The Critical-Systemic Approach to Law in a World Society

This article is part of UNIO’s section for non-reviewed articles. This section aims to publicize activities, projects or initatives of the Center of Studies in European Law, which houses UNIO activities. The article below resulted from a project related to Interconstitutionality, financed by Portuguese and the Brazilian Governments (FCT-CAPES), and which consisted of an exchange program involving young researchers from Portugal and Brazil

Universities as Living Labs for sustainable development : a global perspective

Walter Leal Filho, Baltazar Andrade Guerra, Mark Mifsud and Rudi Pretorius use case studies from Brazil, Malta and South Africa to reflect on how the Living Labs approach can contribute towards a more sustainable futurepeer-reviewe

BREVE ALUSÃO AO ATUAL ESTADO (INCONSTITUCIONAL) DE EXCEÇÃO EM QUE ESTAMOS VIVENDO E MORRENDO

RESUMOObjetivo: A meta desta pesquisa é a abordagem, de forma crítica, da temática do estado de exceção estudada por diversos juristas e filósofos, bem como considerações acerca dos conceitos de necropolítica e necropoder (Mbembe), em cotejo sobretudo com o pensamento de Nietzsche. Visa-se, pois, pensar a questão da biopolítica como imunologia e a transformação desta em tanatopolítica.Metodologia: A metodologia utilizada no presente estudo é a pesquisa bibliográfica e doutrinária em obras, artigos científicos, estudos e pesquisas sobre a temática, com foco em Filosofia e do Direito.Resultados: O sistema jurídico, em âmbito global, reagirá crescentemente contra a diversidade e, com isso, irá comprometer os fundamentos da ambiência natural e cultural humana. Este resultado é o pior a que o recrudescimento da presente crise pode levar.Contribuições: A maior contribuição deste estudo é a superação das doenças autoimunes que a todos acometem enquanto corpo social mundial - nos termos de Roberto Esposito - destacando-se que a atual “crise alérgica” da União Europeia é um exemplo claro e menos grave do que o da Alemanha nazista analisada por esse autor, em que a enfermidade decorre da tentativa de isolamento dos contatos que põem a política a serviço da vida e não a vida a serviço de uma política mortífera, ou seja, da biopolítica transformada em tanatopolítica.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Violência; bode expiatório; homo sacer; estado de exceção. ABSTRACTObjective: To critically approach the thematic of state of exception studied by several jurists and philosophers, as well as comments about the concepts of necropolitics and necropower (Mbembe), in comparison with Nietzsche's thought. The aim is to think about the issue of biopolitics as immunology and its transformation into tanatopolitics.Methodology: The methodology used in this study is bibliographic and doctrinal research in works, scientific articles, studies and research on the subject, focusing on Philosophy and Law.Results: The global legal system will increasingly respond against diversity and thereby undermine the background of the natural and cultural human environment. This result is the worst that the resurgence of the present crisis can lead to.Contributions: The major contribution of this study is the overcoming of the autoimmune diseases that affect everyone as a world social body - according to Roberto Esposito - highlighting that the current “allergic crisis” of the European Union is a clear and less serious example than that of Nazi Germany analyzed by the author, in which the disease stems from the attempt to isolate the contacts that directs politics at the service of life and not life at the service of a deadly policy, that is, of biopolitics transformed into tanatopolitics.KEYWORDS: Violence; scapegoat; homo sacer; state of exception

