societies exist before the States. But,
to say that the States appear of a contract seems to go beyond the limits, as well as,
to believe that from the elaboration of the laws will arise moral or imoral acts, good
and evil. Also was Hobbes who defended the thesis of that the sovereign never can
be died. Let us agree, only in primitive societies, it could believe that their problems
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finish when they cut heads. But, we believe that it is possible to take the power the
sovereign off in the measure that he loses his power to keep the community
congregated, once that the cause that made the union - his capacity of persuasion -
does not exist more or is too much weakened.
Does make sense the thesis of Max Weber (for us, only one disciple of
Maquiavel) that the State has monopoly of the use of the force, so repeated by many,
that we find that its veracity was unquestioned? Well, if the State need to use a force
to impose itself is because what it established goes against what the society waited
of it, or in relation to all society or on some individuals. The error of this thesis is to
see the State as something distinct of the society. We are the State. When is
necessary to arrest somebody, for example, this would have to be understood as the
defense of the own life of that person that committed an immoral or illegal act and of
the others, innocent people. Here is opportune remember Jean-Jacques
Rousseau: ... the force does not need any law to be imposed! That is, force is
contrary to State and law.
A last thing: we would like to see State not to use letal weapons indiscriminately
as what occurs today, but replace them for, for example, tranquilizers darts.
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can make a mistakes, not in the adult life. Since there we are satisfied with our
experience with the power and we don’t desire it more! That is to come to maturity!
We don’t see it in the most part of politicians and in of the Brazilian people (we are at
the beginning of century XXI); in other countries if one politician makes something
illegal or immoral, he knows that nobody more goes to vote in him, remaining, thus,
that he renounces or comet suicide!
Will Durant has a phrase that synthecizes the passage of life of the nations:
“they are born stoics and die epicurists”. Except for the exaggerated interpretation of
the school of Epicurus – for whom happy consisted in a simple life in the company of
his friends -, we understand that what Durant wanted to say was that the decay of a
nation is produced from the preference in satisfying its more immediate necessities –
concupiscence or irascibility - in an extreme way. To have grown in an environment,
as Plato would said, full of honey, but with little water, excesses of pleasure and
absence of difficulties and rules.
The same Durant told a thesis of a very interesting biologist that, unfortunately
we do not remember the name, but that is in his book “Mansion of Philosophy”: from
observation of bacteria, it it established a law that understood to be universally valid,
which is of that the genetic load of the peoples gradually goes weakening and the
nations that characterize for creativity and enterprising spirit is those that had
received genetic influxes from other peoples. However, we do not agree that
creativity can genetically transmitted, but is clear that the nations that had reached a
standard of living tend to want to only keep it and diminish its spirit of competition.
More adjusted is to think that the transmission occurs through the culture. Here, it is
opportune to remember the research of Piaget with a species of clams - Limnae
stagnalis: the experience consisted of taking the clams off with long shape of a calm
lake and putting them in one of agitated waters where they had taken the rounded
form as protection. Later, they had been returned to calm waters and was observed
that its descendants had kept the rounded form of the previous generation without
any influence of the genetics or of environment, but…. surprise, in our opinion, from
influence of the culture!
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All the history of the domination of the European peoples on the Asians, the
center and South American and, also, Africans, was caused not by genetic
superiority, but, only for the fact that as they lived in a cold climate - that it
represented the constant risk of death and restricted the pleasant experiences to a
minimum -, they had to choose work much and together, thinking beyond of their
individual necessities. Of another part, peoples who had lived and yet live in tropical
climates don’t had and have great necessity to transform the nature its return. That is
enough, we think, to explain the cultural differences. What it occurs, today, is that
human being having created a new habitat distinct of the original - the nature -, and
an instantaneous communication of a point to another of the planet, it remains that
each family, each society, watches over for passing to the descendants a perception
of world ampler than a individual one.
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perplexes”, expose hundreds of orders, not only ten, as, for example, to forbid that
the men use feminine clothes!
We do not see reasons that justify a text too much long, if we can enumerate
general rules in a summarized and complete list, such as:
(1) the rights to the one worthy human life, extended, also, to other species;
(2) to command the structure of the State, in the three powers, detailing the
rights and duties, as well as, the requirements so that the citizens can be elect and to
vote;
(3) to determine the attributions of each one and its instances federal, state and
municipal, as well as, the budgetary division, a system of register of private
companies and simplified payment of tributes - with a sole tax, preferential one that
uses computer science, as what there is Brazil, even so it is one among sixty tributes!
And, also, central questions as the one that restricts the new cities, limiting only those
that can with respectives taxes keep its administrative structures!
We could speculate, also, if the would not be enough to adopt “Universal
Declaration of Human rights” as Constitution. Declaration this that is product of the
deepest feeling in us, the feeling of order, exempt declaration of any natural and
cultural particularity, without, however, to curtail them or impede them. We have seen
the increasing search for making to take advantage a feeling of humanity on the laws
of the countries, as the international courts who judge the “crimes of war”, genocide
of peoples or disrespect on ethnic differences. And this because the increasing
fortification of the belief - despite unconscious - of that an internal moral feeling
surpasses any formal law, as the sovereignty of the governor to make what he want
to do. Nor we see reason for defending that the central task of a Supreme Court is to
guarantee that the laws do not confront the principles of the Constitution of a country,
therefore, in general, they protect stretches put there usefulll just for the opportunists.
By the way, the legal system says that all legal process must follow a series of norms
and if one of them not to fulfill the process must be annulled, because it would violate
the Constitution. However, the Constitution orders that the minimum wage has a
value that it offers to the worker a worthy life, but the judiciary does not order to
increase its value!
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What we wait that occurs with all the international law is that it does not have to
zeal for the fulfilment of the law and, yes, for the internal sense of morality. Of what
we said before, does not mean that the Organization of the United Nations is the
adjusted agency to decide on the world-wide problems, because the diplomats
always to defend in first place the interests of its respective nations. It is necessary
that moral people with ample perception and moral experiences in favor to those
people that need more and in favor of world peace and progress, occupy the chairs of
the “ONU”. Of the the opposite, we will watch horrified the acts as the economic
sanction against the Iraqian poor people, taking the access off to foods and
remedies, even because the objective is to dismiss its dictator.
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that, to prevent that the citizens commit murders that the proper State commands the
death?
A last possibility of refutation was presented by Kant and ratified by Hegel: to
believe that all of us share of a rational will present in the human beings, such notion
would legitimize the laws and, also, the capital punishment, authorizing the
punishment of those that to disregard the laws. Still more: they, as well as, Hobbes,
appeal to the Bible to justify that it can kill, since that the law command, that is, the
rational will command as God commanded in the Old Testament. But, what is this
reason that we did discover not to be free? It is a arrangment of neurons that, in an
ample perspective, will allow us to see the world as a whole harmonic, not having
space for death decrees, of one of its indispensable elements, as colors of a picture.
However, it is important not to forget that the proper Beccaria accepted (Of the
delicts...: XVI) an exception which if could condemn somebody with the death: if the
criminal action to threaten the freedom of the nation. As the people who could put at
risk the freedom of all a nation they are in small number, the death penalty would be,
thus, applied in very rares cases and not spread to the all crime of murder, or same,
to other crimes, as we see in many nations. We can’t forget, also, that the death of
someone is allowed mostly of the laws, but only in the cases of self defense.
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have aversion to the desorder, therefore, as already we speak previously, it hinders
us to recognize any object our return!
§79. Revision of the term “Democracy”. The scholars. And about the
equality.
When the last vote is counted, the politicians, in general, leaves to hear the
people with the attention degree under which they heard them before. It does not
remain doubt that the position demands a concentration, an introspection, but the
task is not private, but public. Beyond forgetting the demands of those did choose
them, the politicians are unaware of more serious something, when become
governing: that a democratic government must be a “government of all”, where
exactly the minority must have participation, at least, in its proportional participation in
the last election. We must rethink the democracy as a government whose existence
and maintenance depend on one continued approval of all the citizens. In this form of
government it is only possible to carry through the internal feeling of order, that
perceives all the individuals as necessary parties of the social life.
By the way, the democracy never could have been definite as “government of
the majority”, because if during decades the minority to lose the elections and will not
have possibility to participate of the governmental decisions, then under its point of
view, this government is a dictatorship. We discover, later, the surprising phrase of
Edmund Burke, in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790): “In the
Democracy, the majority is capable to exert cruelest of the oppressions on the
minority”!
By the way, for us, dictatorship is synonymous of “civil absolutist monarchy” and
unacceptable for whom say to be republican. One another difficult question to
understand: how democratical would live in the heaven if the government there is a
monarchic?
Why government does not belong to the scholars? First because they do not
have a perception with enough acuity to the details of the life in society and how to
convince the people to the adequate ends. In second place, we disagree with the
platonic belief of that the people does not know what they need and that it would fit
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better to the scholars to decide. For living next to the real problems of its city, the
people knows what it must or not be priority and, the specialists, in general, only
know the solutions techniques. This does not mean that the thinkers must not have
voice: the present book has this intention, to offer arguments that improve the
relations among the people and among the powers of Democracy. And, mainly, to
make them to think on this.
And, from where did we take this belief that we are equal each other? First, of
the feeling of order folloied of an ample perception that includes to all of us as part of
a same society, untill exactly of a universe, contemplated as an only being. Second,
the equality feeling is born from observation that “in the average we are all equal”,
because if some are very good in an activity, others are good in others ones – a good
philosopher can to teach people to see question under ample point of view, whereas
a expert in electronics can decide questions that they demand a very detailed degree
of perception - and, thus, the life in society would make possible the “interchange”
among these different degrees of perception that predominate differently in us. And,
third, we recognize as possessing of a human form understood - illusorilly - as
common to all.
And the optional vote? Is there an argument in favor of it? Is the voting place far
from its house? When we saw that in the United States the majority of the people
don’t vote, we pay attention about the big shame that the biggest democratic nation
of the world suffers in front of the others peoples and we saw this as a good reason
for the vote is obligator. There are a few things that must be obligator: (1) not to kill,
(2) infantile vaccination, (3) taxes and (4) to vote.
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occured a series of historical examples of that the monarchies had pacified peoples
in civil wars and, because this, the sovereign seems to have a universal character. In
any way, they restricted to its interests and of the ones of the people.
Hegel said, also, that the Executive Power would be particular view, other error,
because it is not more than an individual and, saves rare exceptions, deeply egoistic.
It is opportune to remember Tocqueville, that in his visit to the United States (in
nineteenth century), surprised himself that in that democracy was delegated an
extreme power to the president and that finishes for stimulating egoistic people to
search that position of prominence.
And, still, he said that the Legislative is the individual view – what is, tôo, na
nonsense, because all legislative decisions aren’t individuals, but particular ones, a
place where interests are localized, as of agriculturists, bankers, etc, and is the vote
of majority that imposes on the rest groups. About this last power we need to say one
thing more: it is necessary to stablish a equal number of vacancies for each group
and that each political party does a (open or closed) list with its candidates for not
prevail, for example, as it occurs today in world democracies, lawyers and
businessmen, because the first ones will think legally (formally, without give attention
to contents, an absurd) and the second ones will think about their own investiments.
Another important element is to know from where a congressman came, in stead of a
dispersed votation, without representing anyone and free to do what he desire.
It seems that we are looking desperately for ways to prevent the corruption of
the politicians, as to choose parliamentarism instead of the presidentialism or, then,
to index the wages of the congressmen to the minimum wage that the workers
receive, for example. But of all the ways, only one seems efficient: to allow that one
politician occupies only once one same position, thus extinguishing the professional
politician and, with him, the madness to take the way as one end in itself! They will
can to say that good politicians will be hindered of reelecting. However, are only they
alone good enough or they are so rare that don’t exist others like them? One prove
that the re-election is bad for a democracy can be seen in the Executive Power: at
least, president, governors and mayors, despite without intention, finish using their
position for their own candidacy, a disharmonous situation for the other candidates.
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And, in the maximum, some can use with intention, buying, with public money,
support for the re-election.
§81. The master and the slave and the degrees of the perception.
Example used for Hegel (and, before him, for Jean-Jacques Rousseau) to show
the process of sprouting or discovery of the self consciousness or conscience of
yourself, incurred, however, in a serious error, because he confused the structure of
the perception with consciousness. To explain why we treat the other people as
objects - as Aristotle who, in his work “Politics”, wrote that slaves was alive tools -, is
enough that we understand that, in these cases, there is inside our minds the
predominance of a perception oriented to our more immediate necessities,
physiological ones. Just when between Master and the slave happens a recognition
of weaknesses of master or the manifestation of power of slave is that the relation will
be perceived as different and they will extend their way to perceive the world around,
looking for to include what, before, it met separated, when, then, they will recognize
that master needs same or until more of slave than the slave does of other!
The example of Hegel is useful, especially, to extinguish unjustified social
differences, but useless to explain “self consciousness”, because: (1°) we only know
yourself externally, for more surprising than this can seem, (2°) we believe that the
“consciousness” is only one focal point (or perhaps, more than one), where the
sensations are perceived and, (3°) the perception is physical process, because it
requires emotional envolvement for the alteration of its degrees and it seems more
with what Kant called “understanding” than “consciousness”.
Something similar occurs in the thesis, also, hegelian one that the marriage is
an spiritual union: we only can approaching us to the idea of what it is to be other.
How can a man understand the penis penetration under the feminine point of view?
Or hearing of her impressions or for analogy, when we did try, for example, in an ear
examination, the doctor puts inside of our hear a instrument for extracting the wax
excess. The nature is really imperfect: the union between man and woman alone
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would accomplish if both were physically and definitively united and they became
only one being, joining memories and internal organs!
§82. The cooperativism as third way. And twenty hours per week!
We believe to be it the third way so looked by intellectuals in the end of twntieth
century, between the capitalism and the socialism, because through it, becomes all
as participant proprietors and, at the same time, workers, without the conflicts that did
exist when two functions were in distinct people. But, if the capacity of entreprising is
not awaked equally in all of us, the State must stimulates the association of the
people, under the supervision of managers, for that, together, they can have the
same enterprising capacity - ideas, projects, tools, financial resources, ability to
produce, to negotiate, to motivate the team, etc - that, sometimes, we observe in only
person and that, to the first sight, seem to us to be one natural gift, but is an ample
degree of perception, not really biggest one, but enough to perceive oportunities to
make money that others do not.
There isn’t nothing more unjust that the people who have three jobs speak on
how much the unemployment is serious problem: why they do not open hand of one
of the jobs for another person? If they worked less, other people could work.
Therefore, we defend that we must to work just twenty hours per week, also, for the
people can live more for themselves: do we live to work or do we work to live? There
is a clear disharmony when the people work five days and rest two and when the
eight hours of leisure are squeezed among the moments where we wake up, the hour
of the lunch and a little before we sleeping!
§83. The wars as infantile or youthful act. And the art of the peace.
The wars occur at the moments where the feeling of to belong to a humanity
was overlapped by the individual (physical) necessities, of power, of wealth, etc.
Seem us the correct our conclusion that the wars are caused by memories - or
percipient structures - appeared still in infancy, when the children in its first years
develop the curiosity for destroying what is aroud them, for the curiosity to know the
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elements that compose the objects that they manipulate, beyond that that is time in
which they only think about its immediate necessities, what is not missed. Better it
would be to say that wars are youthful acts, because is in the adolescence that, as
Rousseau said well, appears the force capable to take the individualistic desires
ahead; a child, said him, “only thinks about what to eat”!
We have, however, to differentiate the generals who watch over for the security
of a nation from those butchers who had learned to like blood; but, evidently, the
difference is clear. The biggest nonsense is that if we imagine the planet as an
orange, we will see that just only in its rind exists organic beings and exactly thus the
few that exist fight among themselves!
Seem us clear that there was a previous time where the concupiscence and
irascibility were predominant. What we see today is a sprouting, still incipient, of the
intelective part or, precisely, of the feeling of order that exceeds the limits of our
culture and language and extends for the whole world and all the species. While we
do not eradicate the wars, we must search ways to diminish and to prevent them. We
do not have doubt that the commerce is the most easy way to this, but to make
possible the progress, too. It is not treated, however, any form to make commerce,
but, obviously, one that watches over for the balance of profits between the parts. Of
the the opposite, it will only incite the hatred of a nation for the other. But, even so,
we do not reject this way to fortify common bows, it seems - today – that such way
will stimulate the desire for the wealth, as if it was an end in itself!
There are, still, others ways to establish cooperation among nations, that bring
in themselves a much more ample perspective: (1) scientific and cultural cooperation
and, (2) the stimulation of the migration between the nations. These are much more
strong and more lasting bows. Finally, it has to be distinguished the importance of the
pacifist movements: they are not only successful when they make the governments to
stop to fight. They are successful, also, when their manifestations reduce the level of
aggression of a government on the territory of another one. When we saw that a
group called “human shields” would go to Iraqi as an obstacle to North America
invasion, appear us the a idea of that it would have more success if famous people
were part of it, as singers, artists, writers, religious, etc, not anonymous people.
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7) THE MYTH OF THE LAWS
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our minds? The same thinker (Book 19, Chapter. V) recognizes that if existed a
nation “with a social temperament, a sincerity in the heart, a joy in the life, we do not
must to embarrass it with laws”.
Beccaria wrote (“Of the delicts and the penalties”: §VII) that when the laws are
good they hinder abuses; but, also, that “is enough the simple common sense: one
guide less deceptive” to establish justice. But, as we display until here, the “reason” is
not more than an internal feeling that appears when we are ahead of a social
harmony or we desire one.
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temporary written laws -, is, without doubt, the more preparated to face the changes
that appear without acknowledgment.
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Kelsen, to the similarity of Bergel, also affirms the distinction between Moral and
Right. First, he recognizes the incompetence of the right “to answer if each law is
unjust or joust or in what consists the essential element of justice”. Later, he denies
the existence of an unjust order, because the happiness of a person always will enter
in conflict with the other people’s hapiness. We do not know why Kelsen defined the
happiness as the individual desires, perhaps because he is unaware to recognize the
moral sense that we bring inside us.
§86. The law of the divorce made weak the marriage and the family.
Nothing is so clear to us the fact that the origin of the violence in the cities was
caused because the destruction of the families and that the main cause of this social
tragedy is found in the law of the divorce. Been born with the objective to harmonize
conjugal relations and, also, to legalize the children of relations made out of the
marriage. As if the marriage existed only for two people, thesis that Saint Augustin
was the first thinker to oppose to it. The divorce authorizes the destruction of an
indispensable institution for the formation of the character of the children. It is not by
chance that the papers of the father and the mother had existed for thousand of
years: it must to have a balance between affection and obedience. Functions that
can’t be accumulated by only one of them: how a son will obey a mother whom need
always to yield for not to lose the guard of the son? Or to a father who see children
few times a month! By the way, there a thing that left intellectual and left political does
not realize, that is, that population control should be an instrument of progressive
planners, because when there is a small population, there is less competition for job
vacancies and thus lower demand for labor will result in more deals favorable and
higher wages!
Neither we can attribute the violence to the poverty, because when the
agricultural area was more populous than the cities, the people lived precariously,
without basic sanitation, without treated water and malnourished, but there wasn’t
much violence. There are frequent cases of adolescents that have the satisfied basic
necessities, but do not have the affection and the control of its parents. The
education of the children is so important that future parents would must to do
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Psychotechnical Examination, similar what is required to drive cars! We prioritize the
amount of human beings (as an industrial production in series) and not the quality!
If we think about the cause of a series of violence that we live today, we will
regress not to the drugs, neither weapons easily acquired, but a destruction of
familes and because that one woman has children of many men and let to the world
take care of them!
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reply is “not”. Such principles originate in the order feeling intern in us. Or better, they
are expressions of the feelings and they would not exist case the order feeling did not
exist. Bergel when believe that such principles arise from the customs, he did not
give account that the respective customs arise, before, of a deeply taken root feeling
in our minds – of order, that is, the justice.
We want to add a new reasoning thought about the end of August of 2005 about
we said before: it is ilogical to say that there are many principles, because “principle”
means one “start”. For that, the law just have one start from racionality, that is, in our
order sense. Who says that there are many principles are maken a big mistake,
because he is saying that there are many starts or distinct starting points that base
the laws. It follow that: there can be only a principle, but, while purely formal, is the
same, but when applied the distinct facts suffers alteration for the customs, contents.
In relation to our thesis that for backwards of each law principle there is a
feeling, it elapses of the fact that a feeling only can confirm if the chosen principle is
the correct or not or, of the the opposite, we would have that to appeal to one another
principle and, thus, we would prove that what seemed to be a principle is not,
because there is a principle that precedes it. Beyond that, if one principle precedes
other and this another one in the infinite series there would not be a start, nor a
principle.
To those that collect principles they would have to include this: “to prevent is
better than to remediate” or the principle of the prevention. A good example of its
application: dogs that run away from the patio are a threat to the people, but as thre
isn’t a specific law, the executive and judiciary powers do not make nothing, except if
occurs a bitten. We must waiting for the bite, is not enough the psychological effects?
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in a revolutionary State, but never in a State where there is law, where the conquered
guarantees are preserved. But, why do to protect unjust guarantees and arrest us to
the artificial principles (small laws) as the non-retroactivity of the law, that bring inside
the notion of irreversible time, but do they know what time is?
The argument of the judge of this puts at risk the “rule of law” is adjusted, but
just if it was unquestionable; however, we know that the laws do not express a pure
reason. And which State is being threatened? That one that under which are
particular interests. Recently the judiciary punished with the loss of the mandate
those legislators who had changed of political party, without exist a specific law on
this question, signal that the function of the judge is not alone to follow the law, but to
reveal one feeling ahead of immoral fact.
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322). We do not see necessity of any intermediary between a general perception -
role attributed to the laws - and the particular facts. Of what we discovered of our
mental physiology, this transistion only requires that our brain overlaps to the general
perception, the present particular perception, that is, of the case or of disputes in
question. This would be a good argument for who defends the existence of the
positive laws. However, the central difficulty is that: the written laws - as we saw
saying -, open breaches exactly when is looked to make them simple, allowing its
nonfulfillment for opportunists. Kelsen affirmed (“Théorie pure du Droit”) that “the
interpretation does not depend on the knowledge in Positive law” and not even “is a
problem of the theory of the Right”. It belongs, we affirm, to the sphere of the internal
feeling of order.
§92. On equality of the penalties and its reductions. And what is anger?
There are reasons for Beccaria (Of the delicts and penalities: §VII) to have
defended the equality of the penalties: he says that “each man has its own way to
see; and the same man, at different times sees same objects diversely”. Beccaria
believed that it could not wait that by itself the men were capable to judge justly and,
would prevent, thus, “pernicious reasonings” (§IV), as somebody punished differently
by the judge or the king - when they take “the freedom to the enemy” off and leave
“free the ones that they protect” (§VI). But, if we lived in a period as of Beccaria,
nothing it would hinder that the laws were nonfulfilled! But, do we treat our children
equally? Not. We give more attention to that, at a moment, they need more help. We
are certain that, if we give to the vacancies of judges to the elect people and with
recognized experience of life, dedicated to the social causes, will not have excesses,
nor lacks, in their verdicts!
One another cause, for Beccaria, would be that one that would allow the citizens
“to be able to accurately calculate the inconveniences of a forbiden action”. That is,
we would not act aiming at the good, but, until where we could continue committing
abuses!
One another problem says is related to the reductions of penalties for good
behavior or the fulfilment of a part of the total time: who does interests these benefits
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for? It is, also, a way coward to promote a new judgment, only that, now, without
promoter, defense attorney and jury, just with the solitary presence of a judge, who
adds all the previous functions!
And how to solve the problem of the prisons? Nowadays we do not accept that
nor animals are kept confined, why to accept that men are? It does not make sense
to punish almost all the infractions with arrest, when it could punish with pecuniary
penalities - is not the pocket the most sensible part of the human body? And if they
can’t pay? Maybe realize a forced work in which generates electric energy walking in
a bicycle. We read that would have two different treatments, one for rich people,
other for poor ones. It is simple: we can charge the double or triple of one rich person
had stolen and for a poor person, exactly the same value stolen.
And on the duration of the punishments by confinement, when they are
inevitable? We would have to calculate in accordance with the time of the life of the
victim that was lost (or the suffered psychological damage) and to punish the criminal
with the same number of years. Untill science can to erase memories that they
originate anger in criminal or reduces amount of linkings among the neurons.
But what is anger? It is a vulgar mistake to think that philosophy came from the
contemplation of death, if we were eternal, we would writing thousand of pages about
it, we would hating gods for having given us eternity, etc! We began to philosophize
when we observed incomprehensible events, often very unimportant ones. Once our
cat had an urinary obstruction and each time he tried to urinate he did an expression
similar to that he did when he was in front of other cats that invaded his territory.
Thus, we concluded that the anger is another name for pain! When someone hates
us or someone hates entire nations is because we or million of people cause pain to
someone!
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nonsense to imagine a power restricted the doctors or engineers. Why for graduate in
Law? Nothing hinders that they are assessors of the judges, but not necessarily to be
judges! It would be a nonsense to limit the functions of president, governor and
mayors for graduated in business or public administration, but it accepted without
questioning that a power belonged to a professional class!
Without speaking that we see, still today, one clear limitation of the access to
judiciaries vacancies only to the middle and high class that had access to the
instruction, what it does not mean wisdom, as well said Heraclitus, in century sixth
century B.D.. We do not see reason, also, for lifetime positions in a democratic
system where the alternation of the power is so healthful. Aristotle, in the work
“Politics” (book VII, chap. 1), already defends that “all the magistracies (must) are
elective… that all the judges are taken of all the classes off”, so that “they obey and
they order alternatively”.
Why do we reject the public competitions for the ingression of magistrates?
Because a competition only measures the capacity of the memory and not the sense
of order that somebody, throughout its life, has developed. Development - or, better -
discovery of something taken root in our minds – that we observe with more intensity
in the people who give more to the society than receive from it - to the prudent man
(or woman), wrote Plato, it must give more force than to the laws, because he (she)
knows what it is certain and what is just!
And if the judges will be elect, who will pay their campaigns? Our more
immediate idea is that the political parties can suggest names, as they make in the
campaigns to Executive and to Legislative. However, we think that it would be more
adjusted that the indicated never had made fiche in the parties or that, in the measure
they had already become elected to one Power they are automatically forbidden to be
elected to the Judiciary Power or vice versa.
§94. One magistrate or a plurality of them? And about the popular jury.
We see as indispensable, also, that a judgment is not under the authority of only
one judge, because it does not must to submit an important decision to one alone
person, without speaking in the corruption risk that, for this, would be enough to buy
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one alone man. Montesquieu wrote that the unique magistrate “only can exist in the
absolute government. (We) see in Roman history untill what point a judge can abuse
of its power” (The spirit of the laws: Book VII, chap.10). Therefore, the judgments
must always have the presence of a group of judges, in a number not superior to the
ten, because it is necessary that we can list the votes of each one, for the society
judges them in the next election. A great number would make easily possible that
somebody hid among the multitude. Of what we said until here, seems evident that
we reject the institution of the popular jury, because they bring in itself customs and it
does not have guarantee that they judge with exemption. It will fit to the voters to
choose who deserves its confidence to make justice. In a popular jury, it does not
have no guarantee of this.
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8) THE ART AND THE BEAUTY ARE NOT SUPERFLUOUS.
§97. Pain and pleasure for backwards of the feeling of the beauty. And
what is the aura?
The origin of our aesthetic feeling rests in a very subtle pain not identified until
today, except for this our present work. A pain related to the capacity of the memory
to hold back the external stimuli. It does not make, therefore, any sense to say that
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the art is a “gratuitous luxury”; it is expression of the feelings more internally taken
root in us. It is evident that it can use works of art to gain money, as well as we use
other objects, diamonds, cars, houses, etc, but, in this in case, the art is a way to
satisfy another necessity: financier; somebody will look for to awake the ambition for
rare works, whose artists are pioneering in a style, or it can, still, deceive the others
saying that a work is art - a repeated lie will seem a truth! Another problem is the
craze fashions: somebody leaves to put in the wall a picture with a figurative art,
because it is in fashion to put there an abstract picture. To be or not to be... different,
that is the question!
