language as metaphor

Mauthner esteemed language as a philosophical inquiry. He measured the philosophical entailments between language and reality and the consequent knowledge produced by such entailments. He questioned language’s aptitude to express and represent reality and, according to him, language is a critical source of knowledge and an unfaithful representation of reality, because there is a gap between language and reality, i.e. language distorts perception and engenders false and fictitious assumptions about reality. Language fosters superstition, creates gods and idols and exerts a dominating power over the intellect. Mauthner pointed out a critique of language based on metaphors, which would serve to address and clarify the deformation of reality. Wittgenstein, unlike himself suggested, was inspired by Mauthner. Both showed interest toward the critical analysis of language and there are many conceptual similarities between their language’s conceptions (e.g. concerning the use of metaphors to understand language). Therefore, this paper seeks a) to emphasize Mauthner’s metaphors on language as an accurate interpretation regarding the philosophical entailments between language and reality, and b) to demonstrate the epistemological legacy of Mauthner’s critique of language to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.Mauthner encarava a linguagem como uma investigação filosófica. Assim, mediu os vínculos filosóficos entre linguagem e realidade e o consequente conhecimento produzido por tais vínculos e questionou a aptidão da linguagem para expressar e representar a realidade. Segundo Mauthner, a linguagem é uma fonte crítica de conhecimento e uma representação infiel da realidade, dado que há uma lacuna entre linguagem e realidade, ou seja, a linguagem distorce a perceção e engendra premissas falsas e fictícias sobre a realidade. A linguagem acolhe superstições, cria deuses e ídolos e exerce um poder dominante sobre o intelecto. Mauthner apontou uma crítica da linguagem baseada em metáforas, que serviriam para abordar e clarificar a deformação da realidade. Wittgenstein, ao contrário do que sugeriu, foi inspirado por Mauthner. Ambos mostraram interesse relativamente à análise crítica da linguagem e existem muitas semelhanças concetuais entre as suas conceções do idioma (por exemplo, sobre o uso de metáforas para entender a linguagem). Assim, este artigo procura a) enfatizar as metáforas de Mauthner sobre a linguagem como uma interpretação precisa sobre os vínculos filosóficos entre linguagem e realidade, e b) demonstrar o legado epistemológico da crítica de Mauthner da linguagem à filosofia da linguagem de Wittgenstein

Didáctica da Filosofia: Educação para a Autonomia da formação do Pensamento

Uma criança de seis anos pode ou não usar e compreender os conceitos abstractos de “liberdade”, “verdade” ou “justiça”? A resposta a esta questão pode, por um lado, ser orientada se tomarmos como exemplos as histórias infantis que as crianças conhecem, por outro, ser explorada se tomarmos a Filosofia como prática de aprendizagem básica para a formação e desenvolvimento de um pensamento correcto, crítico e criativo. Por exemplo, na história da Branca de Neve, de Jacob Grimm, uma criança pode ou não questionar se a Branca de Neve tem liberdade face às regras impostas pela sua madrasta. Uma criança de seis anos tem ou não capacidade para compreender a falta de liberdade da Branca de Neve dadas as circunstâncias oferecidas pela história? Já deve ter essa capacidade interrogativa da liberdade como bem supremo dos seres humanos, mas nas devidas proporções? O ensino da Filosofia nas crianças constitui, essencialmente, um projecto educativo que visa disponibilizar os instrumentos, métodos e modos de desenvolvimento do raciocínio e do pensamento. Através da prática do diálogo, do desenvolvimento cognitivo, afectivo e social das crianças e dos jovens, o programa explora as dimensões crítica, criativa, lógica, estética e ética, numa relação inevitável entre o pensamento, a linguagem e a acção. Quer o entendimento dos conceitos filosóficos (como “liberdade”, “verdade” ou “justiça”) quer a formulação e posterior resposta a perguntas do tipo “O que é a liberdade?” exigem a formação de um pensamento crítico, reflexivo e conceptual apurado, bem como a definição de critérios de valor e de juízo. Formar um pensamento crítico, reflexivo, lógico e normativo em crianças exige um programa curricular adaptado e acessível, de modo a tornar útil, no presente, métodos, ideias e questões de uma história da Filosofia com cerca de 2 500 anos. Um tipo de pensamento como este é facultado e estimulado pelo exercício da actividade filosófica. É precisamente este papel da Filosofia que é proposto como problemática a analisar, a discutir e a defender

The theatre of cruelty aesthetics: Does life in society has to be beautiful or good?

