Por boa parte do tempo, fazemos escolhas com base em instâncias não plenamente conscientes. Claro, decisões fundamentadas em estratégias de raciocínio formal são possíveis, mas elas sempre devem ser cotejadas com a memória de eventos passados para a formulação de soluções voltadas à obtenção dos resultados que se desejam. Especialmente em situações de incerteza, sistemas como esses são extremamente úteis para agirmos com perícia e rapidez. De fato, é bem mais “econômico” valer-se de determinados sinais que analisar algumas situações em todos os seus detalhes.READ MORE
The extremes of consciousness
What does the word subject designate? A name inevitably involves choosing between one statement of reality and another. In identifying with it we allude ourselves that we are subtracting it from the mutability of time. What is that fixed, atemporal image of ourselves that we call I? What is its semantic value and how can we come to know it? Again, who am I referring to when I say I? And lastly, who is speaking in my voice? READ MORE
An inexplicable and surprising happiness
Surely the exceptional nature of consciousness has never been more effectively evoked than in Proust’s recollections of madeleines. The echo of a far-off sensation generates in Marcel a stunning sensorial kaleidoscope. Fragments of experience, relegated to the archives of his memory, are brought back to life. Mnemosyne does not merely rescue Marcel from a sense of guilt, from anxieties and the contingency of the present. The ecstatic recollection provides a release from the extreme struggle between life and death. It does away with the filter between past and present.READ MORE
The uneasy bond with things
As a rule we do not give any thought to how objects appear to our consciousness. Nor to how conscious acts appear to our reflection. Objects never emerge from their silence. READ MORE