Of our part, we understand that all the artistic expression is (or must be) a
search to make to appear a mental pleasure, from those scenes that present chaotic
or monotonous. The aesthetic sense is, therefore, a vital necessity, what it
guarantees our health, a mental hygiene. It is not by chance that psychiatric
institutions and penitentiaries stimulate its interns to making art, for they can have a
chanel of expression of its internal structures and yet to develop a ampler perception
of the life, especially in the case of the prisoners, once that their crimes are
committed when we prioritize our more immediate necessities, without thinking about
the others.
Someone will can to say that the duration is a subtle pain that easily is dimmed
by other pains. It is not truth. The pain of the hunger, for example: it is perceived by a
person instantaneously, but, one second, third, etc, perceptions will not be come from
the emptiness sensation of the stomach, but of the pain that the repetition of the
sensations and, therefore, it will pass to the scope of mental pain, of pain for excess
of hunger sensations in memory. For us, the mental pains are most intense and more
basic in us, even so normally we don’t perceive them.
And what is the aura of a work of art? Walter Benjamim presented an
incomplete definition: he said that it was as the leaf shade on our head or the image
of a distant mountain. Seem us that the aura is related to the feeling of the beauty
(the absence of that mental pain) when it we annex all the historical information of the
produced work. If somebody saw the David of Michelangelo and did not know its
origin (sixteenth century A.D.), would not find it beauty?
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But, and if the time do not to exist? Then, when we say sixteenth century, we
only can say that the work was conceived some thousands of kilometers ago! But, an
important aspect in the thesis of Benjamim is that the capitalism (or the reproduction,
mechanics copy of the works of art) separate in parts what is more beautiful when is
contemplated entire, as an artist who constructs alone an car (or imagines new
dishes for a restaurant) in contrast with laborers whom they deal with specific parts
and ignore all (or a net with thousand of stores, all repeating the same menu and the
same ingredients). Moreover, it contributes to destroy the new ideas and the artist,
almost a divine being is substituted by some workers who seem robots! The
capitalism when expanding its borders to profit more, also standardizes products,
limiting the diversity of ideas; producing an car, a meal, etc, for all the world!
§98. It there a sexual desire for backwards of the feeling of the beauty?
Freud wrote that the feeling of the beauty is derived from the sexual feeling -
“the love of the beauty seems a perfect example of an impulse inhibited in its finality”.
And he continues: “ ‘Beauty’ and ‘attraction’ are, originally, attributes of the sexual
object. More ahead het contradict himself: “(it is opportune) to observe that the
respective genital organs, whose vision is always exciting, hardly are judged
beautiful; the quality of the beauty, in contrast, seems to related to the certain
secondary sexual characters”. Or the beautiful binds to the sexuality or not. What are
they secondary characters? Sex is a necessity as another one and any need is better
or has more priority than others, beyond the fact of that all actions are product of the
internal feeling of order.
It is clear that if our history of life lead us for intense experiences to the sex - or,
at least, to the affection -, the perceptions constructed in these intense experiences
will lead us to repeat them in a similar future stimulaton.
It is not rare that when we know a person, let us see it as gorgeous and, only
with the succession of the experiences, we observe its defects. This must, we
suppose, to the fact of that when of the presentation, we were nervous, unsafe,
ahead of an unexpected, chaotic experience, that we would live, what provoked an
alteration in the percipient structure. It was the case treated for Erasmus
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Roterodamus, in his work “The Praise of Folly”, when he said that a married man can
find his woman the incarnation of Venus, goddess of the beauty, exactly that she is
ugly.
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one, to the ratio with the body, what seems to indicate that the part of the body most
beautiful is, respectively, the face for first group and all the body, for the latter one.
The ones that uses short hair, seem us more intelective people those ones that use
medium - irascible - or long - concupiscible, even so in these last ones can occur a
balance of the three parts. But, it is not enough to have one of three hair length; it is
necessary that the person has chosen himself.
We read scientific research that identifies as beautiful faces to those where it
has symmetry, where a side of the face is similar - almost identical - to the other.
These researches put in evidence that the sense of the beauty is not subjective - an
objective root has evident - contrarialy to the “common sense”. But, even so a
symmetrical object immediately is taken as beautiful, it, also, is more easily
discarded, once it becomes repetitive!
Sciences have for centuries look to the ideal measures of the human face for the
discover what it is the beauty - is enough to see the study of Leonardo of the Vinci on
the human proportions, in vain, because (some times the common sense is certain)
“the beauty is in the eyes of who sees it”. Our present thesis defends that the
elements of a face, must be perceived in one same duration, for to be considered
beautiful. Thus, it will depends the perspective that someone adopt.
When Kant says that the individual aesthetic judgment is related to a personal
taste, but seated in universal base – that can be transmitted to others people -, only
we can to believe that he is speaking of a related to a beauty for a specific culture in
which somebody is inserted, but, not of the sense of order folloied in a maximum
degree of perception, ample, condition this is, we believe, in the base of the sense of
the beauty in an objective way, when each element of a work - natural or cultural -
must be perceived, or instantaneously, or each one of these elements, in one same
duration that the others. It is clear that such perceptions are unconscious and alone
we are conscious the final part of the process, which is, the feeling that something or
someone is beautiful or not or, then, is more beautiful than one another one.
And the golden ratio? From the sequence of numbers conceived by the
Fibonnaci mathematician, 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55, etc, where the addition of two
numbers gives one third, has observed that dividing the following number for its
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previous one, it would get one same value: the “gold number”, except in the divisions
2/1=2; 3/2=1,5. But, it will be the same number? When we divide 5/3 gives 1,66; 8/5
gives 1,6; e 13/8 gives 1,625, that they are not equal, but similar. And if they were
exactly “1,6”, we could, still, with a necessary ruler distinguish differences in
hundredth or millionth of millimeter or still, it would be constructed inifintely a new
ruler each time more detailed and, thus, we could not arrive at one definitive
measure! Because this, the order that the golden ratio seems show us in the objects
and beings of the world, depends on the way as our mind perceives standards, or
better, in the way as the exterior world conforms to the measures of our own mind!
Still: we saw in the television that in plants petals sprouts according to golden ratio in
such way that no leaf appears to do shade for another one, but what the
mathematician did not see is that they are born, yes, making shades on others and
what it occurs is that the leaf of low, with little luminosity, turns yellow and falls!
§100. The beauty in itself. The world of the ideas of Plato and the test of
the retroprojector.
The beauty in itself seems to be a middle term between two extremities: nor the
sun with its maximum brightness, that blinds a person, nor the closed night where we
do not see the stars, are beautiful in themselves. Now, under the point of view of a
deity, that we assume to see everything without distinction and instantaneously, the
closed night or the blind light is beautiful. But, it is under our limited point of view that
we must treat the “beauty in itself”. Plato, in “The Republic”, wrote, in its fifth book that
the brunette people are “manly” and, therefore, strongs and expressives; whereas the
blond ones, are compared, for him, to the “sons of gods, although pale”. We are
committing an error when limiting the relation color of hair and color of the skin to the
brunette and blond people; better is to imagine a world without colors: it will have
diverse other combinations that will be had as beautiful in itself.
And when the color of the hair contrasts very strong with the color of the skin, or
vice versa, it can be said that the person is beautiful in itself? Not. The contrast
makes to detach an element, that, then, is contemplated and judged beautiful or not,
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but, only, separately. We can be here taking the reader to an mistake: to make to
believe that, or something is beautiful or is ugly. It is not about this, but, yes, of
degrees of beauty and, we must add, that our capacity of observation of more or less
harmony among the elements of the face, the body and, in a more amplest attention,
of the mind, as temperament, personality and the character.
There are other involved aspects in the choice of the hair: (a) the trend of the
women for smooth and not curly hair. This has root in the physiology: it is more easy
to identify the first type that the other one, that is, to apprehend the image in a lesser
duration; (b) in Brazil we see a great number of brunette women to change the color
of their hair, becoming more clear or blond; but, the inverse is not seen in great
profusion.
Will someone not to say that the animals as the cats or dogs are beautiful, but in
them we can observe the same coloration from head untill feet? It happens that there
is a significant difference: the coats in the animals cover the body all, but this does
not occur in our bodies, where the hair is an element separated of the skin of the
body and must be distinguished equally - as the others elements. In the animals, the
coat spread for all the body serves as screen on which the nature paints certain
contrasts.
In the same “The Republic” (chapter V), Plato also treated on the “beauty in
itself”, relating to one another world - perpetual - reached by means of the intellectual
activity, differing very much with our thesis that explains the experience or the access
to the “beauty in itself” in the physiology of the mind. In at least a aspect, he is
certain: it is necessary a certain distance of the customs and established standards
for our culture.
But, what is the “intelligible world” of Plato and of many other philosophers: it is
the cerebral world; nor superior, nor inferior to the remaining portion of the world that
our senses receive and our memory holds back. Neither this world is incompressible
or unattachable. If someone asking us where are the eternal beauty idea, we will say
that the only difficulty to represent them is to draw or to think the elements of a face
without none of them predominates excessively. In truth, it is possible that one of the
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elements predominates. In this in case, the perception compares this with the sum of
the other elements, emitting an sensation of pleasure or welfare.
We would like to prove that the “beauty in itself” appears inside of our mind: let
us catch a retroprojector device, instrument that projects in a screen or wall an image
printed in a transparent paper. We detail the description, therefore, maybe, a reader
in distant future can to read this work… Well, let us place the paper with an image of
an apple, for example. Gradually - and slowly -, let us take focus off of it. What will it
happen? Gradually, we will go to observe that, in first place, the colors will disappear
and, finally, before all image to lost its focus and to disappear, will see the form, not
more irregular of the fruit, but a perfect circle. Simple physics or specifically… optics!
Here it is the world of the ideas of Plato, twenty and five centuries later! How many
confusion was produced from there until our days…
Schopenhauer wrote in the work “On the sufferings of the world” (page 153),
that the art was a “ephemerous libertation”, while the ascetism, that is, the
unfastening of the material things in favor of a rise of the spirit, a “definitive
libertation”. What do the contemplation of the beauty frees us of? We can only say
that it frees us of a chaotic or a repetitive perception, both causers of pain in our
memory. We do not see any rising of the spirit. Even therefore, if the beauty could
lead us to an experience with something divine, then, we must ask if the ugly one
would take us to a experience with demonic something, what sounds completely
nonsense! However, we cannot disdain such internal sense of order, because if there
isn’t an “ego” (self) inside us, then all that we see is an objective and all that we feel
reveals a behavior that is in each portion of matter. If we search for a sense of our life
is because there really is one.
Let us see some classic artistic works and let us investigate if they are “beautiful
in itself”:
(1) when we look at the “Gioconda”, of Leonardo of the Vinci, we see that the
human body occupies a portion of the slightly bigger picture that the landscape.
There already a problem inhabits, because the image of the woman will demand a
bigger time to be perceived, occupying - we assume - a bigger space in our memory
or, at least, provoking pain for perceiving more times than the landscape. A
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magnificent work is the “Saint Ana”, where the tones of blue, the sky and the
vestment of the saint, balancing with the colored tones of the soil, the bodies and the
clothes. And his “Last supper”? It seems really beautiful, because the artist divided in
two equal parts, one above of the table and to another one below. That the low part
what it includes Christ, place setting, apostles, etc, seem fuller of elements than of
above part, what it will require more time to be perceived that the time of perception
of the ceiling;
(2) we had chosen to analyze “Birth of Venus”, de Botticelli, as an example of
the “beauty in itself”, but there is an excess of sea’s image and, beside that, there is
an artist that deserve more our attention: Renoir. When we saw pictures of his works
we perceived how beatiful they are: “Le Moulin de la galette”, with its wonderful light
on people, “Lady Sewing”, as well as, “Dance in city” that seem both that in some
moment will talk to us! And the work “Lise ou la bohemienne”, don’t have it more
“soul” than “Gioconda”, of Da Vinci?;
(3) let us see the “The Scream”, of Edvard Munch: what parts can be
perceived? The bridge, the three people, the sea and the sky. We ask: do these
elements seem to occupy same space in the picture? Not. The bridge is excessively
long and could have more people for exist a balance in the relation the busy space
for these elements;
(4) Kandinsky has a painting - “yellow-red-blue” – that is not “beautiful in itself”,
because it has little “yellow”, almost nothing of “red” and an excess of “blue”! By the
way, it was not contrary to the conceptions of Kandinsky, as he himself wrote, that a
art work could be disharmonous and, according to our thesis, not arise a mental
welfare, but, yes, a purely mental pain, rejecting the character “instantaneous” of the
“beauty”;
(5) Another excellent work is “The dance”, of Matisse. Seem us a complete
work, even so the green color could have occupied a slightly bigger area;
(6) and the works of Picasso? Gorgeous. It did seem us that he wanted to
destroy beings and objects (even so the cubists had for a philosophical base the
thesis to show in picture diverse perspectives and almost instantaneous), because
we know how many women had succeeded his life, how dismissable they seemed to
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him and how much he was insensitive to each separation. What do perception had
predominated in him? A series of acute perceptions that cause a violent curiosity for
all the things of the life, leads us worrying little about each one of them and that, it
leads, inevitably, to the gotten passionate decisions, not thought ones;
(7) and the work “composition with red, blue and yellow”, of Mondrian? We do
not see it as “beautiful in itself”, the percepção of red and white colores produce a
similar duration, but the blue ad yellow colors are in minority. If blue and yellow were
painted as they were for backwards of the other colors, we could image that both
have same size than others colors. We could affirm, still, that the figures of blue and
yellow colors have the incomplete form, harming, thus, an objective judgment for the
beauty of the work, but, we believe that exactly an incomplete image can be beautiful,
in opposing, thus, to the belief that comes since Aristotle of whom something
beautiful must have start, middle and end.
We would like to talk about sculptures, even because paintings nothing more
are than “false windows”. It happens that is more easy to analyse two dimensios than
three ones, one we just saw this art works by way of pictures.