With this abstract I intend to reflect on the implications between individuals and society, starting from the question “Does life in society has to be beautiful or good?” For this, I support my paper on the work of Franz Kafka, In The Penal Colony, to represent a social theater of cruelty aesthetics in contemporary societies of post-modernity. The social dimension of ethics is a sort of practice of cruelty as well as a sort of aesthetics representing prescriptions of society, which clashes with the contemporary trends of these post-modern societies characterized by the individualism, narcissism, consumption and media spectacle. The theater of cruelty works on punishing the condemned; it is essentially a work of social aesthetics or hygienist ethics. The insensitive machine of Law has social authority and it embodies the faults or the mistakes punished in Kafka’s writing. Is this machine still working (in an invisible way) in our societies, where the social requirements remain the order of the Law

Iconolatria publicitária pós-moderna: semiótica e retórica no espaço urbano

I plan to underline the (conscious and/or unconscious) performance of advertising as a mass discourse in urban spaces, i.e. mass discourse produced by a specific (post-)modern rhetorical strategies to a peculiar target or audience. My propose follows the field of study of the semiotics of advertising, which practical application allows us to read and understand the social values of a given urbanity, i.e. the visual and architectural support of consumerist and post-modern ideologies (according to Gilles Lipovetsky’s theory) in different cities. To implement this semiotic approach, the methodology starts with a conceptualization of the semiotics of advertising as a building structure of visual and urban landscape. Taking into account the scope of this theoretical research, the requirements of the topic and the guidance imposed by the objectives, I will also follow an empirical analysis of the issue, in order to demonstrate the subsequent expected results. This includes the interest of visual semiotics of advertising. In a global and postmodern time and space, this kind of applied semiotics is characterized by binding consumerist messages and dominant values in urban public space. This paper will be comprised with the following stages: planning, research, determining the sources of information, observation and recording, understanding, interpretation, classification, questioning, explaining visual phenomena, formulating hypotheses, evidence and conclusions. For the practical part of my research plan, I’ll follow a methodological approach to researching, collecting, sorting and processing the data. After that, I’ll follow the subsequent written and visual presentation of outdoors or frontage of buildings (the faces or fronts of the urban landscape), which are representative of some specific rhetorical strategies in urban public space. These strategies are, sometimes, visual pollution, because the plethora of advertising images saturates and indiscipline the aesthetic view over the cities. According to Gilles Deleuze, the name of “civilization of image” is, mainly, a particular connotation to “civilization of the cliché”, which explanation may be related to the iconic inflation that relies on redundancy and, on the other hand, in the concealing, distortion or manipulation of certain images, so that these images conceals the reality, rather than become a medium to uncover it. Thus, there would be, according to Deleuze, a general interest to “hide something with the image”, i.e. it’s own persuasive natural character. I argue, therefore, that all visual/iconic advertising discourses in urban space are the result of persuasive and significant strategies. The excessive flow of images affects human behavior. So, we need to talk about the “ecology of the image”, i.e. the care about the visual pressure we are daily submitted. To the theoretical support of this subject, I think it is relevant the use of a specific literature on the semiotics of advertising very close in resemblance with that preached by the pan-semiotics of Roland Barthes

Mythic meanings and ideology for beliefs in God: Is religious fear a disease?

Every day we make use of a huge variety of signs. For the most times, we do it deliberately, creating a wide range of messages and meanings. However, sometimes we use signs unconsciously. So, do we still creating a wide range of messages and meanings using signs unconsciously? A sign can be used without any intention of the emitter to communicate anything? Meanings are made everywhere. In the religious field of meaning-making, can we imagine religious practices and rites without symbols, meanings, Gods or feelings represented in images? My primary focus is on how semiotics can be used in the social study of religious symbolism; my following focus is on the patterns and structures of signs used in religious practices, conditioning the meanings which can be communicated and understood. I will also focus on the relations between signs in a social and cultural context; the connections between signs, myths and ideology. So, as I ask in the title: Is religious fear a disease? Is it rational? If not, why God remains a “grammatical ghost”, according to George Steiner’s expression? If it is, what’s the role of semiotics to religious belief and practice? My purpose is to reflect if religious fear is a mental and mythic disease and if religion is deeply tied to mythic meanings forming ideologies for beliefs in God

Unveiling the Visual Rhetoric of Pathos in Bacon’s Images Through the Lens of Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism

Bacon’s paintings are images-sensations, a figurative art that composes a visual rhetoric of pathos. It is a rhetoric of sensations centred on the effects of visual signs on the spectators/ viewers. The pathos is something perceptive and sensitive that happens in the spectators/ viewers; it is driven, incited, provoked by Bacon’s images. The pathos is indistinctly caused by the intentional and strategic use of a visual language. The meanings of the visual signs are formed a priori and transmitted as clearly as possible in reference to a given situation, activity, event, reality/world. If this is so, the use of rhetoric is emphatic to explore the pathos instigated by Bacon’s images-sensations. Following a theoretical and conceptual approach and through the lens of Deleuze’s perspective, the aim is to show the power of visual rhetoric when provoking sensations, and to problematize the representation and report of reality as a changing process through signs/images. This is demonstrated by Bacon’s images-sensations and Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism perspective. In a semiotic perspective, Bacon’s paintings are a perfect anchorage to understand the influence of an aesthetical language and practice of image as a visual rhetoric resource, which amplify the pathos.As pinturas de Bacon são imagens-sensações, uma arte figurativa que compõe uma retórica visual do pathos. É uma retórica de sensações centrada nos efeitos dos signos visuais sobre os espectadores/observadores. O pathos é algo perceptivo e sensível que acontece nos espectadores/observadores; é impulsionado, incitado, provocado pelas imagens de Bacon. O pathos é causado indistintamente pelo uso intencional e estratégico de uma linguagem visual. Os significados dos signos visuais são formados a priori e transmitidos da forma mais clara possível em referência a uma determinada situação, atividade, evento, realidade/ mundo. Se assim é, o uso da retórica é enfático para explorar o pathos instigado pelas imagens-sensações de Bacon. Seguindo uma abordagem teórica e conceptual e através da perspectiva de Deleuze, pretende-se mostrar o poder da retórica visual na provocação de sensações e problematizar a representação e relato da realidade como um processo em mudança através de signos/imagens. Isto é demonstrado pelas imagens-sensações de Bacon e pela perspectiva do empirismo transcendental de Deleuze. Numa perspectiva semiótica, as pinturas de Bacon são uma ancoragem perfeita para compreender a influência de uma linguagem estética e da prática da imagem como recurso retórico visual, que amplificam o pathos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Critical thinking applied to media and digital literacies

What are the benefits of critical thinking for a daily practice of media content consumption? What are the information quality criteria in the news media and social networks? Critical thinking is a careful and insightful mental process of analysis and evaluation. Applied to the media uses and influences, critical thinking is the ability to understand connotations, ideological arguments and implicit assumptions that are often false or persuasive information. This text is a sociological perspective on the relationship between critical thinking and media and digital literacies. Based on a theoretical and conceptual approach, supported by a bibliographic research, critical attitude is defended as a media literacy tool. The objective is to characterize critical thinking, relate it to media literacy and highlight the criticism as a tool against disinformation in the (digital) public sphere.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Visual Literacy and Visual Rhetoric: Images of Ideology Between the Seen and the Unseen in Advertising

Advertising imposes ways of seeing, thinking, feeling and acting; it leads consumers to act without them noticing; it creates an ideal social imaginary of a “perfect world” or “happy ending” for the daily needs and problems of consumers. Advertising does this by formulating a proposal for a collective and ideal good. Following a theoretical strategy and a critical analysis, it is an approach intended to relate rhetoric, ideology, and literacy of advertising image, exploring the implied ways of the seen and the unseen (i.e. what visual messages say and show). Advertising is a public and massive myth-poetic and logo-poetic device and an increasingly multiform, omnipresent, seductive and visually persuasive. It is important to understand the elements of (explicit or implicit) meaning and the corresponding processes and mechanisms through which the meanings produce effects. This chapter assumes itself as a contribution to a desideratum that may be called visual advertising literacy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Baudrillard on the Symbolic Violence of the Image

In today’s increasingly visual and digital cultures, images are ubiquitous and excessive. We live globally in a new videosphere, where images provoke a plethora of visual information. Some public images are like ideological weapons with which a symbolic violence is exerted because their excessive use, tautological form, and imposing information. It is the power of images acting on the masses, namely on their thinking and feeling, imposing ways of being in society, social attitudes, behaviors, and actions. Images are seductive, credible, and effective, even if the messages are not true or are out of context, illusions, or simulacra, according to Baudrillard. Images produce ideologies, illusions, desires and needs, and simulacra. Therefore, Baudrillard’s perspective on images of violence and the violence of the images is relevant to understand today’s visual cultures. This article aims to relate images to their effects, namely symbolic violence. Images are signs and languages of symbolic violence, which is conceived, transmitted, and shared in the public videosphere. Following a theoretical and conceptual approach based on Baudrillard’s texts, the objective is to discuss the visual rhetoric of images of violence and the violence of the images.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Rhetoric of affections: advertising, seduction and truth

Advertising frequently provokes pathos and elicits emotional reactions (e.g. fear, patriotism, guilt, pity, joy, satisfaction, etc.) to get what it wants. Considering the rhetorical ability and the proliferation of advertisements in the contemporary Western societies, this article analyzes these omnipresent, seductive and affective discourses. Following a theoretical and reflexive approach, the objective is to argue and understand the power of rhetoric developing seduction and provoking affections in advertising strategies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio