At the meeting, Jerónimo will discuss the interface between the world of knowledge and the world of decision with focus on the concepts of risk and uncertainty. To do so, she will address the tensions between science and policy brought out by scientific expertise. There will be three main topics:

• to show how scientific expertise amplifies the complexity of the relations between science, technological system, and political and social values
• to illustrate from case studies the multiplicity of formats in scientific expertise
• to analyze the tendency of experts to underestimate the uncertainties inherent in many of the phenomena they are called on to evaluate and to confine themselves in a probabilistic language of risk.

The conferencist holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, is a professor of the School of Economics and Management (ISEG) at the Technical University of Lisbon (UTL) and a researcher at UTL’s Centre for Research in Economic and Organizational Sociology (SOCIUS), where she develops studies in Scientific, Technological and Environmental Sociology.

SEMINAR

The conference will be the second in a series of four meetings of the 25th International Seminar on Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology (see schedule below), all featuring Jerónimo as exhibitor.

Organized by IEA-USP’s Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group, the seminar is coordinated by philosopher Pablo Mariconda, professor at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) and coordinator of the group.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The debate has been organized by a partnership between two of IEA-USP’s research groups: Environment and Society, and Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology. They had the support of the Center for Studies in Social and Environmental Governance of USP’s Institute for Energy and Environment (IEE). The meeting has comprised two roundtables, both mediated by Pedro Jacobi, coordinator of IEA’s Environment and Society Research Group.

The exhibitors were Wagner Ribeiro Costa, professor at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), Maurício de Carvalho Ramos, also a professor at FFLCH, Daniela Libório Di Sarno, professor at PUC-SP’s Faculty of Law and vice president of the Brazilian Institute of Urban Law (IBDU), Marcio Automare, organizational development analyst at the Institute of Land of the State of São Paulo (ITESP), and Susana Prizendt, coordinator of the Paulista Committee of the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and for Living.

The meeting has addressed the water problem from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering environmental, legal, socio-political, philosophical and food safety aspects. According to Jacobi, the idea was to reflect on the problem of water in the RMSP, but covering broader issues involving, among others, inequalities in access to water, changes in rainfall rates caused by the phenomenon of climate change, institutional barriers and the posture of the government in relation to the prevention and remediation of the problem.

Photos of the event

MEASURES OF THE STATE

The debate has been heated up by recent measures that have been studied and taken by the state government of São Paulo in order to try to circumvent the critical situation of the Cantareira reservoir, which currently operates at approximately 15 % of its capacity. Among these measures is the proposal of using water from the Paraíba do Sul River reservoirs to supply the RMSP. When asked about the matter, Ribeiro said that he does not consider the proposal timely, since the suggested river is also undergoing a situation of water stress.

Ribeiro has criticized the emergency works of the state government, which began on March 14 to pump the volume of "dead water" from the bottom of the dams that form the Cantareira reservoir. According to him, this means "to remove the last drop of a water that has been stored for 40 years, stagnant, whose quality is questionable due to the unknown factors associated with it."

Besides, he said that it was a risky move, which can lead to resource depletion in the region. “That is because to saturate the soil again to the point for the dam to refill, much more than the average rainfall rates in the region will be needed, and those were not achieved this summer."

FRAGMENTED MANAGEMENT

Sarno has pointed out the incongruity of the Brazilian legal system in relation to water resources management as the top reason for the shortage in the country. According to her, although the Federal Constitution provides that the management should be shared between the federal government, the states and the municipalities, there is little dialogue between the parties and the administration of water resources ends up getting fragmented.

"To meet the challenge of shared management, the three [federal, state and municipal] parties need to sit down and discuss. But this step has still not been taken. There are neither vertically talks between the parties nor horizontally ones between institutions," she said.

This fragmentation gets compounded by the mismatch between the division of the federal system, that obeys political criteria, and the division of watersheds, which follows geographic criteria. The watersheds are important because they put another actor in the scene: the Watershed Committees, which comprise the National System for Water Resources Management. Composed of representatives of the various water user sectors, civil society and government organizations, the committees approve the Water Resources Plan for each watershed, arbitrate conflicts over water use, suggest values ​​for the charging of consumption, among others.

According to Sarno, the problem is that none of the management models adopted in the country - municipal management and state management by autarchies or contractors - is consistent with the watershed divisions. "The Committees even do part of the management, but who puts the distribution of water into practice is not them, but managing institutions.”

PUBLIC X PRIVATE

As for Ribeiro, the biggest obstacle to equate the issue of water in Brazil is the private management of water resources. In the RMSP, for example, the management is done by SABESP, a mixed economy company, publicly listed and traded on the stock exchange, which operates according to the logic of a private institution.

"Is it the function of the state to pay up, profit and speculate based on the commercialization of water resources? No, it is not the function of the state to make money from the water, as done by SABESP," warned Ribeiro, noting the lack of transparency in the management of the company. "Besides the water flows, there should be transparency in relation to financial flows," he pointed out.

As Ribeiro, Automare pondered that a government-linked company as SABESP should not behave like a private company, treating water as a product. He also cited the industry of water sold in gallons, whose growth was affecting groundwater, as an example of the commercial exploitation of water resources.

Sarno also addressed the conflict between public and private interests. According to her, Watershed Committees treat water as a commodity, whose distribution should be equal and the charging should happen only to regulate the consumption. The companies that put management into practice, such as SABESP, treat water as a product for sale.

According to the lawyer, the managers of metropolitan regions and municipalities do not take into consideration the willingness of the watershed in allowing, for example, the expansion of an industrial district that could endanger the water supply on site. "It takes measures to reconcile urban expansion and the infrastructure for distribution of water in terms of quality and quantity," he warned.

ETHICAL DIMENSION

Taking a philosophical approach, Carvalho said that the water can be considered from two sets of properties: material ones, linked to biochemical principles, and symbolic ones, related to its immeasurable value to life, making it a symbol of power.

According to him, when considering the symbolic properties, water can be conceived both as a resource - a product to be exploited economically -, as well as a good - something free and not marketable in any way. And it is this conception of a good that should be adopted to tackle the problem of water stress from an ethical perspective.

"Addressing the issue rationally and responsibly involves not putting into practice technoscientific possibilities related to water use that may jeopardize the availability or the material properties of water resources," he said. "If the ethical stance prevailed, there would be no need for rationing and an appeal to the conscience of people would be sufficient," he added.

PARTICIPATION

The panelists drew attention to the low involvement of society in discussions on the management of water resources. According to Automare, water has achieved the last place in the priority list of the citizens of the State of São Paulo: "We have been induced to credit the discussion on the subject to the representatives and forgot to get involved." He also emphasized that "the public has no forum for debate, so the situation is in the hands of technocrats."

Ribeiro has also warned about the paradox that involves the lack of popular participation on the one hand and excess of institutions to manage water on the other. For him, "we have more institutions dealing with water than water itself. There are too much institutions for very little water. And civil society is under-represented within them."

FOOD SAFETY

The water problem has also been addressed from the point of view of quality. Addressing the contamination of water resources by pesticides, Prizendt said that the issue should be discussed with a view to replacing the agribusiness, model of conventional production and based on intensive use of pesticides, by agroecology, an alternative model, whose practices intend to maintain the balance of ecosystems and preserve the sources of rivers and the water system as a whole.

According to her, pesticides are the second leading cause of contamination of rivers, a fact that becomes particularly worrying considering that Brazil is world champion in the use of these substances, accounting for one fifth of what is consumed in the world. Moreover, the agricultural sector accounts for about 70 % of freshwater consumption in Brazil, said the environmentalist.

Lacey’s model is unique because it includes, in the same analytical framework, epistemological issues and concrete implications of science in contemporary society. In his studies, Lacey questions the idea that domination over nature is an intrinsic ethical value of scientific practice and argues that scientific institutions – and the scientists themselves – must take into account social, ecological and human contexts when choosing the strategy of their research. “Scientific work has been treated more like a business and scientists are subject to pressures of productivity that often leave them with no time to reflect on and discuss their responsibilities as scientists,” he stressed.