Someone will can say with reason that we are very critical and we are not
capable at least to imitate the great artists: we believe that the art is made, or without
reflection only with feeling, or is consequence of the a previous philosophing, after to
reflect on the life, we decide to intervene in it, what we did in topics (1) a (7). They do
not make sense books, for example, on “Philosophy of the art” (a philosopher
analizing the art in itself), but of “philosophical Art” (one artist that makes art after
having philosophied), because Philosophy, for requiring an ample perceptions, is not
predicated of any human activity, these last ones are predicated of it, as the
aristotelian definition on the essence or forms, more external limit perceived by us.
Thus, we can’t extracted the all from one part!
§101. The “beauty in itself”, “pixels” and the criterion of the “isocronia”.
On the “isocronia”: it is a criterion for which we can conceive something as
“beautiful in itself” and occurs in two types of experience: (1) instantaneous, when,
ahead of something, we do not feel the sprouting of duration; or, then, (2) when a
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duration perception appears, but it is identical in each one of the elements of an
object or being, compared among them. If we could be so or faster than the
functioning of our mind, we could recognize that, in a certain work, the colors red,
blue and yellow, for example, are perceived in frations of second.
If a color predominates then it will produce in us a bigger sensation of duration
and, in this in case, we will perceive this difference. Thus, even so a picture or a
sculpture has diverse elements, is the totality that we will perceive first (we will be
conscious) and, only after, its parts or some one that have detached more. Therefore,
we believe that, if a picture have three colors, inside of our mind will perceive each
one of the colors separately; later, they will be compared and, only then, will be
conscious of the object that affects us.
It is not difficult to believe in these stages, therefore, of the the opposite, we
would have that to assume that we perceive the three colors (three sensations)
simultaneously. But, the simultaneity is an illusion, because it would imply to perceive
each one sensation, to recognize it individually and, also, not to perceive them
individually, but all together. Thus, we would fall again into the principle of the not-
contradiction: nothing can be perceived and, in the same experience, not to be
perceived. Or in the old formularization, nothing can be and not to be at the same
time.
But, and if the work have only one color? There, we believe that the analysis will
be made only on the forms and the ratio of them not in the screen, but in our mind.
We have to consider that the criterion of the “isocronia” alone makes sense for the
people who have a predominantly ample perception; already those with narrower
percipient structures, need to be informed of the historical context of the work and of
the reasons that had taken the artist to produce a work, therefore, in general, the
criteria, for them, used, will be the references of its culture and if both criteria
combine, they will say that work is beautiful.
We will not offer resistance to who to speculate on the possibility of a computer
to judge, in future, works of art. It would be enough, we believe, that the image was
divided in lesser parts, parts that correspond the colors and, then, if it could calculate
how many “pixels” - measured used in screen of computers as minimum unit of image
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- corresponds to each color. However, this is not enough, because is necessary to
identify forms – and a form is built with diferent colors -, depth, perspective, etc.
Exactly the degree of perception with which the spectator perceives the work, will can
make that different colors seem as identical ones.
§103. The unaesthetical and amoral art. And the false “paradox of the art”.
Salvador Dalí said that the art could be “unaesthetical” and “amoral”. We do not
have any problem in accepting that the art - as much the form, how much the content
or, at least, one of the two - not only expresses an instantaneous experience - of the
beauty -, but, also, painful - mental or physical. The “unaesthetical” art has a function
that remembers us the thesis that Aristotle displays in the book “Poetics”, about the
“cathartic effect”, when provoking in the mind of the spectator a pain - to feeling and
to living as real that history - making with that the most recent perception layers are
as that “breached”, leading, then, to the deepest layers of ours mind - where it locates
the sense of order -, provoking a sensation of relief and welfare. About the “amoral”
character, we agree in part with Dalí: we accept that the aesthetic sense can be
independent of the moral sense, but from this it is not follows that they always must
be distinct, that is, that they cannot be identified together in any experience. It is
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enough that the observed elements, human or others creatures of other species, are
in a situation where they are ordered harmonicaly - aesthetic and morally!
A paradox seems to appear: it is that we only have perception of the existence
of something - ourselves, another being or an object -, when we perceive its images,
sounds, etc, many repeated times. If an instantaneous experience occurs just once
and never more is repeated, it is not something in which we can believe. The
expressionist painter Henry Matisse suggested that we always have the sprouting of
a duration as condition of the aesthetic experience, in which, he adds, we can
recognize in the work some experience that we already live before. It is evident that
the expressionists had mixed and loaded in their analysis the physical pains of the
World War I.
Initially, we look for to explain the question raised, thinking that new
perspectives would always appear in our minds or the “thousands or millions of
perspectives”, according to Henry Bergson, provoking one continued pleasure, purely
mental, bigger than those pains that would appear due to the repeated perceptions.
However, still it would have pain, otherwise, we would have to perceive art’s work as
something always new and, for that, we wouldn’t have an instantaneous experience
of the beauty. We believe that the certain answer consists in showing that the
analysis of the painting techniques, colors and drawing - so important for the critical
of the art - describe only parts of the work and not under an ample perception, in
which we observe, yes, the parts, but almost extinguished or without focus, in whose
perception what it matters is if one part detaches in relation to the others. Thus, it is
clear that Henry Matisse confused the instantaneous sensation of all work with the
perception of its parts, seen separately. But, the difference between who sees
something instantaneously beautiful and Matisse is only one: the first one perceives
some elements, while the painter perceives a bigger number of elements, because
the painter is able to perceive more details.
We read that the works of art are almost all false because the successive
restorations that they suffer as the temple from the Partenon that receives new
marble rocks or the “Davi”, of Miguelangelo, when received a external cleanness
recently. In our opinion, the who say that made a big mistake - and they, too, to reject
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“beauty in itself”, because not even original materials would remain -, but they do not
perceive that the beauty is a feeling, where, as we saw before, the form detaches, as
well as, its parts, but these only slightly. Thus, it does not have importance the marble
of a sculpture; the material used at the time is an accidental characteristic, except
when it symbolizes rigidity, for example, but this does not hinder that it is restored
and when necessary, either substituted for something of similar rigidity!
We remember the thesis of Hegel who saw in the heaviest materials a
distancing of the concepts of the spirit, defining the Architecture as the most inferior
art and the poetry as the the most raised one. We do not believe this, but after to
know this thesis arose us the a idea of a sculpture made with solid glass, material
that it would be come close to the hegelian thesis: something almost incorporeal,
almost spiritual.
§104. On the fame, the styles and the perpetual return in the art.
Why do we treat the artists with if they were members of our our family? It is that
when we see repeated times a person, this modifies our cerebral conections and it
makes with that we prefer to choose them and not a strange person: each one
external stimulaton will take us to the memory of the repeated experiences, as a river
that flows better and faster in a wider area and not in a narrow one. These celebrities,
however, even so possess unquestioned a moral character, in reality, also are able to
make mistakes. It occurs that in relation to the strange people we do not have any
information. We have similar behavior with the pioneering people in any activity,
because they are the first ones to become something more clearly before ignored,
that is, unrecognizable. But, we can follow other influential and persuasive people
and to give value to them that they does not deserve, for pure craze fashion.
It is opportune to say something on styles: the plurality of existing styles is not
something harmful. As much more styles to exist and as much more they to reveal
themselves in a way that none of them predominates, the life not only become more
beautiful - harmonic -, as well as, it will be more easy for an artist to keep away from
any “tradition” or school to which could demand that he belonged. He will be able,
thus, in a more easy way to keep away of this chaos of perspectives and the
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possibility to develop its own style will be very great. The problem is that, in general,
the young feels the necessity of tying themselves with a school and, in this in case,
they feel, evidently, pressured for all the sides.
One another important question: we agree to Eugênio Of Ors that believed that
the baroque style was not limited to a phase of history, the Renaissance; he found
baroque traces in other historical periods, as in the prehistoric painting. Is not it
fantastic? Without speaking in the other styles that, in general, it assume, they are
surpassed, by the way, a great deceit. We must remember the thesis of the perpetual
return of Nietzsche: world is cyclical, without start, nor end, or better, with
interminable starts and ends. We, however, desagree to the belief that each time is
always the same, because this would be repetitive and, if we will be able to extend
our discoveries, too, to the universe, we believe that even in the cosmos - as well as
in our mind – exist a rejection to repetitions events.
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happened. We want, in the truth, to extend without end our life, space and time,
because we are thus not surprised at unexpected situations and, therefore,
disordered under our point of view.
§106. Kant and the sublime one. And the degree of the “beauty”.
Kant called “sublime” a being or object whose dimension exceeds our capacity
to perceive it, causing in us a “sensation of inadequation”. But why do not to call
“sublime” as something that possesss “a very great degree of beauty”? His example,
of the cathedral of Rome, seems to indicate this: a cathedral is composed of diverse
elements that we wait are in harmony. Therefore, we oppose to the kantian definition
of sublime that, for us, it corresponds to an image - or another kind of sensation -
perceived under the maximum degree possible, in way that the image of the object is
almost completely without focus.
Artists and critics will say that a screen with just one uniform color will not be
beautiful; we agree, because the correct term is to say “sublime”. But, when Kant
wrote that the night is sublime and day, only beautiful or, then, that the man is
sublime and the woman, beautiful, he only presented his perspective. Led for his
subjectivity - that dominated almost all his work - Kant committed many other similar
errors as we saw in part II (§59), of his “Critique of Judgment”: he remembers that the
violet color can differently be felt by different people; for some, it is “soft and amiable”,
for others, “dull and weak”. It would not have, for him, any possibility to analyze the
violet color, objectively, as when we observe the space that it occupies in a screen in
comparison with other colors - what we call “isocronia”.
In return to the question of the beauty: we can find, for example, that a black
woman is so or more beautiful than an Asian one, but, both, in lesser degree than the
beauty that we attribute to a brunette or a blonde people. And we are not relating to
the sexual desire, that depends on other experiences and that let us use detailed–
acute - perceptions.
But, someone can, also, ask us, if we will be able to feel an object or being as
partially beautiful? Yes. A building, for example, can be beautiful in a restricted area
of its side of the front. How does this work? When we are of ownership of a certain
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degree of detailing, the perception can focus a part of the building and to lose focus
on others. That is very common and we try this with our photographic devices, for
example.
§108. The physiological and the cultural beauties. Hume and the enemies.
Something needs a bigger clarification: which is the preponderant factor for the
feeling of the beauty: physiological or the cultural one? In general, what it matter is
the cultural aspect. Here is useful the same relation that Plato and much other
philosophers had made when had analyzed the human societies: in a large extent of
the human groups predominate the irascible and concupiscible parts of their souls;
just in few rare examples, the intelective one.
The culture is so strong that we still believe today (in twenty and first century
A.D.) that we are part of a human species, as if we shared of one same form. The
culture is as a third skin, the fetal is the second one, both them are added to the
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original surface. When we are dressing many clothes, ones on the others, on the
original layer it goes being deposited an increasing number of layers or cultural
experiences - gotten in the interaction with other people. This is not bad: what we
would make alone, if all the economic progress, of public health, the ways of
information, gave, exactly, in the exchange among people and their different degrees
of perception!
But is clear, for us, that the physiology is in the bedding of our choices, including
those decisions oriented by social culture. What changes are the degree of our
mental percepient structures. An indication of that the pleasure of the beauty is,
before everything, mental, is given by David Hume, in his “An Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding” (Book III, part I, Seç.II): we can find beautiful qualities same
in our enemies, even so we do not like them, not even their presences are pleasant.
Here, the physiology is determinative on cultural values.
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But, it is necessary we attempt about the fact the perspective in which we
observe only the elements of a work, the ratio among them and the duration that will
produce in our mind, is very difficult to be reached. We tend to perceive a work
according to style that is more familiar or, then, we relate to the culture in which we
were educated and to the more common experiences lived byus, in a imediate and
limited way.
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observing the results that had appeared five years later, she said that we had “gift” to
take care plants. Nor reason, nor dom, only the sense of order - aesthetic - folloied of
an ample degree of the perception that is reached when we breach the most recent
layers, cultural. In fact, we do not breach all of them, because we observed frequently
other gardens to see the form of the seedbeds - that we choose one different, half-
circle, beyond to copy those species more used as ornamental plants.
There is something that we believe to be very important to say: when Plato
wrote that the beauty is good, he did not see that exist things that are beautiful, but
are not moral, as a weapon. He made a mistake when did think that the beautiful
things were part of the group of the good things. We suggest, pioneering, to invert
this phrase: the moral things are part of the group of the beautiful things, that is, the
moral sense nothing more is that the aesthetic sense and the harmony that we
search in the social life it is not different of the harmony that we search when we paint
a picture with diverse colors; thus, the good is good, because it is beautiful! An
addition that we make to the reasoning of George Moore (§63, [1]): the pleasure is
desired by being good; but, the good is not the end, because the good is beautiful
and, thus, the beauty is the end!
It is opportune to remember Nietzsche (“Human, All too human”: §174-77,
§122): he saw in the art the great “stimulant” of the life, “the only force that can resist
the pessimistic views of the life”, he believed that the scientific man is the continuity of
the aesthetic man and that is the art and not morality the supreme activity,
“Metaphysical”, of the human being”. That is, we are born to make art, to search
harmony in everything and to create and to transform the world!
§111. The propensity to the art, the Philosophy and the architecture.
We remember a poem of Cândido Portinari, known Brazilian painter, that we
read in a universitarian thesis of Ângela Anchor: (page 119): - “I was always different;
I was always surplus. In everything. What all had I did not have. Sometimes I think to
have come by mistake, the material used to manufacture me, there in the infinite, was
destined to form tree leves or… water. Why did you came if you nothing feel”. The
previous stretch could indicate that the good artists, as the good philosophers, both
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rare ones, would be insensitive to the world. More ahead, Portinari writes: “the artist
in the solitude… sees anima (soul) in inanimate” (...) “I saw a tree giving concert and i
saw the sands dancing. The waters of the sea crying and beating themselves. I heard
clouds to talk”.
