Curso: Leituras do Corpo 2020

Leituras do Corpo
Linguagem do corpo, expressão do corpo e menos frequentemente “leitura do corpo” são termos que têm sido usados desde os anos 1960/70 a partir de enfoques inicialmente ligados à contracultura. Desde então, estudos sobre o corpo adquiriram centralidade na cultura ocidental. As Neurociências e a Psicologia trazem novos elementos a esses estudos. O corpo neurológico, identidade e tatuagem, corpo, saúde e sociedade, são temas abordados no curso, tendo como pano de fundo a pandemia do Coronavírus.

*Início das aulas: 23/06/2020
| Inscrições: https://forms.gle/vK8qWBhL7vZhzjnX9

| Valor: R$150,00

| Carga Horária: 10 horas

| Os encontros: Serão 5 terças-feiras, das 12h30 às 14h.
23/06, 30/06, 07/07, 14/07 e 21/07

| Aulas ao vivo à distância através da plataforma Zoom.

| Mais informações e dúvidas: cenpsiedu@gmail.com, (11) 98891-5505, @cenpsiedu (instagram).

| Coordenadores: Prof. Dr. Afonso Carlos Neves e Prof. Dr. João Eduardo Coin de Carvalho

Why Neurohumanities

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, or the knowledge about knowledge.

Someone can say that the knowledge is built by neurotransmitters.

Another one can say that knowledge is built by thinking and thoughts.

And another can say that knowledge is socially constructed.

Everyone is correct. Knowledge is consequence of several human complex activities and so the biological explanation is not the only correct, although very important.

The German psychiatrist, neurologist and philosopher Henrik Walter wrote that “Neuroscience is so important for the contemporaneous Philosophy as was Physics and Evolution for the modern Philosophy”. So, we can extend this idea for all the Humanities. Beyond Philosophy, Other areas of the Human Sciences are also important to keep the understanding of Knowledge in a broader and deeper way.

By these reasons, the field of Neurohumanities appeared as a consequence of interdisciplinary activities correlated to the understanding of Knowledge and other aspects of the human being related to Neuroscience.

Neurodiscourse of Human Phenomenon - part 1

When we talk here about "Human Phenomenon" we are referring specifically to aspects of the work of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) with that title.

Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist, philosopher, theologian French Jesuit. One of his best known works in Paleontology occurred in 1929 with the discovery of Homo pequinensis. He has published around 400 scientific papers.

Teilhard de Chardin was one of the forerunners of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity to correlate various fields of study in their writings transversely. In "The Phenomenon of Man" speech he makes use of biological, anthropological, historical discourse, and even religious discourse about the "human."

In this work the author was also a forerunner of the concept of Complexity and Complex Thinking and Systems Thinking. He also made use of the term "Gaia" in a sense similar to what would later set the "Gaia Theory" of James Lovelock about the planet Earth like a living organism.

Thus, Teilhard de Chardin has built an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary discourse about the human phenomenon. This discourse also includes notions about the nervous system connected to the discourse on human phenomenon.

Before that, it may be appropriate to speak of "discourse" and "neurodiscourse."

The term "discourse" can be used in many ways. Here we are not doing the colloquial use of the term, but the sense intermediate between philosophy and linguistics.

For Greek Philosophy “discourse”, in a larger sense than "speech", refers to the Logos. The most common meaning given to the term "logos" has been “to study" or "the knowledge about something”.  However, the Greek word "logos" primarily means "speech" in the dynamic sense of “discourse”.  So, for example, we can see in the Gospel of John the use of the term "logos" being translated as "word" or even in some languages as “verb”.

Thus, "logos" about something means "The discourse about a particular subject." So all the "technology" that we know are "speeches" or “discourses” about some "specialty".

In Greek philosophy that speech involves a "discursive knowledge" that can be established by a succession of reasons, or a logical succession that is different of the knowledge that is only a legacy by tradition or by some kind of intuition.

We do not mean that the suffix "logy" can only be used in this condition, but we want to emphasize the dynamic aspect that gets to be understood as "discourse." The discourse implies a "text", a structured speech that has certain goals and that is included in a "context".

There are many studies and discussions about various aspects of the discourse. As, for example, several forms of analysis of discourse. Among these is known  the study of Michel Foucault about the discourse, not necessarily accepted by all scholars.

Anyway, our focus is not exclusively about discussing what constitutes discourse analysis in all its aspects, but stressed that there is a "neurodiscourse" about the human phenomenon.

If there are discourses constructed differently, there may be a "neurodiscourse" that is structured from notions of neuroscience and neurology and has something specific to say about the human phenomenon, from Teilhard de Chardin, or from "knowledge-discourse" originated from neuroscientific paradigms.

Environment and Multi,Inter, Transdisciplinarity.

Initially we are interested in question which has been automatically incorporated into our everyday vocabulary as "Environment".
When referring to ENVIRONMENT, what are we talking about?
Nature? What is Nature?
Did we think of  Environment as something that is always THERE ... away from us ...
Was the environment only in the forest? In the mountains? In the sea?

Is there an "Environment" without the "human being?"
Or is there an "Environment" only with "human being?"
Maybe there is just something that can be called "Environment" from the point where there is a human being to "think" that Environment ...

In this sense, philosophically we can remember two lines of thought: Idealism and Materialism (or Realism if we add movements of artistic and social nature).
In Idealism, the Real is just what is perceived by humans.
In Materialism the Real is in material things, and need not necessarily of human thought to exist, but to value such things.
In an intermediate and phenomenological position we can say that the world without human beings to think this world would be something that we do not know what would be, ie, when naming and saying "world", the human being produces parameters that will characterize what is "world".
There is then something external to man, which starts to have the meaning of "world" when human beings think that world.So in a way, this is a constructed notion.
So, "Environment" can be also an elaboration of the human being.And still we dare to say that the Environment is an elaboration of the very "modern" or "modernity".
This could raise the question: But there is no Environment “together” with the world that have billions of years?
In this sense we consider that the whole process prior in time to the elaboration of the concept of the Environment, was seen by the modern individual, who started calling this whole process that he imagines as something from immemorial times: "the Environment".
Thus, we can then ask how it would have been the discovery or invention of the Environment, as well as the concept of "Nature."
The development of our discourse in this regard is given on the construction of the Western Knowledge. We are not here denying other aspects, but we are building on the knowledge bases that are unique to our cultural tradition.
From Prehistory to Thales of Miletus, we can say that there was a "mythic discourse" about what we call Nature. It seems that humans lived immersed in Nature, differently of what seems to be to us as a"distant" thing: we here, Nature there.
Thales of Miletus (VII-VI centuries BC) is traditionally regarded as the first to have started a philosophical discourse about Nature and the World. Therefore, he was the first person to question, to ask, rather than just receive the traditional notions and successively passed from generation to generation. Having started his questions, Thales sought to build responses, so that, for example, developed the well-known theorem of Thales. Tales also studied the world of nature as physis, where this term came to apply to studies concerning these issues. Thus Thales held that water would be the main element of which would be derived the other elements and the world. So his answer was not mythic, but physical.
In general, it is considered that Pre-Socratic philosophers, which succeeded in time to Thales, were scholars of physis, or sought to explain the world.
Among them were those who understood that the fire, or other element would have been the key to the formation of the world, among other considerations.
Pythagoras was a unique among them (sec. VI-V BC), who also had his theorem and developed an entire study on the numbers, about music, etc., and (more particularly on the issue we are addressing) was a vegetarian, which portrayed a particular way of seeing the world and living beings in nature, probably influenced by oriental doctrines.
It is supposed that Pythagoras would have created the word "philosophy" as he has stated that "only God is wise. I'm just a friend of wisdom"(ie philos sophos).
From Socrates (469-399 BC) philosophy began to focus more heavily in the human being and in ethical aspects.
Socrates was Plato's teacher (428-27 - 348-47 BC), which, in turn, was a teacher of Aristotle (fourth century BC).