In the following interview to journalist Flávia Dourado, Lacey explains some of the assumptions of his model, criticizes the growing subordination of science to economic interests, and calls attention to the importance of developing alternatives to today’s hegemonic currents by investing, for instance, in studies on agroecology as a way of highlighting the risks involved in transgenesis. According to him, “contemporary scientific institutions are dominated by the notion that science aims to generate technoscientific innovations that contribute to economic growth and, more generally, to technological and economic progress.”

1) The model of interaction between science and values that you propose assumes a distinction between epistemic/cognitive values and social and ethical values. What characterizes each of these value groups in their relationship with the scientific endeavor?

In the model, several logically (not temporally) distinct moments (or stages) of scientific activities have been identified, including: M₁ – adoption of a research strategy; M₂ – undertaking the research; M₃ – cognitive evaluation of theories and hypotheses; M₄ – dissemination of scientific results; an M₅ – application of scientific knowledge. The epistemic/cognitive values concern the criteria for the cognitive evaluation of theories and hypotheses (i.e., evaluation of them as bearers of knowledge and understanding of phenomena) at M₃. They include, among others, the empirical adequacy, explanatory power and consistency of theories and hypotheses.^[i] Social and ethical values may have various (proper, as well as sometimes improper) roles at the other moments. These values concern, respectively, ideals of a good (or desirable) society (e.g., progress, social justice) and of acceptable and obligatory human behavior and relations (e.g., honesty, autonomy, solidarity).^[ii] The distinction between cognitive and the other kinds of values underlies the ideal of impartiality (or objectivity), that (at M₃) judgments about scientific knowledge should be based only on the cognitive values, and that they neither presuppose not imply any commitments concerning social and ethical values.^[iii]

2) Is it the distinction between these two value groups ​​that allows us to make an ethical and political critique of science without necessarily questioning scientific objectivity?

Yes. Political/ethical values may play roles at all the moments, except M3, without impartiality being impaired. E.g., at M₁, social values may have an integral role in the adoption of strategies for research, where strategies involve (1) constraints on the kinds of theories and hypotheses that will be considered in a research program, and (2) criteria for the selection of empirical data to procure and record – of what phenomena, in what (often experimental) conditions – for the sake of gaining knowledge of selected phenomena, or aspects of them, and identifying the possibilities open to them.^[iv] The constraints limit the kinds of phenomena (and possibilities open to them) of which we gain knowledge in a research project, and so social values may play a role in determining what phenomena are investigated. However, the knowledge we gain of them should be established at M₃, in the light only of the empirical data, and whether or not the knowledge claims (theories, hypotheses) being evaluated manifest the cognitive values highly in relation to these data. The impartiality of this knowledge, therefore, is not impaired. Remember, however, that it is knowledge of the selected kinds of phenomena; and gaining knowledge of them (rather than of other kinds of phenomena) may serve especially well interests informed by certain social/ethical/political values. So, one may make political/ethical criticism of the adoption of these strategies rather than other ones, without challenging the impartiality of the knowledge gained and without implying that this knowledge (qua knowledge) should be challenged on political/ethical grounds. The political/ethical criticism would lead to engaging also in research that is conducted under other strategies that would enable knowledge of phenomena (of interest in light of the political/ethical values in play) to be gained.

This point is of great significance in my discussions of the controversies connected with using transgenics.^[v] [Throughout this interview, I will frequently make use of the case of transgenics and its competitors, e.g., agroecology.] The knowledge that has informed developments and innovations of transgenics (gained under strategies deployed in molecular biology and biotechnology) accords with impartiality; but it tells us little about the environmental and social risks that are occasioned by using transgenics, or about the alternatives (e.g., agroecology) that might be used in agricultural practices. Political/social/economic considerations lie behind emphasizing almost exclusively the research conducted under the strategies of molecular biology and biotechnology, and downplaying research on the other phenomena just referred to. Likewise, different political/social/economic considerations lie behind questioning the relative inattention given to research conducted under strategies that could inform issues of risks and alternatives. Either way, political/ethical values influence judgments made at M₁, but (in principle, for all parties) this leave impartiality unchallenged at M₃.

3) Does a criticism focused on ethical and social values include scrutinizing the submission of scientific activity to economic values, particularly to the ideals of development and progress?

Yes. Contemporary scientific institutions are dominated by the notion that science aims to generate technoscientific innovations that contribute to economic growth and, more generally, to technological and economic progress. This has several problematic consequences. They include:

a) The criteria for evaluating scientific contributions, and the productivity of individual scientists, have become intertwined with (in some cases subordinated to) economic considerations. E.g., gaining patents to discoveries has become an indicator of scientific success. The intertwining of scientific and economic considerations can create conflicts of interest (e.g., downplaying evidence of potential risks of using a new drug, in order not to endanger its profitable use; and keeping empirical data pertaining to risks secret).

b) Scientific work has become treated more like work within a business, and scientists have become subjected to productivist pressures that often leave them with little time for reflection and discussion about their responsibilities as scientists. Marcos Barbosa de Oliveira, co-director (with Pablo Mariconda) of the Theme Project Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: On the Relationships between Science, Technology and Society, in which I am a participant and which is located in IEA, has written important articles on these consequences.

4) Has science prioritized values linked to private interests, to capital, to the detriment of those associated with public interests and social welfare?

Following up my response to the previous question, the notion that underlies “private-interest science” – that science aims to generate technoscientific innovations that contribute to economic growth and, more generally, to technological and economic progress – entrenches the almost exclusive role given in scientific institutions to research strategies (like those of molecular biology [see response to question 2]) that constrain the theories investigated to those that can represent the underlying law and structure of phenomena in a way that dissociates them from their ecological, human and social contexts. I now call them decontextualizing strategies.^[vi] It is a consequence of adopting decontextualizing strategies almost exclusively that environmental and social effects of introducing innovations (such as those connected with climate change) tend not to be well investigated in advance of their introduction.

I have argued that private-interest science, not only conflicts with the ideal of the modern scientific tradition that scientific knowledge belongs to the common patrimony of humanity, but also weakens democratic institutions.^[vii] In several recent writings,^[viii] I have proposed that this approach to scientific research should be balanced by strong support (including appropriate levels of funding) for research that is framed by the following question:

“How should scientific research be conducted, and by whom, with what priorities and using what kinds of strategies, and how should technologies be developed and administered, so as to ensure that nature is respected, that its regenerative powers are not further undermined and restored wherever possible, and that the rights, well being and conditions for constructive participation in a democratic society, are enhanced for everyone everywhere?”

Obviously, asking this question is motivated by ethical/social values, by interest in public interests that are not subordinated to commercial ones. However [see answer to question 2]), this does not imply that impartial knowledge of phenomena (e.g., linked with environmental risks, and approaches to practical activities like agriculture that are not based on technoscientific innovations) cannot be obtained in research conducted under the strategies adopted – just as aiming to foster economic growth and progress (also social values) is consistent with gaining impartial knowledge of phenomena and their underlying laws and structures.

5) How do you see the tensions between the public and the private that underlie contemporary scientific controversies, such as those related to climate change, transgenesis and nuclear power?

I find it difficult to address these three cases together; so, in order to give a sharper answer, I’ll just focus on the transgenics case. I have argued in several writings that public interests can be well served (and the question [posed in the response to question 3] answered in concrete terms) only if agricultural innovations and policies are responses that arise in research that addresses the question of “the space of agricultural alternatives”:^[ix] “Which agricultural methods – ‘conventional,’ transgenic, organic, agroecological, biodynamic, subsistence, indigenous, permaculture and others, including those adapted to urban environments –, in which combinations and with which place-specific variations might be sustainable (even in the current situation of global warming and climate change), relatively free from harm and from the risk of doing harm, and productive enough, when accompanied by viable distribution methods (taking into account the largest population concentration in urban environments), to meet the food and nutrition needs of the world’s population for the foreseeable future?”

Transgenics were introduced, not after receiving confirmation from research, which dealt with the space of alternatives, that transgenics were indeed needed for meeting the world’s food needs. Instead, the research and development of the transgenics that are currently being used responded more to the question: “Using the methods of genetic engineering, what traits can crop plants be modified to have; and which ones might be able to be commercially exploited?” Having recognized the potential of using transgenics for commercial (private interests, agribusiness corporations went ahead with developing and implementing varieties of transgenics with the traits that they deemed desirable (e.g., resistance to herbicides that the corporations themselves produced). Putting resources into investigating the question of the space of alternatives would be contrary to their interests – for, antecedently to its being conducted, that research could not guarantee that a major role (or, indeed, any role at all) for transgenics would be supported.

6) Are the values of objectivity, neutrality and autonomy, so dear to scientific endeavor, being jeopardized because of the growing influence of the private sector in science through research funding?

In the seminars I gave at  the IEA in 2013, I stated the ideal of neutrality in this way:^[x] “In principle, (1) each value perspective (viable and sustainable in today’s democratic societies) is embedded in practices that may be informed by some items of the established corpus of scientific knowledge (or that may use some applications of scientific knowledge), and (2) the body of scientific knowledge (as a whole) serves all value perspectives more or less equally, without favoring some over others.” Neutrality is undermined when scientific institutions become dependent on private sources for their funding (or public sources that prioritize research that is intended to contribute to economic growth). Then the outcomes of research are likely to serve especially well the interests of capital and the market often at the expense of those that may reflect values connected (e.g.) with social justice and environmental sustainability. Research, development and innovation of transgenics (e.g.) has served the interests of agribusiness very well, but transgenics have no place in (e.g.) agroecology, an approach to farming that responds to such values as social justice, maintaining the well-being of local communities and strengthening their cultural values, democratic participation and sustainability; and, where private interests have influence over scientific institutions, research that would be potentially relevant to agroecology (e.g., research pertaining to the space of alternatives) is thoroughly marginalized.

Where neutrality is weakened, so too is autonomy, where autonomy refers to the ideal that there be no interference from non-scientific interests (religious, political, economic) in setting the agendas and methodologies of scientific research.^[xi] However, autonomy is difficult to characterize precisely, for scientific institutions depend on outside bodies for their funding, so that outside influences cannot be eliminated even in principle. The difficult issue is how to reconcile a role for outside influences but not to permit outside interference. “Private-interest science” has little interest in exploring such reconciliation.

Note that issues about neutrality are especially pertinent at M₅, and those about autonomy at M₁. Those involving impartiality (objectivity) are especially pertinent at both M₃ and M₅. At M₅, questions about both the efficacy of an innovation and the legitimacy of using it need to be considered. Usually matters of efficacy are settled at M₃; the knowledge that underlies the claim that an innovation works (and how it works) is expected to be confirmed in accordance with impartiality. Legitimacy, however, involves issues of benefits, harm caused, risks and possible alternatives. These are all matters with ethical implications, and usually none of them are adequately addressed in the scientific research that leads to impartial claims being made about efficacy. E.g., the efficacy of using certain transgenics in certain conditions is explained by reference to the theories of molecular biology and biotechnology that enabled the development of transgenics; but this research tells us nothing about the social and ecological conditions needed for, and effects of, using transgenics in actual agricultural practices. Private interest science is well served by insisting on the ideal of impartiality at M₃ (although it does open up possibilities for conflicts of interests [see response to question 3); but by not providing support for research on the crucial issues about legitimacy, any claims made about, e.g., there being no serious risks that cannot be dealt with adequately in the light of enforced regulations, are likely to be discordant with impartiality.

7) According to the model you propose, social and ethical values operate mainly in the choice of a research strategy. The way this choice is made explains why science prefers research problems that are relevant from the standpoint of interests associated with economic growth and the policies that emphasize it, but less auspicious to the interests of popular movements, family farmers and, overall, marginalized people and groups?

In discussions of the model, I emphasize the role of social and ethical values (at M₁) in choosing the strategies to be adopted in a research project. This is the most distinctive feature of the model. However, these values also have roles at the other moments (except at M₃). The role they play at M₅ is especially noteworthy, and it is closely connected with the role they play at M₁: frequently strategies are adopted anticipating applications that would serve interests that embody specific values. In contemporary scientific institutions, research projects tend to be chosen that require the adoption of strategies [the ones I called decontextualizing strategies in my response to question 3] that have mutually reinforcing relations with the values of technological progress and those of capital and the market, the values desired to be especially well served by applications (innovations) that arise from the research. But these values conflict with those articulated in the popular movements (e.g., social justice, participatory democracy, sustainability), which are not well represented in scientific institutions, and so little support becomes available to engage in research under the strategies (strategies that do not involve decontextualization) that might produce results that would serve their interests.

The role that social and ethical values play in the adoption of research strategies makes it highly likely that the results of the research, on application, will serve especially well interests that embody these values, often at the expense of interests that embody competing values. This implies that neutrality cannot be approximated, unless scientific institutions become open to supporting a multiplicity and variety of research programs that can be responsive to the range of value held in a democratic society.^[xii]

8) Among the values that influence scientific endeavor, do you include values linked to ambition for academic prestige, to the desire for power and to the political game that often pervades scientific activity?

Yes, values like these are often in play at M₂, the moment of carrying out the research, and the influence can be quite positive when it provides motivation to engage with really difficult questions – the aspiration to gain the Nobel Prize is generally thought to be an appropriate one for scientists to have. These values can also have negative influence. For example, at M₁ today, they may contribute to strengthening the idea of science as investigation aiming to produce technoscientific innovations that contribute to economic growth, and the unfortunate consequences connected with this [see response to question 6]; and, at M₃, they may lead to personal interests over-riding judgments that should be supported by the evidence alone, and create conflicts of interest in various other ways. The so-called “scientific ethos” described by the sociologist Robert Merton is intended to counteract the negative effects of these values. I, myself, have not written much on this question.

9) You associate the Baconian principle of control over nature with the decontextualized approach to science, distinguished by a disregard for the ecological, social and human contexts that underlie the phenomena being studied. What values predominate in this approach?

Yes, I have argued that there are mutually reinforcing relations between adopting decontextualizing strategies and holding a value-outlook that contains what I now call the values of technological progress, In this value-outlook, the exercise of control over natural objects – or, in Bacon’s terminology, “the domination of nature” – becomes in itself a social value that is not generally or systematically subordinated to other social values, while high ethical value is attributed to innovations that increase human ability to control natural objects; to the evergrowing penetration of technologies into more and more domains of daily life,  human experience and social institutions; and to the definition of problems in terms that make for technoscientific solutions. Pablo Mariconda’s articles on this topic are very good. Furthermore, in present-day technoscience, holding the values of technological progress is reinforced by (and reinterpreted in the light of) the fact that today institutions that embody values of capital and the market (especially economic growth and the centrality of property) are the foremost bearers of these values.

10) Is it the prevalence of these values that hinders the advancement of research aimed at social inclusion and sustainability? What are the challenges to carry out alternative research programs that do not adopt the decontextualized approach to science?