A SENSORY-MOTOR LINGUISTIC FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN ACTIVITY UNDERSTANDING

We empirically discovered that the space of human actions has a linguistic structure. This is a sensory-motor space consisting of the evolution of joint angles of the human body in movement. The space of human activity has its own phonemes, morphemes, and sentences. We present a Human Activity Language (HAL) for symbolic non-arbitrary representation of sensory and motor information of human activity. This language was learned from large amounts of motion capture data. Kinetology, the phonology of human movement, finds basic primitives for human motion (segmentation) and associates them with symbols (symbolization). This way, kinetology provides a symbolic representation for human movement that allows synthesis, analysis, and symbolic manipulation. We introduce a kinetological system and propose five basic principles on which such a system should be based: compactness, view-invariance, reproducibility, selectivity, and reconstructivity. We demonstrate the kinetological properties of our sensory-motor primitives. Further evaluation is accomplished with experiments on compression and decompression of motion data. The morphology of a human action relates to the inference of essential parts of movement (morpho-kinetology) and its structure (morpho-syntax). To learn morphemes and their structure, we present a grammatical inference methodology and introduce a parallel learning algorithm to induce a grammar system representing a single action. The algorithm infers components of the grammar system as a subset of essential actuators, a CFG grammar for the language of each component representing the motion pattern performed in a single actuator, and synchronization rules modeling coordination among actuators. The syntax of human activities involves the construction of sentences using action morphemes. A sentence may range from a single action morpheme (nuclear syntax) to a sequence of sets of morphemes. A single morpheme is decomposed into analogs of lexical categories: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. The sets of morphemes represent simultaneous actions (parallel syntax) and a sequence of movements is related to the concatenation of activities (sequential syntax). We demonstrate this linguistic framework on real motion capture data from a large scale database containing around 200 different actions corresponding to English verbs associated with voluntary meaningful observable movement

From the medieval theological-metaphysical epistemology to the theory of autopoietic social systems

O presente ensaio traz uma construção histórica que abrange a epistemologia metafísica utilizada pela teologia cristã, desembarcando na teoria dos sistemas, a qual retrata alguns pensadores de suas épocas, defendendo uma nova postura filosófica que abarque o momento atual que se vivencia.The essay brings a historic building that covers the metaphysical epistemology used by the Christian theology and disembarking in the theory of systems, featuring some thinkers of their epochs, defending a philosophical stance that embraces the current moment that one experiences

Inferências paleoclimáticas para o holoceno do sul do Brasil em ambientes influenciados por diferentes sistemas hidrológicos

Organic matter preserved in continental deposits is an excellent archive of environmental and climate change, and various research tools are commonly used to access this information. The present study is the result of a study conducted in continental environments influenced by different hydrological systems and demonstrates the usefulness of these analyses in obtaining rainfall-related paleoclimatic data. The study area is located in the basalts of the Alto Uruguai region (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), known for its mineral riches such as amethyst geodes and hot springs. The methodology used integrates palynofacies and organic geochemistry techniques, complemented by radiocarbon dating. The results were obtained from three sedimentary profiles and showed a trend of relative decrease in rainfall levels in the region. However, the scale of these changes is also highly influenced by the hydrological system of the depositional environment that originated the sedimentary record at each site. Based on the data obtained, we advise the establishment of medium- and long-term policies involving better management of local natural resources in the investigated region.  A matéria orgânica preservada nos depósitos continentais é um excelente arquivo de mudanças ambientais e climáticas, e várias ferramentas de pesquisa são comumente usadas para acessar essas informações. O presente estudo é o resultado de um estudo realizado em ambientes continentais influenciado por diferentes sistemas hidrológicos e demonstra a utilidade dessas análises na obtenção de dados paleoclimáticos relacionados à chuva. A área de estudo está localizada nos basaltos da região do Alto Uruguai (RS), conhecida por suas riquezas minerais, como geodos de ametista e fontes termais. A metodologia utilizada integra palinofácies e técnicas de geoquímica orgânica, complementadas por datação por radiocarbono. Os resultados foram obtidos a partir de três perfis sedimentares e mostraram uma tendência de diminuição relativa nos níveis de chuva na região. No entanto, a escala dessas alterações também é altamente influenciada pelo sistema hidrológico do ambiente deposicional que originou o registro sedimentar em cada local. Com base nos dados obtidos, aconselhamos o estabelecimento de políticas de médio e longo prazo que envolvam melhor gerenciamento dos recursos naturais locais na região investigada