Aristotle built immense work that still constitutes an important basis of thought and Western science, of course not in any detail "modern" science but on the basis of the development of thought.
Aristotle (sec. IV BC) and his pupil Theophrastus (IV-III century BC) are traditionally regarded as initiators of a line of "biological"studies (?), Or even as "old Fathers" of biology? Were then the initiators of a Science of Nature in a broader sense than the Pre-Socratics.
However, there was not a term “Biology” as we know. A “biologist” to the ancient Greeks was more like someone who interpret, mimetizasse someone's life, or make a speech, a narrative about someone's life, than someone who studied plants, animals, etc..What we now call biology, under its etymology might have to be more a kind of "zoology" (Zoe is another word for life as it is Bios).
Often, when we elaborate a history of science, we attribute, to the past things, names and concepts that we have created.
The word biology was first used in 1766 in the publication of Michael Hanov Christoph (1695-1773) in the work Philosophia naturalis sive physica dogmatica: aerology et hydrologia sible aeris scientia et aquae. Hanov was a disciple of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), an important character in the structuring of science in the eighteenth century.
However, any such quotation of the word biology is not the same brand that we can consider as a kind of elaboration of a more consistent "clustering" of certain studies, that would come later, although not yet a delimited field of science. Thus, in 1800 Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776-1847) created the words Biology and Morphology in terms of its use in Science (1796 Goethe had used the term "morphology").
Burdach was a physician and was also what in that period was called "natural philosopher", a few decades before William Whewell coining the term "scientist", more specifically in the 1830s. In this decade and in the 1840s Whewell also created the name of the discipline "Physics", referring to the study of aspects of "physical" nature, as we now understand physics.
Burdach was also adept of the romantic philosophy of nature, influenced by his Romantic contemporaries. He was also professor of anatomy and physiology and his name was given to a neuroanatomical fasciculus.
Burdach thought that the term "biology" could be used to indicate studies of the human perspective on morphological, physiological and psychological aspects.
It seems that the biology of Burdach was more restrictive than the Biology which became a scientific discipline.
Meanwhile in 1802, also used the term biology scholars Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829) and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1776-1837), in this work lebenden Biologie oder Philosophie der Natur. In this way we can observe the tendency to use the term in relation to "living nature".
At a time when this scientific view of living tends to establish itself as a field of study, is the same time as the doctrines of thought Hegel's Idealism are underway, thus establishing a right "speech on the Modern." This period also began a process of expanding the practice of the Industrial Revolution, as well as a transformation of the city, which will gain more body in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Although Burdach and Treviranus, it is common to see considered as a sort of "Father" of biology the scholar Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
Here we take the opportunity to recall the notion of zeitgeist, or "spirit of time", which here concerns who fall within that spirit of the moment and becomes enshrined in his work. This is what happened to Darwin.Other scholars have also been studying the evolution, but were not in the zeitgeist as Darwin.
We also want to take this opportunity to emphasize the notion that the so-called "Fathers" of the different scientific areas, have always been preceded by others who have started that kind of work that enshrining such "Parents." However these "precursors" are little remembered, for not having been in some kind of zeitgeist. We should also point out that, generally, the "ownership" of areas, discoveries, scientific inventions, is actually multiple and not single. But there is always a dedicated individual who somehow "customize" or "incorporates" that creation of an area, or that discovery or invention.
Years before Darwin, Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) developed the Cell Theory, which would "enable" it also as a father of biology.
More or less contemporary with Darwin, Claude Bernard (1813-1878), considered the "Father of Modern Physiology", created in the mid-nineteenth century the concept of Internal Milieu and External Milieu in relation to human and living beings. That milieu we can take as “environment”. The work of Bernard took years to be recognized in amplitude, but, anyway, the word "milieu" as “environment” in the Science has begun its process of entering the biological discourse.