The values of technological progress (especially when interpreted in the light of those of capital and the market) are in all sorts of ways in conflict with those of social justice, social inclusion, the well-being of everyone, and environmental sustainability. Where they predominate (and they predominate in most countries today) there is likely to be little public or private material, financial and other support for engaging in research conducted under strategies that have mutually reinforcing relations with the competing values. E. g., using my earlier example, there is little support for agroecology, or for the investigation of risks that have socioeconomic mechanisms that may be occasioned by introducing technoscientific innovations, or for research concerning programs of public health that integrally involve the participation (in both research and delivery of services) of local groups, or for research on the possible fruitful interaction between modern scientific studies and indigenous knowledge and methods of its acquisition, or in social technology – to mention just a few areas of significance. (Incidentally, I refer to the strategies needed for research in these areas as involving “alternative strategies.” By this, I intend to convey that it requires the use of strategies that are not reducible to decontextualizing ones; but it also makes use (where appropriate) of results obtained under decontextualizing strategies. The alternatives strategies could not replace decontextualizing ones for all research purposes. The model allows for pluralism of strategies; it does not challenge the central importance of decontextualizing strategies.)^[xiii]

The great challenge is to gain more space for conducting research under the alternative strategies, and to continue to expand it. This involves many dimensions.

Philosophers of science (like myself) have an important role: to show (among other things) (1) that the virtual exclusivity of the decontextualizing strategies in contemporary natural scientific research is not soundly based in the ideals – impartiality, neutrality and autonomy – of the scientific tradition; (2) that, in fact, the predominance of these strategies is owed more to the mutually reinforcing relations between adopting them and holding the values of technological progress; and (3) that, when research as a whole is conducted under a plurality of strategies, the possibility of moving towards realization of the traditional ideals becomes apparent – more generally, to show that science does not have to be conducted in the way in which it is largely conducted in mainstream scientific institutions, and that there are good reasons (based in the ideals of the tradition) why these institutions should open up space to the alternatives.

But that is only a beginning step. The challenge requires drawing input from many parties, each one engaged in efforts in its own space and practices. The prospects for success will depend on achieving successes, initially small-scale ones, in many spaces and practices that, in turn, open up possibilities for expansion when put into dialectical interaction with the others. It requires the unfolding of a very complex dialectic, which would require – cooperatively, simultaneously and in interaction – expanding successful achievements connected with each of the following matters (and, no doubt, others):^[xiv]

a) Taking advantage of the space that is available in institutions, like universities, that are not completely dominated by the values of capital and the market and that see themselves as having responsibilities to further democratic interests, and develop research projects that use some of the alternative strategies (e.g., in agroecology, public health and preventive medicine, alternative sources of energy, free computer software, etc).

b) Taking steps towards claiming and strengthening autonomy in research institutions: towards freeing them from the disproportionate influence of the values of capital and the market in setting the priorities of scientific research and determining appropriate methodologies, from the interference derived from holding these values in the conduct of science (e.g., via legal imposition of regimes of intellectual property rights), and from impositions that are being made on the character of scientific work and its regimes of operation [see response to question 3].

c) Aiming for more widespread adoption of the Precautionary Principle in research institutions,^[xv] and its incorporation in public science policies, so that technoscientific innovation becomes more subordinated to the values expressed in it, and the kinds of research on risks and alternatives, which its use shows to be needed, become conducted more extensively.

d) Working for the growth of – and active collaboration among – movements that aspire to democratic values, including the protection of human rights, the full range of economic/social/cultural as well as civil/political rights recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and to strengthening of the values of democratic participation, so that consciousness grows about the plurality of research strategies that are needed to provide knowledge that would enable all democratic projects to become informed by scientific knowledge.

e) Organizing for the growth of movements, institutions and programs in which researchers, practitioners and citizens collaborate, including programs for educating citizens to be able to be intelligent participants in deliberations on science policy matters, for scientists to learn from citizens what they consider to be the principal problems and interests that need to be addressed, and how they experience the problems and perceive the causal networks that bring them about and maintain them. There is needed the participation of scientists, industry and the public to work out how to re-institutional science, and to create examples showing how democratic and multicultural participation might enhance science.

11) In your research proposal to the IEA, you mention ethical, economic and social values that, on one hand, maintain scientific objectivity against postmodern arguments, but, on the other, reject characterizations of this objectivity derived from Positivism. What are the disputed postmodern arguments and characterizations with a Positivist tint, and what results from excluding both these extremes?

“Positivism” and “postmodernism” are widely used terms, but rarely are they used precisely or univocally. So I’ll just refer to aspects of these views, without attempting to characterize them completely.

Regarding positivism, I criticize the view, which we find in many of the intellectual descendants of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle of the 1930s, that (in my terms) there is no legitimate role for social/ethical values at either M₁ or M₃. This is the core of the widely held “positivist” claim that “science is value free.” In practice these positivists rarely made a distinction between these two moments, or (as I do) between adopting a strategy and accepting a theory; for them, what I diagnose as constraints on theories under decontextualizing strategies are built into their characterization of scientific theories. This had the consequence that the relationship between adopting decontextualizing strategies virtually exclusively and holding the values of technological progress remained effectively invisible.

The “postmodernist” view I criticize is highly sensitive to the role of the values of technological progress and their links with those of capital and the market in shaping contemporary science. It maintains that there is not a sharp distinction between cognitive and social/ethical values, and thus that social/ethical values can play legitimate roles at M₃, and it has the consequence that even well made evaluations of scientific theories and hypotheses are essentially marked by relativism. It denies that a significant distinction between objectivity and subjectivity can be upheld. Sometimes, this has been taken to justify rejecting much of established science simply on the ground that it has strong links the values of capital and the market.

My position, which avoids the two extremes, recognizes a legitimate role for social/ethical values at M₁, but not at M₃. It upholds the distinction between cognitive and other kinds of values, but recognizes that social/ethical values do play many legitimate roles in the conduct of research, and shows how this need not lead to relativism or subjectivism. It enables there to be a social/political critique of actual scientific practices without thereby making the cognitive appraisal of scientific theories (as distinct, e.g., of their being objects for research and their results being applied) a matter for social/political critique.

12) Still according to your research proposal, the seminars you held at the IEA might help to expand the theses included in your model. Could you give an example of this expansion?

The model of the interaction of science and values allows the possibility of there being a range of fruitful strategies (not limited to the decontextualizing strategies) each of which bears mutually reinforcing relations with holding a particular value-outlook. The seminars aimed to show that this is not just a logical possibility, by discussing alternative strategies that have already proved their fruitfulness in promising, if currently limited, ways. I myself have examined the case of agroecology in considerable detail.^[xvi] Its strategies bear mutually reinforcing relations to the value outlook of “social justice, democratic participation and ecological sustainability.”^[xvii] The strategies enable the empirical/theoretical investigation of agroecosystems dealing simultaneously with their productivity, sustainability, capacity to maintain biodiversity, their contribution to health of the agricultural community, and how they affect local culture, agency and values, often with a view to generating what the community itself determines to be a suitable and viable balance of these dimensions. Proponents of transgenics, e.g., often dismiss agroecology as simply expressing an ideological desire.^[xviii] The model represents that, although holding particular social/ethical values (that contest those of capital and market dominant in the mainstream) has close links with adopting agroecological strategies, this leaves untouched that judgments made at M₃ in agroecological research may accord with impartiality [see the  response to question 2). The significance of the model depends on the fruitfulness of cases like agroecology (and many others) being demonstrated in actual practice.

13) What is the content of the dossier on science and values that you and professor Pablo Mariconda are organizing with contributions obtained in the seminars?

The dossier begins with an article, jointly written by Pablo and me, that contains what we consider a mature and standardized version of the model of the interaction of science and values. We hope this will be useful, for – although the model dates back to the mid 1999s^[xix] – it has been refined and developed (and a lot of the terminology deployed has been changed) over the years in the course of numerous seminars organized by Scientiae Studia [philosophical association of scholars associated with the IEA research group that publishes the Scientiae Studia journal] here in São Paulo. The standardized version that we offer takes into account all these refinements and developments (and uses what has now become settled terminology), and points to places where further work is needed. In a second article, based in the model, I argue that how scientific research is to be understood today is open to two interpretations that I call “commercially-oriented technoscience” and “multi-strategy research.” This claim provides the structure for most of the dossier: several articles criticizing commercially-oriented technoscience, but in a way that recognizes the positive value of many technoscientific innovations; and others that aim to show the promise of multi-strategy research in the areas: social technology, agroecology, public health, and potential interaction between modern scientific research and traditional (indigenous) knowledge-gaining practices. (We hope that others will develop examples in many other areas of research, e.g., energy and communications.) Finally, in response to the fact that the model suggests limits to common conceptions of the rationality of science (that tend to be connected with positivism), there are a series of articles on the rationality of science, all in different ways attempting to explore how rationality marks scientific practices, but with different types of considerations coming to the fore at the different moments.