We are not here for knowing if the waters cry, because this is poetry! But, if we
are conscientious and parts of a universe, is because the universe is something alive,
fact that, the people in general, do not perceive. Before we fall in another paradox,
we think that the artists are sensible in an ample degree that predominates, for the
most part of them, in their perception, whereas most of the people, are sensible in a
more detailed degree of the perception. While the people of the first group ask - how
Cézanne made - “where are we useful to the world? ”, of the second group asks:
“where do the world can be useful to me”. This sends us to the similar phrase
pronounced by North American president John Kennedy; however, we distrust when
the politicians ask for us make still more sacrifices …
Of everything that we said until here, it is evident that we reject that aesthetic
sensitivity is genetic: children who are stimulated to draw, will be candidates, at least,
the good artists, saved if an ackward experience or the lack of some stimulaton, to
make them to keep away of the arts instruments. Thus, pain and pleasure, more or
less intense, will affect more or, then, less the degrees of our perceptions and will
determine our future choices. Already the education, it avoids to repeat the errors that
others had committed and to usufruct of the rightness.
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we must pass. Because we dress clothes: they prevent us to mix our corporal smells
with the others ones that are in the world and facilitate the identification of the
divisions of our body, what it becomes pleasant to the senses.
Then, which will be the future that we reserve to the nature? It will be modified
completely, because - unfortunately - it is not possible to carry through the romantic
vision of a life integrated with the animals. Will Durant remembered, in “Mansion of
Philosophy” that the apparent harmony among us and the nature hides a prehistoric
fierce fight of our ancestrals and wild animals, fighting for the life and disputing the
space and the food. Thus, only remains us to reconstruct the world to our similarity
or, more necessarily, in accordance with the physiology of our minds. But, of this, this
is not followed that we must agree to the extinguishing of the species, because also
provokes in our mind, a pain, because the ample perception - present in all the
people, but even so intense in some one - is taken offense when it perceives the loss
of some of the existing elements in the world. For example: to see dolphins and
whales died for fishing (practice for nations advanced cultural and economically, as
Japan) in the beach, to know that animal as chimpanzees are used in laboratories or
that use poisons to kill rats dry its blood, provoking a violent death, instead of to
observe them as livings creature and integrated in the nature, as an inseparable part
of the beautiful picture that is the nature or same the entire universe. That substitute
the animals for voluntary human beings in scientific researches!
Maybe we can preserve the genetic inheritance of lions, tigers, sharks,
elephants, etc, producing, from them, dwarfed specimens and, thus, being able to
integrate them in our life. But, we believe that is too much extreme desire to preserve
current species; first, because there aren’t “species”, being that the correct one would
be to say that each individual is its respective species. And, second, why do not to
think that genetic engineering can develop total diverse beings of the current ones?
Why not a herbaceous whose caule has the texture of the marble rock? Or, then, one
plants with transparent stem with the gene of the sea jelly? Or one plant that
blossoms all year and has varied perfumes? Who would doubt the utility of having
trees - with modified genes - what grow quickly and consummate many times more
carbonic gas that its sisters? Perhaps the most radical ecologists (echo terrorists) do
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not like the idea, but what to wait of people whom reject to plant exotic trees, what it
would be the same that to forbid foreigners living among Brazilians in Brazil!
And what will come after the human beings? We thinks that we are the end of an
evolution, the end point, but we are a “comma”. Would not like the reader to have four
arms to make more things that we make or that its descendants reach the size of
planets or galaxies? I would. And the fingers of the feet and the hands that we do not
use much, will not they disappear as everything what is little used?
Of what we said before, is not followed that we defend the end of the ecological
reserves and the destruction of forests and the diversity of vegetal and animal life
contained in them. But, we must be conscientious that they are created because of
our feeling of guilt for invading the natural environment and they will only hinder
harmful human contact with the fauna and the flora. And if the growth of human
population will be controlled, great areas could be preserved, as a saving on that if it
can count in the future. But, exactly that a people little grows - close to the zero - in
some centuries or thousand of years, the green areas will threaten! All our efforts of
the ecologists (including the echo terrorists) will only aim at to be slow, to impose a
slower rhythm, the transformation of the nature for human. It is possible, also, after
some thousands of years of protection of certain ecosystems, we observe an
evolution of the other animals and in millions of years, significant advances as those
for which we pass, as “human species”.
There are others questions to consider:
(a) our mental structure does not understand why we would have to accept the
separation (and the distance) of the unbroken nature and the “anthropic” influence, as
the ecologists say. Therefore, we agree in part to Hegel for who saw the human
activity on the natural was not a destruction, but an internalization and posterior
transformation, even so we know that the limit between “destroying” and “to
interiorize and to transform” is effectively difficult of being observed;
(b) we will not be able as species to give place the other most complex ones,
new forms to replace the old ones? Maybe living beings that reach the size of the
planet! Exactly that it has taken millions of years, if this to occur, we ask: which will be
the place of the forests? None!
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9) WHEN THE LOGIC BECOME ILLOGICAL
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prevent to see the logic as the search of laws of the thought, because this would put
the freedom of choices at risk. Of what we discover for our reflections, is that we are
determined and the mental functioning can be explained. In any way, the laws
proposed for the logic specialists are incapable to explain the mental functioning.
Already the notion that there are correct reasonings, assumes a path and on
this, also, we disagree, because it is not the path - shorter or long - that it matters, but
if it has a correspondence between what we say and what is in the world, if the
degree of our identical perception and to the detail degree that is in the world. But,
the biggest error of the logic specialists was and still is to develop more complex
studies each time, without answering, before, to a first question: what are forms? We
said, before, that forms is sensation - or set of sensations - that our perception is
capable to apprehend of what is there in the world. It can’t be folloied of its content,
but when this occurs it is because a mental process that the take content off of focus.
It is as if our brain was composed of a series of lenses, that approached or moved
away ones from the others, makes focus or not on details that are in the world.
Without speaking that we only place the ideas under the form of a silogism (premises
and conclusion), later that we discover some knowledge, as well said John Locke,
what becomes the logic useless. The logic as taught in the schools seems the
definition of pig sausage: you take guts off the pig and put the pig inside of the guts,
that is, you take logic off the human mind and try to put mind inside of this logic.
§113. What it is the “form” and the nonsense argument of the “sorites”.
However, if the form does not exist separate of the substance, then why to
believe that exists the possibility of previously, without going to the world, being able
to say if an argument is valid or not? The so basic unfamiliarity of something as this,
lead the logic specialists the great errors as the paradox of “sorites”, of origin in
Ancient Greece, but that was in twentyth century rethink: the paradox consists of
asking how many grains of sand we need to take it off a mount for leaving of being a
mount? It is necessary to distinguish that the form of the mount is distinct of the sum
of the grains. And which the amount of grains that will make difference? It will depend
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on the capacity of our perception to perceive the mount of grains, from the addition or
withdrawal of a certain amount.
There are other paradoxes, contemporaries, as the conceived for Hempel.
Although he do not given account of this, show us that the problem inhabits in what it
is understood for “form” and not in the procedure of confirmation of a theory. The
paradox consists, in short, given a law under the general form “∀x (FxGx)” (that is,
for all element that is part of a certain class, if the element, “x”, belong to group “F” or
have a predicate “F”, then it belongs to group “G”) and since a certain tested
empirically element “x” discloses that “x” belongs to that law, then, it also will confirm
a law equivalent, as the following one: “∀x (¬Gx¬Fx)”. The paradox that appears is
the following one: if “all the trees have cellulose”, then it is equivalent to “everything
what it does not have cellulose, is not tree”. It would be enough, then, that any object
was presented to prove that trees exist, as a bottle cover, for example, what a sounds
nonsense. The problem inhabits in the fact of that the contemporary logical - since
the Middle Age -, for the vanity of its thinkers, aristocratic view or, still, for its
allegiance to the theology and not to the Philosophy -, keep it away of that one
idealized by Aristotle that thought not to have “thought without an image”, creating a
medieval dualism: two worlds whose limits are as what we observe between the
water and the oil, two elements that can’t be mingled! What we are saying is that the
logic, today, beyond artificial, became myope and, when, insists that the forms are
independent of the experiences, confuses different things as if they were identical, as
an elephant with an automobile. If we look at them at a distance, our perception will
be able, certainly, to confuse one with another. But, why to keep this confusion?
§114. Nietzsche and the natural selection of logic. And the natural logic.
An interesting question raised by the German philosopher of nineteenth century
was to assume that some species that saw the world as really it is, that is, in constant
change, had been extinct giving to its place the species as ours, capable “to
suppose” the existence of commom characteristics in things and beings of the world,
what allows definitions as “species”, “forms”, “sorts”, etc. In his words: “it was
necessary that by long time the changeable in the things was not seen, was not felt;
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the beings that did not see with precision had an advantage ahead of those that saw
everything in flow”.
Although, we recognize the intelligence of this analysis, it does not seem us
correct: exactly bacteria live harmonically among themselves, what it means that
exactly very small forms of life recognize each other. Thus, it does not makes sense
that could exist beings that were unaware of its fellow creatures, except if they did not
possess any kind, despite primitive, of sensation and perception. On the other hand,
when we have a very particular perception, directed toward singulars things, we
become isolated of the world, our possibilities of supervened would diminish and, in
this point, the thesis of Nietzsche would be proven.
But, the central problem of that thesis inhabits in the fact that one being does not
have only one degree of perception in its mind, except the children in its first days of
life, when they passes of an ample perception, where, as Freud said, does not
distinguish himself from the remaining portion of the world. Only then, gradually, with
passing of the years, the child will identify singular beings and objects and, later, the
external similarities between the beings and objects. In all this process, none of the
previous arrangements of the perception disappears, but they remain in the mind and
they can be used if the layers most recent will be exceeded.
Is the logic a monopoly of the human beings? It would be necessary that they
proved that we are human, that is, all of us share of an only and commom form. But,
in the simple observation of the animals, we can recognize, despite primitively, logical
actions. Crisipus - stoic philosopher - certain time observed a dog that chose -
logically - among three ways one for which another dog had past, before: it smelled
the first way, later, smelled the second one and, without smelling third, chose it and
left very rapid. Why it did not smell the third way? Crisipus answered: it was the only
way that lacked!
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(3) “Marcus Aurelius is pianist”.
The Logic specialists say that it is an invalid argument. Why? Will not be able to
exist a Marcus Aurelius that is pianist and famous? Or, speaking logically, we will not
be able to deduce, in certain experiences, that Marcus Aurelius is pianista, if we know
that he is famous, if we are in a colloquy on pianists? The same reasoning valley for
the silogism:
(1) “all the unfed one is anemic”,
(2) “John is anemic”, then,
(3) “John is unfed” is not a valid argument, but “all the anemic is unfed, John is
anemic, then John is unfed” is correct? The logical relations are irreversible as the
chemical reactions or as of the Physics, reversible one? If “irreversible”, then the logic
also is submitted to time (for those that believe in time, real and external to us), fact
that it intends to deny, because assumes the irreversible time as something! Of
course that, if we define “unfed” strictly it can means “a person not well feed in some
nutritional foods”, what do not means iron mineral, for example and, thus, nor all
unfed people has need of iron mineral. But, who can stablish which is the correct
definiton? Only those people that are talking about!
The logic specialists will have to admit, too, that the thought is irreversible, what
it is a nonsense. But we aren’t dening the series of cause and efect in world, but we
are saing that our mind after a cause and a effect had occured, it can choose
perceive the effect first.
Certain time the dog of our family was having difficulty to defecate and when it
finally got:
(1) “its excrements seemed droughts”, as it was dry clay!
(2) “seems that it ate soil” and the conclusion,
(3) “it ate the soil of the piss box of the cat”!
It did not have no freedom in our thought, but, yes, a series of connections of a
rememberance to the other in the mind. The term “soil” was the key of the solution
and did not have importance the position of it in our mind! We must think about a new
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kind of logic - “three-dimensional” -, that it incorporates the space, time and the
degrees of our perceptions!
Let us to make a critical reading of famous silogism of Aristotle:
(1) “All the men are mortal”,
(2) “Socrates is a man”, then,
(3) “Socrates is mortal”, it suggested us some contradictory questions between
this deduction and the aristotelian Philosophy that believed in immortality of the
human form or at least, through the generation of children. The first phrase,
recognized for that thinker as a “universal statement”, would not pass, then, of a
relative statement to the group of individuals, the particular facts!
The explanation of that the logic would eliminate ambiguities of the Portuguese
language or of other languages that people use in our daily life, does not have any
reason, because what they call “ambiguities” are, in reality, distinct degrees of our
capacity of perception. When two people use the word “garden”, can be relating to
the degrees of detail that they had tried throughout their lives, having in their minds
distinct images as a soil covered of gram and trees, for the first person, or a tropical
garden, with orchids, bromelias, palms, victory-regal, etc, for second one. Another
example that the logic especialists use to show the thesis of the ambiguity of the
languages: “John and Mary had married”. Then, they ask: did John married with Mary
each one or they married to others two people? Seem us clear that it constitutes rule
of the grammar to add an oblique proname to the verb; in this in case, “they had
married themselves”, we are in relating to an union between John and Mary. There
isn’t, therefore, any ambiguity.
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on our capacity to perceive with greater or minor details the limits of the things that
are in the world. Therefore, to say that the previous phrases can be substituted by the
same logical is to compel the people to see the world under a specific and
determined detail of beforehand for some “Logicrats”. For us observing the two
couples as possessing of one same logical form - in fact the form is not in them, but
in our mind -, is necessary to lose the focus of our perception in a way that let us
perceive only two spots together! Or of one another way, why the corresponding form
“to love” must be equal “to like”?
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part of an identity relation (or equality) se they are annexed to an explanation or a
knowledge that, in the conception of Frege, depends on the experience that we have
with the used language to communicate these expressions.
In our opinion, the explanation of Frege would lead us to a return to the infinite,
because how the addition of a meaning would establish the identity with each
sentence on Venus? Seem us that it required other elements to explain the
explication, or better, an infinite number of them and becomes impossible decides
question. Words are stipulated symbols, sounds or images, related to other sounds or
images. How do they could be the connections that allows an identity?
