É possível misturar ateísmo com metafísica? - Alfredo Freire & Pedro Ivo

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]It's gone, [laughs] button. [clearing throat] No.

[00:00:03]Ah, ah, come on, darlings. Let's return to our work here, to our presentation.

[00:00:11]In my presentation with Alfredo, we will discuss the possibility of approaching the topic of metaphysics from the perspective of people who consider themselves atheists. But before addressing this topic, uh, I'll pass the word to our friends here beside me, Leo and Kevin, who are responsible for producing this new version, this new edition of the theistic magazine, which pays homage to Gabriel. We even spoke with Gabriel about this, but I'll let the child's parents speak about the project.

[00:00:59]Hi everyone, good afternoon. Well, as Pedro said, Kevin and I are the editors of the magazine, right? We're the parents of this child that some of you have in your hands. For those who don't have it yet, I hope they will by the end of the day or the weekend. Well, we didn't do this alone, obviously. Well, we were in charge of the design, but we have two other colleagues, Rafael Berta and Nicolas, who took care of the layout and the art— this beautiful art that you can see in the magazine. Ah, the idea for the magazine, it's called that, right, a feista magazine, to continue the work of the magazine that Ricardo mentioned. We spoke with the owner inside the magazine, and he gave us the right to continue. So, although it's not the same magazine, we see it as a spiritual successor to the magazine with the "perão da tropinha" (a slang term, possibly referring to a character or character) from Tropinha.

[00:01:48]This magazine, in this edition, features some articles written by people who are here, including some of you. We have articles by Samanta, we have articles by other colleagues who are here, and perhaps some articles by people who aren't here. We have a small error in this edition: the last edition is signed with Pedro's name, but it was actually written by André Machado, who you might know from a fairly large linguistics channel on YouTube. I have an idea about the chair, [laughs] but that will be fixed in the digital version. So, uh, thanks to the lawyer's warning here, we're stuck because of this.

[00:02:24]Ah, well, our idea is to continue publishing the magazine and release digitally this version that we have here in physical print.

[00:02:33]Yeah, as soon as the second physical edition comes out. Oh, and we would really appreciate your collaboration in continuing this outreach effort. Well, as Ricardo showed, this attempt to give materiality to our disputes, to our struggles, has been going on for over 100 years. So, those of us who came before and want to continue doing this work, I would like to count on your collaboration in financially supporting PCE.

[00:03:00]You received, I think, the QR code; for those who didn't receive it, there's a little folder with the code on the back. You can donate whatever your heart desires, because it's valuable and meaningful to us, and starting from 25 donations you'll receive a free gift: a magazine like this. Oh, did you forget something? Do you have anything to add? I don't think so.

[00:03:18]No. Uh, please read our magazine. If you don't want to read it, buy it to help anyway. Say.

[00:03:24]I think Kcode isn't working. I think he's already won.

[00:03:28]I think that "K" was only for one day, okay? Anyway, if anyone wants to bring magazines, talk to us at the end of the event because we've provided another QR code for you, okay? Yeah, and I think that's it. Well, I hope you guys like it.

[00:03:40]Future editions will have other sessions. Currently, we will exclusively feature articles written by APCE members and collaborators, but future issues will include data on the state of athletics in Brazil and the world, with information about other organizations that also engage in activism.

[00:03:56]We will eventually contact these other organizations to share this information. So that's it, then. And buy our magazine, support our work, because we need support, right? We are one of the best minorities in Brazil. So please, let's support each other. say. Is it possible to send it to?

[00:04:13]Yes, we'll send it by mail.

[00:04:14]Furthermore, we had other people who provided support before the event, and all the people who supported us received a certain amount as a gift from the magazine.

[00:04:21]If anyone here provided this support, at the end, talk to us so we can verify your information, hand over your magazine right here, and that's it. And we deliver to wherever you buy it, okay? [laughs] Perfect. And that.

[00:04:33]That.

[00:04:34]So, now, we'll have Pedro and Alfredo, PhDs in philosophy, and we're going to talk a little about metaphysics, shall we? Okay, let's go. [laughs] Uh, can I start?

[00:04:46]So, ah, in my presentation and Alfredo's, we're going to talk about the topic of metaphysics. Um, I prepared this preliminary presentation, uh, a few days ago, Alfredo sent me a message, saying: "Ah, let's do a presentation on the topic of metaphysics." Then I said, "Ah, easy, right? Well, I haven't slept for the last three days of my life. This morning I even had to work. So, it was quite fun not being sleepy these past few days. But I prepared a brief presentation about what I want to discuss. I want to talk to you about Aristotle. That's what I want to talk to you about. I want to discuss it with you. I want to talk about Aristotle within a project of mine, specifically research, in which I, uh, from the perspective of a continental philosophy, approach a system, create a system of thought, which is work that I intend to do for life, right? Something that I will spend about 10 years doing. And I created this presentation in three days.