REFERENCES

Lacey, Hugh (1998) Valores e Atividade Científica. São Paulo: Discurso Editorial and Fapesp. (First edition of VAC-1)

––––  (1999) Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding. London & New York: Routledge.

––––  (2006a) A Controvérsia sobre os Transgênicos: questões científicas e éticas. São Paulo: Editora Idéias e Letras.

––––  (2006b) “O Princípio de Precaução e a autonomia da ciência.” Scientiae Studia 4: 373–392.

––––  (2008) Valores e Atividade Científica 1. São Paulo: Associação Filosófica Scientiae Studia/Editora 34 –VAC-1.

––––  (2008a) “Ciência, respeito à natureza e bem-estar humano.” Scientiae Studia 6: 297-327.

––––  (2008b) “Aspectos cognitivos e sociais das práticas científicas.” Scientiae Studia 6:83-96.

––––  (2008c) “Crescimento econômico, meio-ambiente e sustentabilidade social: a responsabilidade dos cientistas e a questão dos transgênicos.” In Gilberto Dupas (ed.), Meio-ambiente e Crescimento Econômico: Tensões estruturais, pp. 91-130. São Paulo: Editora Unesp.

––––  (2010) Valores e Atividade Científica 2. São Paulo: Associação Filosófica Scientiae Studia/Editora 34. VAC-2

––––  (2011a) “A imparcialidade e as responsabilidades dos cientistas.” Scientiae Studia 9: 487-500.

––––  (2011b) “A interação da atividade científica, visões de mundo e perspectivas de valores,” in Eduardo R. Cruz (ed.), Teologia e Ciências Naturais: Teologia da criação, ciências naturais e tecnologia em diálogo, pp.127–147. São Paulo: Editora Paulinas.

––––  (2011c) Preface to Márcia M. Tait, Tecnociência e Cientistas: Cientificismo e Controvérsias na política de biossegurança brasileira, pp. 13-29. São Paulo: Editora Annablume.

––––  (2012a) “Pluralismo metodológico, incomensurabilidade, e o status científico do conhecimento tradicional.” Scientiae Studia 10 : 425–453.

––––  (2012b) “Las diversas culturas y la práctica de la ciencia.” In F. Tula Molina & G. Giuliano (eds.), Culturas Científicas y Alternativas Tecnológicas, pp. 133-169. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva.

––––  (2013) “Rehabilitating neutrality.” Philosophical Studies 162: 77-83.

Lacey, Hugh & Mariconda, Pablo (2013) “The Eagle and the Starlings: Galileo’s argument for the autonomy of science – how pertinent is it today?.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 43: 122–131.

Mariconda, P & Lacey, H. (2001) “A águia e os estorninhos: Galileu sobre a autonomia da ciência.” Tempo Social 13: 49-65.

^[i] VAC-1, cap. 3.

^[ii] VAC-1, cap. 2; VAC-2, cap. 11

^[iii] VAC-1, cap. 1; VAC-2, cap.1; Lacey (2006a: introdução; 2008b; 2011a)

^[iv] VAC-1, especialmente cap. 5; VAC-2, parte 1.

^[v] Lacey (2006a; 2008c; 2011c); VAC-2, parte 2

^[vi] VAC-2, parte 1; Lacey (2012a; 2012b)

^[vii] Lacey (2008a; 2011b; 2012b).

^[viii] E.g., Lacey (2008a).

^[ix] Lacey (2006a; 2008a; 2008c; 2011c)

^[x] My most detailed discussions of impartiality, neutrality and autonomy are in Lacey (1999: ch. 10; 2008a); VAC-2, cap.1. On neutrality, see also Lacey (2013).

^[xi] On autonomy, see my collaborative articles with Pablo Mariconda (Mariconda & Lacey, 2001; Lacey & Mariconda (2012).

^[xii] Lacey (2013).

^[xiii] VAC-2, cap. 2; Lacey (2008a)

^[xiv] Lacey (2008a; 2012b)

^[xv] Lacey (2006b)

^[xvi] Lacey (2006a); VAC-2, parte 2.

^[xvii] Lacey (2008a; 2011b; 2012a)

^[xviii] Lacey (2011c)

^[xix] Lacey (1998; 1999).

Special attention will be given to the imagery documentary record, seen as an inventory of social and cultural practices that contributes to human and social sciences in the mapping and interpretation of Amazonian realities.

According to the organizers of the debate, "science and the technology perspective associated with it tend to understand the Amazon as a repository of natural resources, biodiversity and genetic 'bank', which must be harnessed to meet human needs, specifically to answer the hegemonic model of progress."

However, the researchers warn that "science and technology, as drivers of rational development and of the ideals of human flourishing behind it, oppose the traditional knowledge, meaning knowledge and ways of life of people and local communities, considering that they constitute an obstacle to modernization."

Given the possible tensions arising from the meeting of these narratives, some questions arise:

• Are traditional knowledge and science competing rationalities?
• In spite of their differences, is the cooperation between these rationales a viable alternative?
• Are there rational justifications for the human to be separated from their environment and for biodiversity to be separated from human cultures?

According to organizers, cooperative dialogue between the two sides find support in the theoretical framework of the model of interaction between science and values ​​which is developed by the research group [read the interview with Hugh Lacey on this model]: "The arguments of the model in favor of strategic pluralism point to the need of a research based on methodological complementarity and the possibility of adopting unconventional alternative practices for biodiversity conservation."

Three central issues will be addressed by the two debates of the event:

• The imagery documentary record and field survey: from image to translation of realities
• Dialogue between science and traditional knowledge: from the model of interaction to methodological pluralism
• Communication and polarization between scientific and popular narratives in biodiversity conservation

PROGRAMME

April 9 from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm

Exhibitors: Antonio Carlos Diegues (NUPAUB-USP) and Sylvia Caiuby Novaes (FFLCH-USP)

Discussant: Stelio Marras (IEB-USP)

Mediator: Ana Tereza Reis da Silva (FE-UNB and IEA-USP)

April 10 from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm

Exhibitors: Mauro William Barbosa de Almeida (IFCH-Unicamp) and Ana Tereza Reis da Silva (FE-UNB and IEA-USP)

Discussant / mediator: Stelio Marras (IEB-USP)

According to Canevacci, "the event aims to try an innovative way to present a book that develops an ethnographic research on contemporary arts and therefore it will merge languages ​​and narrative forms in a compositional polyphony." Specialists in art, philosophy and anthropology will present reflections on the work.

Minimum Monument

Azevedo’s project has been presented in cities of different countries and cultures. The work is described in the artist's website as below:

"There are numerous ice sculptures placed to melt in public spaces where they attract the attention of passersby, causing a suspension of their everyday path. Acting in a few minutes, the work subverts the official canons of the memory record in public monuments, reducing the size of the monument to eight inches high, making it mobile and fleeting and honoring ordinary people instead of leaders and heroes. It carries with it a concrete, poetic and political seizure of space, of the body within the city and of the monument in the collective space."

During the launch, the book "SincrétiKa - Ethnographic Explorations of Contemporary Arts" (Studio Nobel, 2013, 296 pages) will be for sale at promotional price. The meeting has been organized by the IEA- USP and by USP’s Tenda Cultural Ortega Y Gasset, linked to PRCEU, Dean of Culture and University Extension.