If we observe the idea that we are someting identical, we will note how this belief
arise: it depends of repeated images and our capacity to see each of them as was
the same. Thus, in case of Venus planet of Frage’s example it is enough overlapping
in the mind the successive images of the trajectory of the planet that makes to appear
in our minds an imaginary line, the real or approached trajectory of that object.
Willard Quine, before us, had this observation: “...one astronomical observation was
needed...”
The proper Quine has a very interesting thesis in his article “The Sense of New
Logic” (p.136), he believed that a river was always the same - “an extensive object,
as much in the time as in the space” -, considering the “total of its diverse
instantaneous states”, exactly that changes its constitution, that the water drops are
not more the same ones, etc. Thus, how we could call something “river” that we do
not know since the beginning? Exactly if we knew, which the criterion to differentiate
a drop as of the river and not of the atmosphere?
Piaget, in twenty century A.D., in his fantastic studies with children (even so
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in century sixteenth century A.D., has been the true
pioneer in the inquiry on how the children learn), looked for to show that the principle
of the identity appears in a certain age of infantile life and, therefore, it does not exist
always in the mind of them. In the work “Wisdom and illusions of philosophy”
(Chapter I, page 83), he remember that when asking the children how many balls
saw ahead of them, they answered “seven”, but, moving away a little more the space
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between the balls, and to repeat the same question, children answered “eight”, after,
“nine”.
It is obvious that, in this in case, the children took as “all” not only the object
“ball”, but the set and, exactly, the relation of space between them. It seemed to have
between the child and Piaget an error of communication, because there are different
ways of perception of the reality. Thus the children go, gradually, learning to perceive
“ball” as an isolated object of space and “seven” as the amount of objects, also,
independent of the position in the space.
Piaget recognizes - more ahead in the same work (chapter III, page 140) - that
the children “center everything on their own action and the subjective impressions
that follow it”. And, for this, they would not perceive that, exactly having been
modified in the distance between the balls, the total number of them would continue
the same. But, if the distance to continue to be increased, there will be a moment
where the child will pay attention that there wasn’t any alteration of the number, only
alteration in in the distance among the balls. That is easy of being understood: the
children had given attention to the question of the adult - on how many balls there are
ahead of them -, and they undertood literally the belief that they not only would have
to observe the balls, but its distribution in the space among them.
The same problem occurred when a certain volume of a liquid inside of a
container with a certain form was placed in another one of a different form, passing to
be seen, for the children, as if had been occurred an alteration of the amount of the
initial volume!
Any way, it does not seem adequate to say that the children do not possess or
they do not use the “principle of the identity” before the seven or eight years,
therefore, thus, how we would explain that a child already recognizes its mother since
very early?
Finally, we would like to criticize Wittgenstein for who the principle of the identity
is something useless, because it is a tautology, that is, to say that “A” is equal to “A”,
would not add nothing. First, the principle is not useless, because for backwards of it
there is a promise of unit of the entire universe. And, second, is not of the isolated
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observation of a thing “A” that we affirm that “A” = “A”, but of our need to distinguish
“A” from other objects and beings around it.
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Our solution rests in the mental physiology: what it makes with that we pass of
an image for another one (and we establish relations, comparisons, etc) is that the
repetition of the first image makes them to appear the sensation of duration and,
then, we pass to the image following, or better, an image if it becomes strong more
than the first one. A relation occurs when we overlap at least two perceptions - of
sensations gifts, last memories or imagination of future facts - and, of this
overlapping, we identify to similarities or differences. But, in fact, we are not who is
overlapping such images; it is because they possess similar degrees of intensity,
then they appear ahead of our consciousness. When we see that an object “A” is
greater (there are a bigger amount of sensations) that another “B”, the two images
appear ahead of us and such difference provokes pain, without it depends on any act
of will, because the image of “A” and “B”, apparently simultaneous, the “A” differs
from “B”. It is not the greater that will provoke pain in the memory (duration), because
how much bigger something is makes with that the structure of our perception
extends (become amplest), what reduces the sensation duration in the memory.
Perhaps because this pleases us to see somebody higher than us and, because this
the human societies prefers leaders higher, for example.
In the first edition of this workmanship, we present a critical one to the table of
values of truth. Not because they are established, in last analysis, in the causality
idea, with which we agree: once we observe that from an event “A” it follows event B,
then, whenever to occur “A”, B also will (can) occur or, more specifically, B (will can
be) consequence or effect of “A”. The other problem is that the logical still believe that
if the event “A” is false and “B” is true, thus, the relation will be true. But, we ask: what
relation is there here? None.
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object, as we could see in the Etymological Dictionary, of Augustus Magne. For that,
thinkers of the quality of a David Hume had been deceptive by his own perception.
For him the “causality” is solely a mental operation and that it does not exist as reality
in the world.
Already Barush Espinoza thought differently: causa was a process that makes
with that something become what it is. But, what is a process? It is a series of events
or one event that develop itself, as a movement of an ocean’s wave that has start,
development untill an end. We think in to identify “cause” as a real “path”, but, too, to
a line that our mind image from the spatial’s positions in which location of the objects
in the world (despite it is better to think as the top side of wave of one same
substance, the universe). When we binding these positions, taking the objects as the
points of geometry, we establish the relation of cause and effect. When we say that
an object “A” is the cause of object “B”, this means that “A” is the extreme point of a
path perceived for us or, then, “A” is the beginning of the path that will be able to
have its ending in “B” and, in this case, “A” is called the necessary cause of “B”. But
there are two meanings when we say “to be cause of “B””:
(1º) when “A” is diferent of “B”, when two billiards balls colide each other;
(2º) when “A” becomes “B”, when “A” change its physical or chemical state.
But, how to persuade people whom they do not see as we see, thinkers who
believe that nothing would hinder that the billiards ball crossed to another one,
without touching it, or as the Al-Gazali Arab, who said that the fire was not the cause
of the cotton to burn, but that the two substances were present when the experience
occurred? A different reply is necessary: to believe in that is accepting that two
objects could occupy place in the space the same and, this, would reach the principle
of the not-contradiction, therefore, nothing it can be and not to be, in the same
perception (as we saw in §119); two objects, together, would be distinct each one,
but, also, would be one third object, combination of two previous objects. But, that
thinker could say that God can everything… and He himself is the cause of
everything. But, so, He will be guilty for everything!
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Another possible solution is to make use of the rejection of Hume in the
existence of a “ego” in us: if it does not exist, no idea is subjective, included the idea
of “cause and effect”.
§122. What are they subject and predicate? And on denotation and
connotation…
Why, when we are ahead of two objects, one of them will be placed in the
position who we call “subject” and the other of “object”? For this reply we appeal to
our thesis of the degrees of the perception: we believe that we will choose as
“subject” that being, object or relations among others, for which our perception direct
immediately our attention, that is, to one to be, an object or relations that demand - to
be perceived - a degree ampler of perception and, thus, less detailed. Let’s
exemplify: when we see a tree we perceive its totality, we see its more external limits
and, gradually, conform our interest, we go perceiving more details that were before
not perceived, as its color, the form of the twigs, the texture of the trunks, the
existence of flowers or fruits, if it move strong with the wind, etc. Therefore,
everything what we define as subject corresponds to the less detailed perceptions of
entities - beings, objects or relations - that they are, naturally, perceived for us. What
we call “predicated' consist of the diverse details, properties of what we first had
observed. Such definitions will seem - and, certainly, they are - obvious; however,
until this moment no thinker had explained what occurs in our mental physiology for
attributes to an element the condition of to be “subject” and to another, “predicated”.
Aristotle in the work “Metaphysics” (book VII, Chapter 13, line 1038b) wrote that
the substance - or substratum -, that is, what it remains although all change in the
world, is that of which everything is predicated, without to be it predicated of anything.
Therefore, it is the first subject. And this aristotelian definition identifies perfectly with
the explanation that we had exposed in the previous paragraph. As it is only
predicated that can to present itself to our perception with bigger degree of detailing,
then it is impossible that the first substance was the predicated or that, in the before
example, the tree was the predicated of the green color and, this therefore, it does
not have nothing previous to the tree, when our perception is directed to it!
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It is evident that as we said before, that the long quarrels between Frege and
Bertrand Russell on if a sentence is a relation between concepts, a co-presence of
concepts, as when we say that “Socrates is seated” or, if an sentence express a
relation between a subject and predicate, lose reason and are decided definitively.
It is opportune to say something on the universal terms, species, sorts, etc: one
of the objections, perhaps the main one, to the empirist thesis on the general terms
as ideas of particular beings, is that we do not know of what image of the diverse
men that we know, for example, high or small men, would come the term and the
general image of “man” or of “humanity” ? Our reply is simple: the general term
comes of an image that has been perceived according to a more detailed degree of
the perception.
It remains, however still, one doubt: do expressions as “the present king of
France” assign to beings or ideas? We believe that they can be explained, too, by our
thesis of the physiology of our mind: when hearing the word “present” and “king”, will
appear, in our memory, images of present kings that we know, nowadays. But, when
they mention that the king is French, il will appear a pain in the memory - for the
emptiness or insufficience of an image. So, it is a mistake to say that the phrase is
false, as Russell intended, because all product of our imagination nor is false, nor
true! Before us, Peter Strawson said that the expression “is bald”, is not true, nor
false, because it is something that we intends to say of a inexistent thing. That
intention of Russell was different of the definition given by Aristotle: (1) truth is “to say
what it is of that is or what is not of that is not” and, (2) the false is “to say what is of
that is not or what is not of that is”, because Aristotle said of that exists effectively,
condition to make these correspondences.
We will not give much attention to the enigmas (or paradoxes) of Bertrand
Russell that are in his article “On the denotation”, as the sentences: “George IV
desired to know the author of “Waverley”, “Scott was the author of Waverley” and the
conclusion: “George IV desired to know if Scott was Scott”. These sentences can be
decided with our thesis of the “degrees of perception”: nor always the people are of
ownership of all the degrees under which they can perceive the world our return.
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Nor other enigma about mathematical sets : “if a set is composed of all sets
except themselves”, it would seem a contradiction, because the set must to have
among the sets, but it couldn’t be inside itself. Let’s image the set of South America,
composed for others sets, countries, and, then, the question leaves to be a paradox!
The problem is that Russell did not look an empirical explanation, but an - ilusory –
one, purely formal.
A last question: how we understand the historical distinctions as, “extension and
understanding” - of Leibniz -, “reference and sense”, “denotation and connotation”, of
Stuart Mill? They correspond the moments in the process of meaning. When we know
an object for the first time, we associate the name to its image, sound, etc. Until then,
did not have one meaning, one understanding or a connotation, just a extension, a
reference or yet, a denotation. At the following moment, we can extend our
knowledge, acquiring information on the uses of the object and its relations with other
objects and beings. When to a native american was presented with a radio device, it
learned the name of the object and, later, he uses it. Its perception suffered a gradual
magnifying: (1°) he knew the object and bound its image to a name, a sound; and,
(2°) he learned the causes and efects related to that object, that is, its uses and
reasons for its uses.
An error that not only Bertrand Russell, but, before, Frege, had committed was
to believe that the logic was in the bedding of the mathematics. Unfortunately, we
can’t agree to them: logic and mathematics are sisters, children of the internal sense
of order - of pains and the pleasure, purely mental -, and, of the association, of that
feeling with one certain degrees of our perception.
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§123. The origin of the figures: circle, triangle, etc.
Observing a shrub - a dracena, whose leves grow almost completely in 360º
around its trunk - the image of a circumference appeared in our mind. Of this
observation, we infer that the geometric figures, appear of the loss of focus of the
images that we observe in world. In fact the respectives images aren’t taking ready
from the world (see §123).
By the way, what is a circle? Plato defines it as a figure whose extremities are to
one same distance of the center. It is a definition, not its essence. Already for
Espinosa, the essence of the circle says respect to the process that makes with that
something comes to be circle: we assume that this involves an instrument as the
compass and the procedures until drawing the figure - that, we know, never will be
equivalent to the perfect idea of circle that we have in mind. For us, circle is a figure
that appears when our perception lose the focus of an image of any round object as
fruits, planets or dracenas. For a reason of curiosity, we want to contribute for the
belief that exist “squared circles”, question that frequently is cited by logic specialists
as a nonsense: if we define circle as a figure that has infinite sides, if follows that it
has, also, four ones and, therefore, all circle is, also, a square.
And how a triangle appears? It appears when we are ahead of mental pain to
see three separated points, but that they could be linked. Already an equilateral
triangle appears of pain not to see the three points to one same distance or, more
precisaly, of a pain - duration - that appears when we compare the three straight lines
and we perceive that they are different.
§124. What is a point? And a line, is composed of points? An new
“Euclidean Geometry” based in brain physiology.
Is it a figure without dimension? Difficult to perceive something that does not
have dimension. For the simple fact of being called geometric figure already
backwards in itself the idea of that it refers to a space - mental or existing in the real
world. Probably, it is related to the sensation of an object of very small dimension and
of which we only perceive the form, the limit most external, as, when we see an ant to
some meters of height, apples in the high of a tree, small signals in the skin, almost
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imperceptible, etc. we cannot forget, also, the “period”, as graphical and grammatical
symbol, that we place in the end of the phrases and, that under certain dimension it
seems to reproduce the mental idea of “point”.
We were looking at the strong rain that fell and we observed that we did not see
the drops, but lines! We were on of those that rejected that the line was composed for
points, but if our ideas come of the images that we observe, then we must review our
belief: it is from the drops that fall very fast that we perceive a line. And what does it
makes that line seems to go for low, as it does? We believe that the mind perceives
the drops, but simplify our work show us the first drop and the last one and between
them show us a line.
And for two points does it pass only one straight line? Only if points and straight
line have the same diameter.
A new geometry would have to be written to approach the abstract kowledge to
sensorial one, that never had been separated! By the way, we started to write a book
to explain the origin, in the physiology of human mind, those axioms of geometry that
greek mathematician Euclid had systematized. However, the work was lost, but,
today, we don’t see any dificult to the reader ou maybe a mathematician can alone to
develop its own thesis, comparing each mathematics true with our thesis on the origin
of mental duration folloied with the thesis of degree of perception.