The word "ecology" was coined by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834-1919) in 1870. Haeckel was a medical anatomist, studied comparative anatomy and formulated the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," which he said that the intrauterine development of the human evolutionary process would be similar to the species.
Recently some journals have published studies that indicated fraud Haeckel's drawings in their work with the comparative anatomy, where he had deliberately distorted the designs.
The word ecology, ie, oikos (home) and logia (discourse, study) has similarity with economics, which means oikos (home) and nomos (name, caring, organizing). Thus ecology and economics relate both to the "home", to where we live, to the Environment. However, this conception can make we forget that there is also an "internal environment" to the individual, as stablished by Bernard.
The word economics would have been that Aristotle would have used more to "care home".
Nowadays the study of economics would came after the ideas of Jean Bodin (1530-1596), which would have influenced Antoine de Montchrétien (1575-1621) in his "Traité de l'Économie Politique". It is seen that this author lived in the period of Mercantilism, ie, the so-called Modern Age.
Since we have quoted the Modern and its variants, we turn to this word.
The first person that would have used the word "modernus" in a sense similar to what we use today would have been the scholar Cassiodorus (sixth century).After years of exile in Greece, returning to the city of Rome, Cassiodorus would have been amazed that nobody else knew the Greek language in Rome (which was the international language). So he said he was in "tempus modernus", ie in times of fast changes, as the word modus indicate timing. In the course of the Middle Ages the word "modern" came to be used a few times, making sense similar to "change".
As Modern Age was cited, it may be appropriate to recall the traditional historical periodization in Western World:
Ancient Age: 4000 BC (beginning of writing) - 476 d. C. (fall of the Western Roman Empire).
Middle Ages: 476 d. C. - 1453 (fall of the Eastern Roman Empire)
Modern Age: 1453 - 1789 (French Revolution)
Contemporary Age: 1789 to the present.
We then see that there is an idea of ​​a "Modern" Age which begins simultaneously to navigation and the institutionalization of profit.
In addition there is the “modern” of nineteenth century, where Baudelaire created the word “modernity” to refer to what is fleeting, transient, transitory, or "fashion".
During this period there were movements of Romanticism and Realism, which although seeming opposites are actually different sides of the same "modern" that began with the nineteenth century.
Romanticism was a movement of dreamers, who valued ideals and noble intentions to achieve the ends sought. Realism, albeit with less speech dreamer, had a critical place in relation to society.Thus, Romanticism and Realism valued the ethics of the means to achieve the ends more than the ends itself.
The Modern, with several variations, was present until the Second World War.
In the 1950s started the Postmodern period, where the results were more valued than the means to get them. Efficiency became a key issue in general, and ethics was secondary to results and efficiency.
This was also a period of strong bipolarity that divided the world into the capitalist world and the socialist world.

So it was also bipolarity between a strong capitalism and counterculture movements.
Between 2001-2008 there was a transition period to culminate in what some call "post-postmodern." In the post-postmodern, there is the “end of the efficiencies ", at least as they were before considered. Before, everything seemed to be effective such as globalization, free markets, among other things.
Thus, the height of post-postmodern would have been the 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when consumerism has gained more importance and gained forums virtue of citizenship.
A kind of method to assess the reasons why the postmodern stopped working is a simple assessment that can be called a "method of method"; we can come back to a simple method of Aristotelian logic.Thus, in Aristotelian logic, there is a simple tool that are "necessary conditions" and "sufficient conditions".
In the Post-Modern, specialization and expertise gained great importance for optimization of results and efficiency.Thus, the specialties (not just of Health) were, in general, necessary and sufficient to answer most questions or solve most problems.
In Post-postmodern, specialties still are necessary, but are no longer sufficient in many conditions.
So, we can see, for example, that the expertise of economists is necessary but is no longer sufficient to solve the international economic crisis.
Another example relates to the specialty area of ​​health that are still necessary, but seem insufficient to account for all human affairs in its scope.
The Genome Project, at its launch was a great sensation, and seemed likely to solve all health problems. Ten years later he was found to have remained far below what we had imagined.
Another example closer to our theme: the Conferences of the Environment in Stockholm in 1972 and 1992 in Rio de Janeiro seem to be necessary and sufficient. The environmental meeting in Copenhagen and Rio +20 are necessary but insufficient to give account of environmental issues.

Similar to this comparison, the Post Modern was a period with predominance of Multidisciplinarity as necessary and sufficient to account for the knowledge and scientific practices. Although much discourse objects, Inter and Transdisciplinarity did not have much practical performance.