Photo: Néle Azevedo

Coordinated by Olgária Matos, Senior Professor at the Department of Philosophy of USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), the new group will be focused on the influence of accelerated temporality in contemporary culture. According to the research project, the goal is to analyze "the relationship between time acceleration, culture of innovation and war against the urban phenomena of communication, information and knowledge society."

The project has been written around four themes: the culture of excess, the distance to the forms of sociability of the Enlightenment tradition, contemporary capitalism and the impact of contemporary socio-cultural changes in the psychic apparatus of the human being.

These topics will be investigated from a broad perspective, covering ethics, politics, science and aesthetics, and focusing on theme cores such as the crisis of values ​​and identity, the rupture with tradition, the decline of notions of democracy and republic, the increase of violence, contemporary capitalism, the advent of technoscience and the obsolescence of taste.

Among the key issues to be addressed by the group are the increasing disintegration of the political community, the struggles for hegemony, the weakening of the universal rights ideals, public space and common life, the emergence of individualism, the cooling of guilt and concern for others, the intensification of different forms of incivility, and the disappearance of symbolism and transcendence as structures of social and cultural life.

RESEARCHERS

Multidisciplinary, the new group is composed of researchers from diverse fields, including philosophy, history, literature, anthropology and psychoanalysis. The idea is that each member focuses on a sub-theme of the project linked to their research and knowledge domain. Every two months the group will meet so that members can submit partial results, reporting on what stage of the research they are and talking to other members.

Besides having professors from the faculties of USP, UNIFESP (Federal University de São Paulo), UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), the group will feature invited speakers from the Accademia Di Belle Arti Di Frosinone, Italy, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France, and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP).

From a philosophical point of view, the group will explore utopias aimed at building a world centered on leisure, free of scarcity and where work is not the most important aspect in daily life. It will also discuss the emergence of a more libertarian society, characterized by ease of changing identity, belief, profession, sexual orientation and nationality as well as breaking social ties and creating more free and flexible new ones.

The group will initially focus on eight themes of approach: the revolution of inventions, machines and computers, the extinction of scarcity, the end of history, violence in a world without misery, consumerism and conformism, the difference between happiness and pleasure, utopias and its principles, and harm reduction.

FOCUS

According to the group’s research project, technoscientific advances constitute a watershed in the realization of utopian scenarios as they make it possible to satisfy desires that used to be repressed by several limitations and reach the stage of happiness in which one can "extract the maximum of personal satisfaction from minimal external stimuli." Furthermore, the development of science and technology makes the increase of productivity and the reduce of workload possible from the technical or material point of view.

The prospect of producing more by working less raises a number of issues to be discussed by the group: the possibility to have more time for leisure than to work, the emergence of more malleable identities, which would not be based on occupation, the elimination of the deficiencies that marked the course of humanity, the weakening of social bonds and the liquidity of relationships, and the end of history - or, as the research project punctuates, the end of a story driven by economy and scarcity.

But, as highlighted by the project, to turn the new utopias into reality finds two aspects as obstacles: the need to contain consumerism behind the need to produce and work harder, and the continuity of violence, as this would not disappear even with the end of scarcity, given the longing to have what others have or want, inherent in human nature.

DYNAMICS

The group will start its activities with a core of five researchers, including the coordinator. The expansion in the number of members will be gradual, as external lecturers get interested in becoming members. Among these guests, anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, visiting professor at the IEA-USP, and philosopher Olgária Matos, professor at FFLCH-USP and coordinator of IEA-USP’s research group on Humanities and the Contemporary World (also newly created), have already been contacted.

The idea is that the group meets every 45 days during the academic semesters, with a minimum of six meetings per year. Open to all interested parties and with the participation of external researchers, these meetings will be focused on the development of theoretical issues and the debate about them in practical terms. The group's proposal also includes internal meetings, participation in congresses, conferences and publications, such as articles, books and blogs.

Martí Peran

Is it possible to produce an art exhibition that reflects the feeling of fatigue that contemporary life causes on individuals? How would that be possible? And why do it if its realization would be another causing act of fatigue? These questions will be explored at the conference “How to Convert Fatigue in an Art Exhibition?”, that art theorist Martí Peran, a professor at Universidad de Barcelona, ​​will give on September 8 at 3 pm.

The event has been organized by IEA-USP’s Forum Permanente: Cultural System between Public and Private Research Group and will be held in Ruy Leme Room at USP’s Faculty of Economics, Administration and Accounting (FEA).

SELF-PRODUCTION OF IDENTITY

In the opinion of Peran, if industrial capitalism used to produce commodities with exchange value and the post-Fordist capitalism has shifted to the production of subjectivity, the gain today focuses on self-production of identity: "The logic of the subject of self-exploration has been imposed. The rhetoric of entrepreneurship and ideological advertising is unequivocal: 'Do it yourself', 'I am what I am.'"

From this ideas, Peran identifies the existence of a new productive motto, the "make thyself", causing a widespread nervous hyperactivity, once the individual is required to make small but constant and endless decisions in all spheres of his life (professionally, emotionally, socially, etc.), which have become the new force at work: "They do not contain anything and ensure the benefit generated by the constant action of the ‘restlessness’. The individual has been confused by the incessant movement of their own alienation."

To Peran, this hyperactivity is a paradigm of "poverty of experience" since it leads to a deficit surplus, because the individual has many experiences but almost all of them are banal. He remembers that the consequence of this has been recognized in the statements of several authors: bare life (Giorgio Agamben), damaged life (S. López Pequeño), tiredness society (Byung-Chul Han), corrosion of character (Richard Sennett), factory of unhappiness (Franco Berardi) and depressive society (Alain Ehrenberg).

PRAISE OF FATIGUE

This self-exploration makes the pain of fatigue inevitable. However, according to the speaker, instead of representing a pathological condition that must be corrected in order to return to the senseless spiral of production, fatigue may represent an opportunity for the awakening of consciousness, the inflection point from which a process of emancipation begins. "Fatigue is the point of arrest and break, the moment of 'capable tiredness’, in the words of Peter Handke, with which sabotage begins. Fatigue thus becomes - as the molecular revolution - the beginning of a gap that politicizes the malaise.”

While for engineers fatigue refers to the resistance decrease of materials subjected to repetitive stress, in the sphere of social engineering, Peran defines it through a phrase from Roland Barthes: "The claim of the individual exhausted body that claims the right to social rest."

With fatigue, explains Peran, hyperactivity merely changes in production of detention, and there lies the emancipatory principle of miseducation while its neutrality rests on the still promise of all the possible diversity. He believes that this praise of fatigue (similar to apologies of laziness, anonymity, disappearance and inaction) occupies a similar position - "perhaps inverted" – to the one previously occupied by melancholy in the contemporary experience.

Peran, who is also an art critic and curator asks how to convert this argument into an art exhibition, how to articulate a situation to transfer these contents, and take this to the limit by asking if "these little challenges, characteristic of a increasingly depleted disciplinary field lead to the question: why organize an exhibition"?

PROFILE

Professor of art theory at the Universidad de Barcelona, ​​Peran is the director of the Roundabout Encounter Program, which promotes exchanges between Barcelona and other world cities such as Bangkok, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Santiago. He also contributes to several books and catalogs on contemporary art, writing regularly for newspapers and magazines, both printed and electronic, such as BBC and Exitexpres.

He joined the editorial board of "Transversal - Journal of Contemporary Culture" (1996-2002) and was co-editor of "Gypsy". His most recent projects as a curator include: "Post-it city Occasional Cities." (CCCB, Barcelona, 2008; MAC, Santiago de Chile, Centro Cultural São Paulo, 2009); "After Architecture" (Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, ​​2009); "Glaskultur. ¿Qué pasó con la transparence " (Koldo Mitxelena, San Sebastián, 2006).

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The subject will be addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective, centered in philosophy but also considering anthropology, biology, linguistics, psychology and law. According to the coordinator of the meeting, Lorenzo Baravalle, a post-doctoral student in Philosophy at USP and member of the research group, "the main objective is to define questions and to sketch lines of response rather than reaching definitive conclusions."