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have open hand of one part of this, when he accepted that we could know tones of
blue color, without previous experience. How? Our reply it consists of saying that the
mental pain that appears for the gap - lacks of a blue tone - puts in action the
operation of “average” where two images of blue (preent or memorized) are
compared: one of a stronger tone and another one of weakker one, so that, of these,
it appears, the absent tone.
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people for this area. Interested in proving that everything has a cause, we include the
lotteries. In general, people believe that isn’t possible to foresee the numbers drafted.
But, as well as we know that an airplane that has left a point “A” with one certain
speed and direction will arrive at point “B” in “x” hours, we would be able, in the
future, to know where will be each numbered ball when the globe stop.
Ahead by the impossibility to conceive a sophisticated formula, we take the
following technics:
a) we catch the six drafted numbers (in a universe of sixty possible ones) in the
game called “megasena”, “16”, “18”, “31”, “34”, “39”, and “54” and we subtract each
one for the others, getting series of numbers with the following gaps: “02,03, __, 05”,
“13, __, 15,16”, “20,21, __, 23”. Between the five numbers drafted (in game “quina”,
in the next day) they were “04”, “14” and “22”.
b) we use, still, the technique of “rule of three”, to transform gotten numbers of
distinct universes. In a game called “duplasena” (six numbers in fifity), in Tuesday, we
observed that were drafted seem to indicate a pattern for the next day in “Megasena”:
06 12 15 34 40 46
08 14 15 36 42 48
This numbers above are fictitious, but allow us to show similar event occured
before sometimes. In the next day, it would be possible we see drafted the numbers:
10, 38 and 44, that is, the gap in sequences: “6,8__12,14”, “34,36__40,42” e
“40,42__4648”.
If we aplly “rule of three”, we obtain:
06 12 15 34 40 46 07 14 18 40 48 55
08 14 19 36 42 48 09 16 22 43 50 57, where we can see a gap in a new
series “14,16,18,__,22”, the number “20”;
c) another good track is to observe gaps in the previous drawing: if they had left,
for example, 23-45-46-57 and 61, is possible that in the next drawing it has left
numbers from the set of ten of the thirty, that one that is lacking: 23__45,46,57,61;
Although such techniques do not foresee the totality of the numbers, seem-in
showing them that it does not exist what they call luck, that is, an absence of causes!
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§128. Are there infinite numbers?
If the numbers are product of our perception, as we believe, then they are
potentially infinite, once we could thinking about an increasing series of them, exactly
if the objects of the world were finite, for a pure exercise of the imagination. We go
beyond: we are sure that the numbers are those understanding in the series that
goes from one until the nine, being that, all the others are only combinations of the
former ones, as the places setting that are, primitively, of three types - fork, knife and
spoon -, being that, everything else, are a variation or combination of the preceding
elements, varying only in size. Or, conform our previous thesis (§127), “90” is the
name that we give to ten groups of elements, called together, “nine”.
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their temples, in philosophical theories and, what in it interests us here, to the
inquiries on geometry, of Pytagoras, Thales, Euclid and Archimedes. It is not by
chance that Plato wrote above of the door of the Academy: “that it does not enter
here, who do not to know geometry”!
Let us catch number “9” and let us place it under the form of matrices: we will
have nine figures, but only three of them are matrices, “1x9”, “3x3” and “9x1”. In the
others, elements will remain. Let us catch number “5”: to the exception of the
matrices “1x5” and “5x1”, there isn’t, as in the number “9”, one another matrix.
Because that we believe that a number will be prime when could not be rank under
the matrix form, except in the cases where it appears with number “1”. But, this is not
important, because the “1” is not properly a number, it relates to the perception of the
totality of the elements of a set and not one of them.
We do not know until point this our thesis could be useful to the mathematics,
but it seems us that, at least, this boarding is new, because it abandons the
arithmetical and gives attention to geometry, where it effectively has place, inside of
our minds, especially of those where the perception degree is ampler!
Nothing so deeply took root in the human minds that the belief of the existence
separately of, of a side, God and of the other, the universe. Berkeley was the first to
pay attentio to that such thesis couldn’t be correct, because what it would separate
them, the “nothing”? Would be the “nothing” some thing, one another God, who
imposes and keeps for itself a territory distinct of others? Neither it would make sense
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to think the existence of many gods, therefore, in this in case, it would be valid the
traditional, medieval argument, that for “God” we understands a “perfect being”, that
possesss all the qualities, without sharing them with nobody. We accept that (if God
would exist, what we don’t agree) He woud be something only, nor we rise question if
something without other equal beings can’t be numbered, because even so He can’t
be quantified as “one”, He is “one” in the sense of totality. Saint Thomas Aquinas
defended that the “one” is opposite to the multiplicity of finite beings; but, a thing just
is opposite to the others if they have a common nature and we can, still, understand
“opposition” as perspectives: the stairs that go down are the opposite to that one it
goes up, but, in fact, they are one same stairs!
Remain us, therefore, the alternative of pantheism, where God is identified with
the universe - therefore, does not make sense to pray, because when we pray, we
pray for ourselves. Why isn’t it evident? Because we are God with amnesia or God in
pieces!
In substitution to the image of a creative God who produces its creation, but it
would keep distant of it, as a craftsman that produces a furniture, we suggest the
image of a dancer that puts herself to dance and, where, the creation nothing more is
that the creator in movement (see too Scotus Erigena’s thesis of “teophany” in §35).
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Thomas Aquinas, he says that the expression “from the nothing” is not related to an
origin of the matter, but only one order, a succession: there was a God without a
world and He, then, created the world. Aquinas, seems to believe that there was a
kind of emanation of the things from God, very similar to Plotino’s thesis.
There were two ways that we use to refute that God exists separated of the
universe or, more precisely, for the thesis of that He is identical to universe: (1) by
means of the thesis of pain in the memory and, (2) the ownership of many degrees of
perception, as we will see in §131 and §132 paragraphs.
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organs, although we assume (in theory) He have consciousness – there are who
says that if God created the senses He, also, possess them. However, if we estimate
that God can perceive duration, then, He could perceive a line of events, in a time;
He could relember passed events, but this memory could not be in a space behind
Him, as it is inside us, because we assumes does not exist nothing behind, nor in the
front, nor above and nor below to God.
Plato comes in our aid: in the dialogue “Sophist”, it defends the thesis of that the
“One” - God - of Parmenides would not be completely absolute, because to think -
and the proper “life of the soul” - consists of movements. If one of His capacities is to
think, can’t be immutable, a time that will have succession of thoughts and, in this
way, some will be pasts, other presents and futures. God could not have an
immutable conscieousness, except if He is completely static, as God of Aristotle,
what would make impracticable any act of creation. More correct is to believe that
God doesn’t think, because has even justified reasons to believe that to think is either
physiological and that somebody only thinks when has doubts.
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knowledge, as “simultaneity”, for example. A point in favor of Hegel: for him, the
erroneous belief in the principle of the identity (A=A) hindered the humanity to
understand how the totality becomes multiplicity.
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appeal something supposedly interiorized, hiding, guarding, inside of us and other
objects and beings, exactly because there isn’t nothing inside us, except meat and
bones. The maximum that we could say when we hear to speak of the “essence” of a
person is that we are dealing of his temperament and this, in turn, depends on the
arrangements of its internal perceptions (mental structures or categories). Jean-
Jacques Rousseau wrote that the face of people show, yes, their character, because
when their actions are repeated goes leaving marks in their faces. It’s very interesting
that thinkers had searched to self-knowledge: but, do we know our body from inside?
And how many philosophers and scientists had failed to understand human
behavior?
In century twenty century B.D., thinkers defended that the technology creates a
distinct reality of that our sensorial organs give to us , something unreal. Such thesis
seems inspired in Walter Benjamin who saw with queerness the fact that the
invention of the photograph and of the video camera showed details that weren’t
perceived and, therefore, all this human act would lack of a “aura”, of a proper space
and time. Let’s to send space and time for the devil!
What happen is that our perception can by means of machines be extended, as
well as by means of a microscope seeing beyond its normal capacity. Nor because
we will say that it is one another reality! An example that they gave is of the
pornography that in the sample perspective in bigger number and with more
clearness that we would have when we make sex. But is this something beyond the
real? Our feeling was of that seeing those films would provided more desire to us
than to make sex. But, this occurer by the fact that we did feel a decline of our
physical capacity and understand, today, that we can touch in the body of who we
love exploring new perspectives that we learn in those films. It is all question to
extend percepção and see more that we saw before. That’s the same world!
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nature, it couldn’t never be crossed”. And, still, added: “nothing is complete that it
doesn’t have limits”. Already for theological thinkers, God is infinite, such His
grandeur and perfection! In our opinion, nor a definition, nor another one. This
because we do not see the space, except as an illusion. In such a way - the only one
we believe - we can surpass the antinomy, the paradox, that appears: if he was finite,
He would be limited and if infinite, He would not have limit and - we assume - nor He
would be capable to know Himself or to cross all His magnitude!
§135. One proves of the cyclical world. And had the universe a beginning?
In reply to the thesis of the infinite series (for Espinosa and Hegel, the universe
not had nor start and nor end, progressing for all the eternity to the more complex
levels each time), we offer the thesis of the “cyclical movements”, from the
observation of the development of our perception: we are born incapable to
distinguish what we are of the remaining portion of the world and, gradually, we go
perceiving details, recognizing particular beings and objects, then - retroceding a little
- genus, species and, later - for some still in youth and, for the majority, in the adult
phase or, still, a little before the last breath - will only predominate a mental structure
almost totally ample, that will look for to perceive all universe around. For that, , this
sequence of successive perceptions that we live deeply demonstrates that we finish
our lives coming back to the first perception with which we start. This proves, in our
opinion, that the world is cyclical, has start and end. Let us add that if there isn’t
inside us a “ego” (self), then there isn’t any possibility of this thesis is dealing with a
specific characteristic of the mind human being.
Did the universe have a beggining? It does not make sense, because what is
perpetual is always the same and, we believe, in the case of the universe all is only
always a thing alone, immutable. But, if the human mind extends, make focus on
details and return to an ample perception, we must to wait that the universe, also, do
the same to create groups of living beings and inanimated objects, and, then,
reaches a aspect that remembers one smooth fabric.
And what did it come before? We thought about possibility to think as well as
that the principle of the identity is only valid for the universe as a whole, perhaps to
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the principle of the not-contradiction can be valid only for the cosmos, too. Thus, the
moments of the expansion and the contraction would occur together. The
consequence is that all the moments of our lives, since the birth until the death would
exist simultaneously, but we are not capable to see them or, at least, not so with
necessarily clearness. This would explain, thus, the premonitions or “déjà vu”
(something already seen). But, how this would be possible? We think that a complete
universe, but subtle it was rank in movement, as tracks under the proper Universe
that will be developed; by the way, is necessary that a way exists on which everything
is put in motion, because otherwise, or it would not have movement, or the things
would move in a uniform way, equally spread.
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universe? If it was made of the same matter that the universe, itself would need
something external for existing. If it is different, how this cause would create the
universe? The certainty is that we are like fishes trying to discover what there is of the
side of this aquarium, but in relation to the universe it does not seem to have nothing
of outside!
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§139. On the gravity.
Certain time Newton opposed to the thesis of that between two objects
separated for an emptiness space could have a force (gravity) that was exerted
between them; but, exactly thus, he formulated the theory of the attraction between
bodies. After him, many had speculated on a particle exchange (gravitons). Already
Albert Einstein accepted the thesis of Espinosa of that everything is part of one only
substance and, therefore, the space around of planets and stars, by possessing a
kind of subtler substance, would have to be affected by bodies with denser matter.
The example of the bed with well extended sheet, on which a bowling ball is placed
would show the deformation that a body with dense mass exerts on the space its
return. But, why only in one plan? Here the belief in a gravitational force seems
rooted in the mind of that scientist (in the old Newtonian conception) that it would pull
the ball of bowling or the planets for low!
We believe that the example of the bed and the ball of bowling is very weak,
because the celestial body would deform the space in 360° to its redor; wouldn’t we
must imagine beds and balls of bowling around of 360° of a planet or star? We
mentally find difficult (impossible) to conceive an image thus! And, moreover, we ask:
such deformations would not annul each other? An alternative would be to think that
the planet only deformed the space ahead it in that direction where planet moves, but
thus the moon would not turn together with the Earthe, west-east, but north-south!
A way to solve the question seem us to be the following one: we must see the
Earth, for example, as a portion (dense) of the universe in movement that, when
turning, makes with that everything that is in its return turns together as if it pulled one
fabric (a sheet) its return. What it would make, then, with that we can escape of the
gravity? Well, the spaceships and the rockets already make this, but they need much
fuel. But, without using millions of liters of fuels? Perhaps (in theory it seems easy) if
the object (a rocket) turned in inverse direction of the terrestrial rotation in a about
speed of 107 or 108 thousand kilometers per hour.
If the machine has, 10 meters of diameter, then it must have itself or an engine
in cylinder form that turned below of it a ray of 5 meters or 31,4 meters of
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circumference. Thus, it cylinder to turn 107 thousand km/h, then would need to give
3.407.643, 31 turns per hour, 56,794 RPMs or approximately 946 turns for second.
And that kind of equipment to use to make to turn it? It could be some efficient
engine as the ones that is used in jet airplanes or perhaps something simpler: if
electricity passed around the external side of a cylinder, wouldn’t the machine travel
in the speed of the light?
But, it is necessary care, because many machines like this will can to affect the
speed of the planet and if the Earth to move slowly or to stop, then everything that is
on the surface will be ejected for the space. Perhaps something seemed has
occurred with Mars.
Ten in each ten scientists will say that there already was a proof that the theory
of Einstein was certain: in a solar eclipse was observed that the apparent position of
a star was different of real position and, thus, was concluded that the light of the star
when passing for the deformation in the space around of sun suffered change in its
trajectory. We do not go to argue if the eclipse is only one effect optic, incapable to
modify deformations in the space, what it is a methodological problem for the
physicists. Nor we oppose us to this experience, but, yes, to the theoretical
explanation offered; for us, the light of the star is dragged together with the space in
which it is for the fact that the planet Earth and the Sun to turn around themselves.