In Multidisciplinarity each area stay with their methods and their specific language, with little exchange with other areas. Someone says it's been around since Aristotle.
Environment, in a multidisciplinary approach, work not very integrated. The organic paradigm was dominant.
In Interdisciplinarity, there is switching between languages ​​and methods of the areas.
The use of the word interdisciplinarity began in the modern period, between the wars.
In the post-modern it was much talked about but rarely used.
In Environment:
Although Environment studies and pratices compound an area typically interdisciplinary, in Postmodern Interdisciplinarity was applied within the limits of the necessary. This application seemed to be necessary and sufficient at that time.
In the post-postmodern, it becomes insufficient.
In Transdisciplinarity it is possible to see most widely intersections.
The three pillars of transdisciplinarity are:
1 - Levels of reality - non-reductionism.
Remember that Multi and Interdisciplinarity may be among these levels of reality.
2 - Complexity - non-reductionism. Each living being, or even every thing is more than the sum of its parts.
3 - Third included - reconciling paradoxes.
(4) a extra-pillar added: cultural factors.
Environment:
It is potentially transdisciplinary but in practice it is rarely addressed in this regard, although much talked about.

The look multi, inter, trans, bearing that name, appeared in the Post-Modern, within the "counter current" in relation to the current "outcome-efficiency." When Piaget launched the term "transdisciplinarity" he proposed an overcoming of the separation between the areas.

In the work with environmental issues it is possible to use one of that three levels.

Does neuroscience embrace all knowledge?

Neuroscience had a huge improvement in the last decades due to great advances in research and technology.

More and more we can understand the correlations between knowledge and brain even in the neurochemical level. 

All that studies make us to think that the only language which can be really used to express knowledge is the language of Neuroscience. 

Neuroscience is necessary to understand knowledge but it is not sufficient to include all the conditions and dimensions of knowledge.

Several other disciplines are usefull to understand knowledge.

Before Neuroscience was created, humankind already had "language". This very old capability of humankind was used to create any branch of science, even Neuroscience. 

Of course someone can talk about method. One thing is a kind of "common language" and other thing is a "scientific language" built with "method". It is true, but even the method used a language that existed before, or elaborated new words from previus languages. 

The languages of Human Sciences, or Humanities, are also very important to understand knowledge. 

Although Neuroscience is very important it can not replace Philosophy.

It cannot replace History, Sociology, Anthropology, etc.

...and, a little more polemicist, it cannot replace Psychology.

Only in a reductionist way of thinking Neuroscience could be sufficient to all knowledge. 

By an inter and transdisciplinary approach among different fields, we can better understand knowledge, even respecting several cultural contexts, without eliminating it.

We know that some tendencies assume to be reductionist, but in "Neuro-Humanities" we don't think so.  

The approach to Knowledge: multi, inter, transdisciplinarity.

 The “knowledge of Knowledge”, or the study and understanding of ways and organization of Knowledge is named Epistemology. Epistemology is near Philosophy and Humanities.

We can also approach mechanisms of Knowledge by studies of Psychology, Neurology and Neurosciences.

So, we can see that it is possible to understand Knowledge by the approach of several disciplines.

A discipline is a specific field of Knowledge or Science that was built around specific methods and language that can be partialy shared with other disciplines.

The concern of the relation among disciplines was more present in the academic environment mainly in the second half of 20^th century.

Although someone says that “multidisciplinarity” was created with Aristotle thinking, Aristotle himself did not wrote about “multidisciplinarity”.

After the Second World War, it was a “massification” of Universities to improve the development of nations in conditions according to new technologies. If before the War a nation without education could mean “dependence”, after the War this question was more incisive.

So, in universities and publications it was cited that an “interdisciplinarity”, or a better understanding among disciplines, was necessary.

In a general way we can use the concepts below.

Multidisciplinarity (or pluridisciplinarity): each discipline with its own methods and language. There are few exchanges among different fields.

Interdisciplinarity: there are some common methods and languages among disciplines but they still remain as different fields.

Transdisciplinarity: there are almost no boundaries among disciplines. There are three pillars of transdisciplinarity: different levels of reality; complexity; the third included.

In transdisciplinarity the cultural context is also a variable ever considered.