Some of the issues to be addressed are:

• What are the manifestations of animal subjectivity?
• Does time have the same unifying function of "I" in some animals, that some authors consider central to human subjectivity and individuality?
• Is it possible to speak of an awareness of death in animals?
• Can the concept of "autonomy", taken from political philosophy and law, be used to characterize animal subjectivity?

The debate will bring together some of the researchers who participated in the previous meetings of the cycle. The roundtable on the 29th will be moderated by Baravalle and will feature three panelists. Hernán Neira, a professor of political philosophy at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USC), will speak about the awareness of time by animals. His exhibition will focus on the criticism against the philosophical and biological thought of Jakob von Uexküll, particularly with regard to the distinction between the human temporality, considered objective, and the animal one, seen as subjective. Gustavo Andrés Caponi, a professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), will examine the heterogeneity of the cognitive faculties of human beings and other animals in the context of the ideas of French naturalist Georger-Lous Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Anthropologist Eliane Sebeika Rapchan, professor at the State University of Maringá (UEM), will discuss the existence of an "animal subjectivity" from the results of researches that have explored aspects related to emotions and feelings, conscience, symbolic capacity, among others, in wild and laboratory chimpanzees.

Moderated by Caponi, the roundtable on the 30th will also have three discussants. Stelio Marras, a professor at USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB), will address the topic of human-animal correspondence. For this, he will address a classical issue of anthropology: "the Bororo are macaws" - a reference to the symbolic thinking of a tribe of Brazilian Indians, the Bororo, who have the macaws as totem and do not make an ontological distinction between themselves and those birds. Baravalle, now as an exhibitor, will reflect on the ability of animals to perceive the uniqueness of the experience - that is, the existence of a 'self' with its own identity - and, from there, he will explore the potential of a theoretical model that enables a better understanding of the phenomenology of animal life. Davide Vecchi, a professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Complexity (IFICC), Chile, will discuss whether subjectivity is a primitive property of all living beings or conditional upon certain biological capabilities, such as cognition. In the exhibition, he will address two specific cases: the immune system and a colony of bacteria.

CYCLE

Inaugurated in 2013, the cycle Humans and Animals: The Limits of Mankind covers the origins, legitimacy, and ethical-political consequences of differentiation of living beings in humans, animals and sub​​-humans (this last case defined by the prejudiced view of certain groups of individuals of certain ethnicities, body types or gender, considered inferior humans).

The aim is to discuss the most relevant philosophical and epistemological fundamentals to what is meant by human from an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing various perspectives, including those of anthropology, biology, and ethics.

The organization is from IEA’s Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group, the Philosophical Scientiae Studia Association and Fapesp’s Thematic Project ‘Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: On the Relationship between Science, Technology, and Society’.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Claudio Cohen, a professor at USP's Faculty of Medicine, will be the exhibitor

How will new genetic technologies affect the production of meaning in the lives of human beings? If humanity became a civilization of cyborgs (humans with bio-mechatronic components), how would that affect the human condition? What is the role of the university in thinking about these issues and in establishing (or not) limits to the transformations in the human being?

These issues will be discussed at the seminar The Human Being and Technique, on October 8, at 3 pm, in IEA-USP's Event Room. It will be the fourth meeting of the cycle In Search of Lost Meaning. The speaker will be psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Claudio Cohen, a professor at USP's Faculty of Medicine, who is an expert in bioethics and clinical bioethics.

The debaters will be economist Gilson Schwartz, a professor of the Department of Film, Radio and Television at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and political scientist Maya Mitre, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and a specialist in political theory, and social studies of science and technology. Moderation will be in charge of political scientist Bernardo Sorj, a visiting professor at the IEA-USP and coordinator of the cycle.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

CYCLE

In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence, coordinated by Sorj, has planned four meetings. The goal is to address the changes caused by the decline of the great political ideologies and to discuss the production of meaning in this new sociocultural context.

According to Sorj, the political ideologies of modernity - as the Enlightenment liberalism, fascism, communism and nationalism – have maintained from religious monotheism the notion that values ​​can be organized around universal principles and that there is a single truth. With the decline of the "secular religions" a world of "polytheism of values ​, which transfers to the individual the right and responsibility to choose between often conflicting and mutually exclusionary beliefs and values" has arisen.

This polytheism of values ​​is the main feature of today in the opinion of Sorj, for whom "the challenge of democratic societies is to assume this position, completing the process of secularization that began in the Renaissance."

Photo: Marcos Santos/USP Imagens

Mathematician Artur Ávila, 35, a researcher at the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) and Director of Research at the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France, was one of the four winners of the Fields Medal in 2014, being the first Latin American to receive the award, which is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Thus, Ávila became the holder of the most important international scientific honor in any area ever granted to a Brazilian researcher.

In order to historically contextualize the achievement of Ávila and the Brazilian mathematics field, the IEA-USP and USP's Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME), with support from the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences (ICMC) of USP's campus in São Carlos, will hold the seminar Artur Ávila, the Fields Medal and the Brazilian School of Mathematics on October 15, at 2 pm, in IEA-USP's Event Room.

The exhibitors will be three researchers from the IMPA: Marcelo Viana, Maurício Peixoto and Welington de Melo. Moderation will be in charge of Edson de Faria (IME). Moderation will be in charge of Edson de Faria (IME). Before the seminar, from 11 am to 12 pm, at the IME, Welington de Melo, who has been the doctoral supervisor to Ávila, will give a lecture on the work of the medalist for undergraduates in mathematics.

Founded in 1936 and granted only to mathematicians under 40 years, the Fields Medal was handed to the winners of this year on August 13, during the International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Seoul. The medal is only awarded every four years during the meetings of the International Mathematical Union. Rio de Janeiro will host the next congress in 2018. It will be the first time a country of the Southern Hemisphere becomes the host .

Ávila’s award is the crowning of a long path of struggle by Brazilian mathematics. Although the achievement is due to the merits and individual brilliance of the young mathematician, it should also be credited for his participating in a scientific context that can be defined as a Brazilian school of studies on dynamical systems, primarily established by IMPA, an institution that has played an important role in the world for several years and from which Ávila has graduated.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

Photo: International Congress of Mathematicians

IEA-USP's Humanities and the Contemporary World Research Group will hold the seminar Filiation's Crisis: Subjectivity and Suffering on November 28, at 2 pm (this event has been postponed to February, 2015), at USP's Institute of International Relations (IRI). According to the organizers, the event aims to reflect on "the 'time of agression', which once accelerated prevents the formation of the identity experience in its heterogeneous layers, and of bonds of belonging and memory, replaced by successive traumas in the spectacle of pain according to the markets of advertising and politics."

Exhibitors will be Cynthia A. Sarti and Tales Ab'Sáber, both professors at UNIFESP, and Maria Inês Assumpção Fernandes, a professor at USP's Institute of Psychology. Moderation will be in charge of the research group's coordinator Olgária Matos, a professor of USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH).

Sarti will talk about Memory and Forgetfulness, making a reflection on the role of memories in the establishment of a common shared memory on the threshold between narrative, and psychic healing, trauma and resilience of contemporary politicians.

Filiation's Rupture will be the theme of Fernandes. She will examine the sense of loss of psychic transmission and its consequences in the constitution of subjectivity across generations, allowing family, and symbolic and identity belonging narratives.

Ab'Sáber called his exhibition The Music of Infinite Time. He will discuss the uses of time by the young controlled by the rules of drug consumption and the market in its relations with the processes of depersonalization and unfulfillment both in terms of group performances and celebrations, and in their daily lives.

David Gange (University of Birmingham), Nikki Moore (Rice University) and Helder Nakaya (USP), three of the participants, presented the Closing Report to the members of the project's Senior Committee during the last session of the encounter.