But what force do makes with that a planet drags for itself the space (like a
sheet of fabric) of the universe its return? The most easy answer is to say: was “big
bang” or the explosion of a star that formed the current solar system. But, it is
inevitable we think about each time lesser structures until the point where it must
have had a start where no object turning and did not exist, consequently, nor gravity.
But, is possible a pre-cosmic system without gravity? Perhaps, here, we has fall in
our trap: and if there isn’t an indistinct system? And if a thing without parts will be an
error of our thought? Moreover, how something thus would affect and create the
universe, without force? If there isn’t gravity, would universe have freedom for such
creation?
Until the moment where I write these paragraphs I do not know if I must become
public this paragraph §139, because I believe that the thesis of the gravity can lead to
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the construction of a new flying machine, that will be able to substitute airplanes,
helicopters, throwers of satellites and rockets untill the spaceships. Before making
this, we sent letters to the Brazilian government and got a reply from the
technological Institute of the aeronautics (ITA), that it said thus: “The theory of the
relativity of Einstein has sistematically passed for more rigorous tests each time
certifying its veracity. Based in the theory of the gravitation of Newton, that is an
excellent approach of the theory of the relativity of Einstein, we know that the force of
the gravitation alone depends on the product of the masses divided by the square of
the distance between them. Because its premise of that the rotation of a machine in
the opposing direction to the rotation of the Earth would annul the force of the gravity
is a mistake”.
I received, weeks later, another reply, from the INPE. In it, the researcher says:
(1) we do not visualize the deformation that the planet provokes, because aren’t
enough the three space dimensions, but, still, the fourth dimension, the time, thesis
with which we disagree;
(2) more ahead, he adds: “… we go to consider initially that we are with the ship
in one of the polar regions of the Earth (north or south). The axle of rotation of the
Land is, in both the cases, perpendicular to the vertical line and, therefore, it is well
clearly the direction that we must give to the turn of the ship. And if the ship is in the
equator of the Earth? What side do we turn the ship for? After all the Earth does not
turn in relation to the vertical direction in this latitude”.
In a second email seem us to clarify the first one: “The axle of rotation of the
Earth is perpendicular to the surface of the planet in the Polar regions and parallel to
the surface of it in the Equator”. As if we had passed a wire inside of the Earth
leaving in the North Pole or south, but when it passed for the Equator it would seem
an underground and parallel train to the surface. Any way, we believe that there is an
image of a machine in the mind of the scientist: the traditional “flying saucer” that,
according to our theory, could work (and only turn in the opposing direction to the
terrestrial rotation) in the polar regions. However, we think about one another format:
a machine (a cylinder) that it turns on itself in the same direction of the axle of
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rotation of the Earth (west-east) but in the opposing sense (east-west), as it was a
paving machine that is used to built roads.
The researcher suggested the reading of articles, citing the scientist and, also,
writer of scientific fiction Robert L. Forward (with works in detention of gravitational
radiation or undulations of space-time, understood by him as electromagnetic waves,
who could be caught between an interval of frequency of some megahertz) and, also,
Hideo Hayasaka and Sakae Takeuchi, that had made a research where they affirmed
that when having turned a the gyroscope among 3 to 18 thousand rpms, it seemed to
them lighter, as if the gravity was scrumbled, disclosed research, later, full of errors,
second was informed to us.
In another “email” the researcher asked us: “why did we choose the speed of
the Earth around of the Sun instead of around itself 1,667 Km/h (40 thousand km to
each 24h), in the Equator, and zero in the polar regions. It would be, he adds, easy to
levitate in the polar regions”. Maybe this happen when the magnetic field of the planet
leaves through the polar regions!
More ahead: “...thus the gyroscope of the Japanese test (1.080.000 turns per
hour times 0,6m of circumference) gives 648 Km/h. As the experiment was in Japan
(latitude ~35 degrees north) the speed of the soil there, around the axle, it is of 1,667
Km/h multiplied for cosine of the latitude (cos 35 = 0,82). The result is ~1365 Km/h.
Therefore, the gyroscope was turning under the half of the necessary one to levitate
and must have caused the loss of half of the weight. Nothing, however, was
detected”.
We don’t know which speed to choose for this calculation, but we are certain of
that saying that the polar regions don’t have any speed is an extreme abstraction. We
are as the personage of Baron Von Münchhausen flying on a projectile.
On the absence of signals in the test of the gyroscope, we imagine some
analogies: (a) a maritime chain that drags a swimmer although its effort; (b) a rocket
that it needs a thousand liters of fuel to leave the soil and only has half; or, better, (c)
when it was observed for the first time in history that the water boiled with 100°
Celsius, not giving to an observer no signal of this when it reached the half of the
temperature, 50°C or same 99°C!
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CONCLUSION
We are satisfied with the fact that we do not choose the path that we would carry
through, being led from the connections that we observed between a question and
another one. We start for the question of the time, we entered in the mind and its
internal structures, we launch us in more ambitious objectives, moved for the
curiosity.
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Of those we display throughout this work let to make any sense to ask if what it
predominates in us is the instinctive or rational part. We are, in fact, organized in
three layers: (1) a sense of order, purely mental, formed still in the life in uterus ; (2)
one part instinctive, those knowledge acquired after the birth; and, (3) the cultural
part, the rules - good or bad - that we learn in the interaction with the other people.
However, such separation - didactic - does not mean that they are parts in conflict; in
reality, all our choices are determined by one same cause: our sense of order plus a
certain degree of perception!
It is opportune to talk a little more about our rejection to the existence of a “ego”
inside of us: we do not defend this thesis because it is only the half to extend the
moral sense beyond the intrauterine experiences, relating it it a nobler cause - the
reason of our existence. Someone will be able to ask why we must prefer an ample
degree of our perception than another centered in our most immediate needs? Our
reply: for us and good part of the people, who had reached an intellectual and
physical maturity, are more beautiful to see, for example, a couple that lived the
entire life together, because they are loved, than to see somebody that has a new
girlfriend each week or, then to contemplate and to taste a plate with a moderate and
healthful amount of foods than to see somebody competing in a competition to see
who eats the biggest amount of some kind of food. Although it can seem funny,
certainly it is not something that we would say as a supreme end to reach!
We are, thus, convinced to have presented a model of mental functioning that it
does not need to believe in the existence of a “ego”, to work! Certain time, a
professor said that if our actions were resulted of physiological operations, then,
would not have a sense for the life. We disagree completely with him: if the choices
were free - a absence of any determinism - any choice would be the correct one and
the universe would not reach one same end, but diverse ends. But, if there is an
internal sense of order in our minds, has, yes, a common objective!
There were in the first edition of “Who we are?” three points that we considered
paradoxes:
(1) what it is the conscience and as the sensations are, for it, perceived,
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(2) the feeling of the beauty is instantaneous or requires an experience that
involves duration; and,
(3) if the universe are always the same or if it would be possible to be always
different (refutation to Nietzsche).
We believe that we could, in this work, to show that two of the three paradoxes
(of the beauty and the universe as alway same or diferent) are “pseudo-paradoxes”,
false.
But remain two other questions:
(alpha) “what it is the conscience and how sensations are perceived” and,
(beta) if it is possible that the universe contracts and expands at the same time
(question about simultaneity). Both consist, thus, in the central questions and the task
of the Philosophy.
It is clear that for “task of the philosophy”, we want relating to the task to develop
new theories (hypothesis). It can even though be returned to the paradox of the
universe or of the beauty, for, who it knows, to add something new or same to correct
everything what it was written. But, we can work in philosophy in other ways, beyond
the lessons in colleges and universities: we can be innovated in other activities:
schools of philosophy directed for other public, as liberal professional and retired
people and, also, to be consultor to put in practical the ample perception - peculiar of
the Philosophy - assisting sciences, but in a differentiated perspective, looking for to
keep distance from the usual techniques and to inspire new ideas, unknown causes
and new technologies. However, it will only occur if the philosophy education will
stimulate the kind of rare ample perception, that we describe before.
What original discoveries we had made and what are our contributions to the
history of the philosophy? We will enumerate them:
(A) duration is pain that appears in the memory, related to the monotony and the
incompressible experiences and is the cause why we think, we develop mathematics
and we search philosophical and scientific solutions;
(B) past, present and future are position in the space of the point of view of each
person. When we are in front of mirror, even so, science say that our image is
past,for us, is present when we perceive it;
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(C) there aren’t nothing simultaneous, because two sensations together produce
one third distinct perception of the previous ones, as the perception of blue and
yellow, together, it gives green;
(D) the gravity does not result of the deformation of the space, but of the fact of
that the planets, when they turn, drag I obtain the space (ilusorially empty) its return;
(E) our capacity of abstraction elapses from images (and others sensations) of
external objects, without focus, through internal structures, as if it was a set of lenses,
something perhaps organic as the neurons, diferent of Kant called categories and
thought to be transcendental, beyond the physical world. The circle idea, for Plato
pertained to an intelligible world, would be formed from the loss of focus of any
rounded off object, as an orange. But, we are not saying, with this, that the form is in
the things, because colors are forms, too. It seems that from the world alone we
receive impressions and we do not know nothing on the things in itself, but, in true,
each degree of our perception perceives a degree of the world;
(F) with mental structures, in ampler degree, we have our sense of aesthetic and
morality and, when we perceive the elements that compose a work of art or a human
society, where the elements are seen as equally important, being that none of the
parts must be distinguished excessively. Taste must be to debate, yes: if the
perception alone reaches what is more close to us, we say that it is a taste (a
subjective feeling) in contrast with ampler perception, when we compare not the
elements in itself, but the harmony among them, an objective feeling. We go more
far: something is good, because is beautiful, that is, the moral sense is established in
the aesthetic sense and, this, in the fetal experience, of where we learn the harmony
and the completude (absence of necessities);
(G) There isn’t any free will or free choices, because there isn’t simultaneity,
then, two alternatives never are equally available and one always will prevail for its
own force. We follow the strongest stimuli, that series of more intense emotional
experiences than we lived and this makes us happy. Then, why do we punish the
people because they have only one alternative to choose? It remains to think that we
have hope of that this censorship becomes a stronger stimuli than those that had
made him to commit a crime. But, how to know if it has functioned? To free him after
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fulfilled to the penalty or to do tests to identify his degrees of perception: as much
more ample is better! ;
(H) there isn’t a evil taken root in us, because the moral imperatives and the
forms that our mind constructs or perceives in the things can be good or bad,
depending on the experiences that we live. A dealer of drugs or a psychopath can
accept as universal maximum moral the “law of strongest”, exactly that he can be the
victim, therefore, he can undertanding that it is ideal world;
(I) pleasure is a kind of pain, even so subtle, an overflow after a necessity to be
extinct and, therefore, the happiness must consist of the extinguishing of pain and not
in search a pleasure;
(J) There is need of an ego, if all the choices are automatic, determined for
previous experiences, includind those lived when fetus. And without an “ego” inside
us (J1) everything is one alone Being and (J2) nothing is really subjective. More: if we
bring in us perceptions that go since amplest, when we are born, until the most acute
one, with which we recognize objects and beings, can’t we say that such perceptions
represent something similar to the some stages of development of an embryo, since
the primitive forms until the human one? The ample perception, more basic, would
not be that one with which, in the beggining of the world, we would perceive the
universe as only one Being? ;
(L) God cannot think, because the duration, pain, would appear in Him when
perceived repeated times one same thing, unless He doesn’t perceive similarity and,
thus, would see all always as new things. If He could think, would not plan the world,
because when planning, already would imagine to all and we would exist in the
planning, before the world being created. God also can’t be omniscient, because to
perceive everything together is to perceive a mixture and not things separately. Nor
He can have consciousness, if just we can have consciousness of external things;
(M) moreover, to think is physiological, because most part of the times it is
involuntary and when there is a reflection is because there was a ties up to between
the possible alternatives, differing, thus, of the instinct, because this last one results
of repeated experiences as many times that it becomes automatic. And the disdain to
the body in contrast with the divinization of the thought elapses that thinking is next to
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the focal point (consciousness) and the remaining portion of the body is as the
Romans legions when they were thousand of kilometers of the central power of
Rome;
(N) dreams are what it happens, also, when we are waked up, that is, the
respectives thoughts and, therefore, we can’t say that are restrained desires, but, that
they can, yes, to involve the memory of previous frustrating experiences, as well as
happy ones. What happens when we sleep or waked up is that the mind doesn’t to
stop to make analogies, to search similar images or other sensations filling gaps. The
intuition, for example, is a reply that appears after having been done, unconsciously,
many internal relations;
(O) There isn’t a universal rational “will” that would guarantee the unconditional
application of the laws that nothing more are then fragile references, replaceable for
common-sense, a compound of moral sense and customs. The judiciary power must
be elect for universal suffrage and composed for people with description of moral
acts. Do the reader already had repaired that the judges have two speeches: in an
audience, ahead of ex-boyfriends, a judge said that if the victim was his daughter, he
would punch who attacked her, but that, as authority, he could not say or do this!
(P) numbers are, for the aristotelian definition, names that we give to a group or
list of objects or living beings that, for beings without focus, give us an appearance to
possess one same form or an identical specific characteristic. Already the prime
numbers have the following explanation: they are numbers that can’t be ranks under
the form of matrices and, therefore, the question isn’t arithmetical, but it belongs to
geometry;
(Q) the consciousness that we understand to relate to a point on which the
sensations impact, isn’t a physiological operation, because such operation is
sometimes involuntary, othertimes voluntary or, then, is possible of some control,
while other times not, but in the case of the consciousness there isn’t possibility of
any control. When they attribute to it a progress, they made a mistake because it isn’t
what progress, but the brain’ structures and, as well as they progress (they extend),
these structures, also, to retrograde. In another way, why would consciousness
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perceive certain experiences with bigger detailing whereas, in others, with lesser
detail?
(R) we would have to make a retrospect of the relations that we had throughout
the life with the people of the opposing sex to observe with which physical types and
which personalities we feel better, because are those emotionally more intense
passed experiences that will define our future preference. Thus, all the affection form
happens because we following those more detailed neurological connections [END].
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