Karl Popper versus Theodor Adorno: lições de um confronto histórico

Karl Popper versus Theodor Adorno: Lessons from a historical confrontation. In 1961, during the Congress of the German Society of Sociology, two great theoretical references of the XX century faced in a historical debate about the logic of the social sciences. In addition to methodological issues strict sense, the confrontation became known as a debate between positivism and dialectic. The article first deals with the theoretical trajectories of Popper and Adorno and the relation of their theories with their political and ideological certainties. On one hand, the trajectory of the Popperian epistemology is examined, its contributions and vigorous attacks on Marx in what he called 'poverty of historicism" and false predictive Marxist world, and, on the other hand, the role of Adorno in the Frankfurt School, his criticism of totalitarianism and the defense of a critical emancipatory reason. The article also deals with the confrontation itself, the exposure of Popper's twenty-seven theses that culminate with the situation logic and the method of the economy as exemplary for the social sciences and Adorno's critical perspective of sociology and society as non-separable objects. In conclusion we show how the articulation of theory with the weltanschauung of each author helps to clarify the terms of the debate and how the confrontation contributed unequivocally to the dynamics of scientific progress and for the critical history of the ideas.

Persuasão antes que convencimento: apontamentos sobre Wittgenstein e a psicanálise

As relações que Wittgenstein mantém com o pensamento de Freud, como atestaram vários estudiosos, são marcadamente ambíguas: existe, por um lado, uma crítica acerba do caráter pseudocientífico com que a psicanálise apresenta supostas "descobertas empíricas", e do fascínio exercido por este modo de proceder; mas há, por outro lado, evidências da sua admiração pelo efeito dissolvente do uso de metáforas e interpretações, chegando mesmo Wittgenstein a incorporar essa estratégia ao seu próprio método de investigação lógica dos conceitos filosóficos. Neste trabalho pretendo retirar de uma reflexão acerca do método incorporado às Investigações Filosóficas, comparável em muitos aspectos à clínica de uma psicanálise lingüística dessubstancializada, alguns pontos positivos que se poderiam acrescentar à crítica da concepção de linguagem de Lacan.

Of empty thoughts and blind intuitions Kant's answer to McDowell

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell's neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden.2 The focus is on Kant's twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions to conceptual determination is not due some pre-existing, absolute conceptuality of the real but to the "work of the subject."3 On a more programmatic level, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of a selective appropriation of Kant and the philosophical potential of a more comprehensive and thorough consideration of his work. Section 1 addresses the unique balance in Kant's philosophy between the work on particular problems and the orientation toward a systematic whole. Section 2 outlines McDowell's take on the Kantian distinction between intuition and concept in the context of the Kant readings by Sellars and Strawson. Section 3 exposes McDowell's relapse into the Myth of the Given. Section 4 proposes a reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy as an epistemology of metaphysical cognition. Section 5 details Kant's original account of sensible intuition in the Inaugural-Dissertation of 1770. Section 6 presents the transition from the manifold of the senses to the synthesis in the imagination and the unification through the categories in the Critique of pure reason (1781 and 1787). Section 7 addresses Kant's formalism in epistemology and metaphysics.

Putting the horse before the cart: a pragmatist analysis of knowledge

The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is the best we presently have. However, the canonical tripartite analysis of knowledge does not do justice to it due to a Platonic conception of a priori truth that puts the cart before the horse. Within a pragmatic approach, I argue that by doing away with a priori truth, namely by submitting truth to justification, and by accordingly altering the canonical analysis of knowledge, this is a fruitful definition. So fruitful indeed that it renders the Gettier counterexamples vacuous, allowing positive work in epistemology and related disciplines.

Platão, Wittgenstein e a complexidade

No Teeteto, em uma tentativa de definir o conhecimento, Platão trata da unidade e da complexidade segundo um modelo de análise dos complexos em elementos simples não analisáveis. Wittgenstein, no parágrafo 46 das Investigações Filosóficas, cita esse argumento do Teeteto, introduzindo uma crítica à sua própria noção de objeto, no Tractatus. Nosso tema será um exame das noções de elemento e composto, apresentadas no Teeteto e retomadas no Sofista, tendo como horizonte a aproximação, feita por Wittgenstein, entre o objeto do Tractatus e o elemento do Teeteto

Form(s)-of-life: agamben's reading of Wittgenstein and the potential uses of a notion

Giorgio Agamben and Ludwig Wittgenstein seem to have very little in common: the former is concerned with traditional ontological issues while the latter was interested in logics and ordinary language, avoiding metaphysical issues as something we cannot speak about. However, both share a crucial notion for their philosophical projects: form of life. In this paper, I try to show that, despite their different approaches and goals, form of life is for both a crucial notion for thinking ethics and life in-common. Addressing human existence in its constitutive relation to language, this notion deconstructs traditional dichotomies like bios and zoé, the cultural and the biological, enabling both authors to think of a life which cannot be separated from its forms, recognizing the commonality of logos as the specific trait of human existence. Through an analogical reading between both theoretical frameworks, I suggest that the notion of form-of-life, elaborated by Wittgenstein to address human production of meaning, becomes the key notion in Agamben's affirmative thinking since it enables us to consider the common ontologically in its relation to Human potentialities and to foresee a new, common use of the world and ourselves.