Goals of the MOOC

According to them, the MOOC to be produced will be a kind of interactive online guide for students and researchers who want to develop or expand their interest in the concept of time. For now, there are three name options for the course: "On Time", "Thinking with Time" and "What Time Is It?".

The expectation is that the users of the MOOC acquire skills to synthesize arguments from large areas of knowledge, learn to analyze evidence in order to form their own ideas on the raised issues, develop the ability to deal with conceptual materials and think transversely to the disciplines involved.

Students should collaborate in the construction of scientific knowledge at the same time as they develop their framework of knowledge

Course structure

The young researchers have in mind a MOOC with four central themes chosen after a group evaluation on the key subdivisions of the concept of time.

All content will be studied from 14 topics, 13 of them related to at least one of the four core subjects and involving various disciplines, both the sciences and the humanities. The completion of the course will have an additional topic which will focus on the future of the concept of time.

Core subjects

Is time essential or a cognitive phenomenon? Does it require change? What exists in time? Is time an independent entity as suggested by physics and philosophy? Is it absolute or relative? These questions will try to answer the question of the first central theme: "What is time?".

“How is time perceived?” is the question that defines the second central theme. It raises a number of issues to be studied, including the following:

• Can we perceive time?
• Is it possible to make reliable judgments about temporal properties?
• Can one perceive time without change?
• What is the relationship between experienced time and neural time?
• How is it possible to experience events that last in time (movement, change, succession, melodies) as something extended in time?

The functional concept, the mutant concept and the standardization of time, the mental time travel (chronesthesia), the opposition between linear time and cyclical time, and (in anthropology) between deictic time and sequential time will be analyzed in the third central theme: "How is time conceptualised?".

The question that defines the fourth central theme is "How is time used?". The issues to be discussed approach time as something relevant to subjects such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and medicine as well as how narratives use it creating linearity, circularity or even its fractionation. The importance of time in social interaction (time management, punctuality, working and leisure hours), history, traditions and other aspects also deserve attention.

Topics of study

The 14 topics of the course have been established through specific questions which are broken down into sub-questions:

• How is time measured?
• What traces does time leave?
• Is there a relationship between time and causality?
• Is time relative?
• What are temporal illusions and what can we learn from them?
• Does time have a history?
• Why is the present special?
• Can we predict the future?
• How do different rhythms interact?
• What does symbolic representation do for human understanding of time?
• Do non-humans have individual time?
• Is time running out?
• How do we value time?
• What is the future of the time concept?

Means

Each topic will be covered in a class which will feature videotaped speeches, animations, questions and 5-8 films of 7-15 minutes each.

There will be a discussion forum in which the students will be encouraged to provide answers on questions raised by the course and other students.

There are also plans for a multimedia reading list, a kind of database with links and relevant content separated by levels of complexity. The idea is that students can write short comments on the presented material's support itself.

Target audience

The MOOC will be designed at a level of scientific complexity that should be "suitable for intellectually ambitious graduates." However, it will not be necessary that the students have previous specific qualifications as this would not match the diverse academic profile of those responsible for the initiative, who do not have an area of common knowledge to everyone. It would also be incoherent with the general spirit of this type of course.

The introduction of complex ideas will be made from the basic concepts domain, since each student is a beginner in at least some of the subjects comprised in the MOOC.

Additional results

Biologist Helder Nakaya presented the potential additional results that the Intercontinental Academia can provide besides the MOOC.

The first one is to send a "letter to the editor" of some interdisciplinary journal of world prestige. This contribution will address the importance, the key features and the project's results.

Even the contact of the young researchers throughout the project should result in interdisciplinary scientific articles, which might also be possible from the processing of the data to be collected through questionnaires answered by the students of the MOOC.

The production of a video with various multimedia features on all the work being developed in the Intercontinental Academia will be considered.

“Is there an original theoretical contribution that Brazilian archeology can make to this discipline?” The author of the question is Eduardo Goes Neves, researcher at USP’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE) and organizer of the dossier “Aspects of Brazilian Archaeology” that opens the new edition (No. 83) of the Estudos Avançados journal. (The digital edition is available at SciELO.)

In addition to discussing the identity of Brazilian archeology, the dossier also brings articles on Amazonia, the Pantanal region, the ethylic practices of the Tupi-Guarani, early settlement of South America and the cultural landscapes of the southern Brazilian plateau.

History and temporality

In the introductory article, Is There Something We Can Call “Brazilian archeology”?, Neves assesses whether there is a corpus of problems and specific data that are unique to, or at least a prerogative of, Brazilian archeology. Although he does not have a clear answer to the question, he is certain that it involves the concepts of history and temporality of South American indigenous societies.

Neves’ article is discussed by Ulpiano Bezerra de Meneses, professor emeritus at the School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and author of the essay The Identity of the Brazilian Archaeology.

For Meneses, the conciliation of history and temporality advocated by Neves is exciting and ethnographically feasible, but archaeologically presents numerous difficulties because “from the point of view of the groups that we studied, we cannot assume the same kind of relationship we have with artifacts.”

With regard to the framework of reference of Brazilian archaeologists, Meneses said it is necessary “to reiterate the warning made by Eduardo Neves: we must look less outside the continent for theoretical references, and conversely, more at the available local evidence.”

The other articles of the dossier are: Agricultural Determinism in Amazonian Archeology, by Claide de Paula Moraes; Archeology and Indigenous History in the Pantanal Region, by Eduardo Bespalez; The Archaeology of Fermented Brews: An Ethylic History of the Tupi-Guarani People, by Fernando Ozorio de Almeida; Early Settlements in South America: Contributions of the Brazilian Milieu, by Lucas Bueno and Adriana Dias; and The Genesis of the Cultural Landscapes of the Southern Brazilian Plateau, by Silvia Moehlecke Copé.

Science and values

In addition to the dossier on Brazilian archeology, issue no. 83 of Estudos Avançados publishes the second part of the dossier “Sciences, Values and Alternatives,” organized by the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Technology research group, which brings the findings of studies made by the group under FAPESP’s thematic project “Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: The Relationships Between Science, Technology and Values.”

Whereas in the first part (published in issue 82) the texts addressed methodological concerns of researches on the relationship between science and values, this time the articles examine three areas where attention to values is crucially important: agro-ecology, health and biodiversity.

The first topic is discussed by Hugh Lacey in Agroecology: An Illustration of the Fruitfulness of Multi-Strategy Research, and by Rubens Onofre Nodari and Miguel Pedro Guerra in Agroecology: Research Strategies and Values. Lacey was visiting professor at the IEA in 2011 and 2013, and currently heads the Agroecology Workgroup of the IEA-USP’s Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group.

The other two topics are covered by Nicolas Lechopier, visiting professor at the IEA in 2013, who contributes with Four Tensions in Public Health, and by Ana Tereza Reis da Silva, author of The Conservation of Biodiversity Between Traditional Knowledge and Science.

Other articles

The journal also features articles on economics, orthographic changes, and anthropology.

Economist Ladislau Dowbor, professor at PUC-SP, is the author of The Current Financial System Hampers Economic Development, where he analyzes how the system of financial intermediation sterilizes a country’s assets by draining staggering amounts of resources that should be directed to productive and economic development.

In A Serene and Scientific View of the New Orthographic Agreement, philologist Evanildo Bechara, from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, examines criticism of the 1990 Orthographic Agreement.

In the article The Occupation of Congress: What Are the Indigenous People Fighting Against?, anthropologists Artionka Capiberibe, from Unicamp, and Oiara Bonilla, from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), address the clash between politics and the economic model that underlies the resistance of indigenous peoples to agribusiness and its representatives in Congress.

The edition also includes reviews of the latest books by Nabil Bonduki, Ana Paula Koury, Marco Bobbio, Michael Löwy, Mauro Rosso (as organizer), and an essay by Lorenzo Mammi on the installation “Clara Clara,” by Laura Vinci.