[00:05:56]So, which means that this is just the beginning of a work. What I want to show you is the following: there was a historical moment, right, from the 17th century onwards, I establish this timeframe, in which there was a process of The denial of metaphysics. But then I'll tell you, there was a process of denying metaphysics. You say: "Wow, but what is metaphysics that these people are denying?"

[00:06:20]And this is a topic that I find interesting, including for the presentation we have, uh, because two people are relevant to me, uh, that I would like to mention in my history of getting into this subject. My postgraduate studies, my master's degree, my doctorate are on the topic, I mean, the postgraduate program is called the Postgraduate Program in Metaphysics. And when I went to do this program, a very dear psychologist here in Brasília named Adriano, he said to me: "Uh, what?" You're going to do a master's degree in metaphysics, there's metaphysics at ONB, psychology is a doctorate.

[00:07:01]And another interesting case that I would like to mention was Pirula. There was one time he recorded a video where he said something like, "Anything along those lines."

[00:07:09]metaphysics.

[00:07:10]There are some people who go down this path of metaphysics about God, and he would summarize it more or less as metaphysics about God. And then I looked at him and said, "No, now I'm going to choose."

[00:07:22]And then we talked, right? I made a mention of him. He once said that we were talking, and after that video, I never opened my mouth to talk about metaphysics again. he said. Well, and, and it's interesting that I want to tell you this detail, I want to mention this to you. Ah, because deep down, this notion of an immediate connection between metaphysics and God isn't entirely wrong. Metaphysics and God have a lot in common. It's quite relevant.

[00:07:51]I want to go through a movement to explain why it has to do with and how we differentiate this initial movement from what we call metaphysics, which contemporary philosophers, especially in the area of analytical philosophy, treat as metaphysics, because all of them, all these subjects, refer to just one guy, or rather, not one guy, because we are not exactly that guy. The question is the text, the text called Metaphysics, attributed to Aristotle, right? So what I want to draw attention to are two branches, right, of philosophy. It's so much analysis that it will address metaphysics in a very particular way, which is where our presentation culminates when Alfredo starts speaking. But there's another element, a good part of continental philosophy—and we say continental primarily because it was developed on the European continent, in opposition to analytical philosophy, which in some ways has a very strong base in England.

[00:08:54]They, many philosophers, uh, asked the question directly. Metaphysics is over, there's no need for metaphysics.

[00:09:02]Metaphysics no longer exists. This was a mistake in the history of philosophy. And what I want to do, in fact, is to say that all these authors, with their complexity, with their reasons for carrying out this type of attack, when they were doing their actions, they knew what they were talking about.

[00:09:18]They knew what this metaphysics they were dealing with was all about.

[00:09:23]Oh, and she had a presentation, she came back. So, what happens then? I want to first show you the history and then return to Aristotle to give a model of initial knowledge, how it was questioned, and how it was reinterpreted.

[00:09:40]Ah, I repeat, this is merely an introduction. So, ah, there was this crisis of metaphysics that I'm going back to, it's the beginning of a crisis of metaphysics. And if you think that metaphysics has to do with God, I'm going back to two important figures who made this criticism, without saying that they are making the criticism, without saying that metaphysics is a problem in itself. Ah, the characters I selected are Spinoza and Candide.

[00:10:05]Spinoza, he, Spinoza, will say that God is nature.

[00:10:13]If God is nature, and the previous conception was that God was something else, then he is eliminating that other thing, right? So he's bringing a new concept that, for all intents and purposes, creates a kind of new vision regarding the figure.

[00:10:31]Or, depending on how you interpret it, you could even understand it as him eliminating God, right? Or at least the conception of God that is diminished. And another point, another important author in this story is Kant. He's eliminating, he's not arguing with God at all, but when he makes his conception regarding the limits of reason, he places God outside the limits of reason. So, what he's saying in short, if I can summarize it very roughly, is that God is beyond what he's debating in his philosophy, it's in the realm of faith, he's playing on the other side's field. So he's not arguing with God, but he's questioning, from a philosophical perspective, an element that's in metaphysics—I'll call it that for now—an element that's in Aristotle's metaphysics, which I'm always mentioning. So, uh, I'll go to the quotes. I quickly gathered this up, just so we can get an idea of ​​the way I'm looking, demonstrating with effect in the appendix of the first part, we're talking about Spinoza's ethics, which is a system of philosophy, that in nature, ah, nature does not act for the sake of an end, because that eternal infinite being that we call God, that is, nature, acts with the same necessity with which it exists. So, he... he significantly transforms the conception that people had about the figure of God or what God means. And that's quite impactful. Even Espinosa was Jewish, and he ended up, well, his Jewish heritage ended up being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula because of Christian persecution of Judaism.

[00:12:22]So he's in another place and he's condemned within his own Judaism because of the writing, uh, of his text.

[00:12:30]So it's noteworthy because even if someone says, "No, but Spinoza wasn't yours." He was just redefining God in some way. Okay, but he felt it firsthand as if Au were [the victim] and being criticized was as if Au were [the victim]. That 's irrelevant. The other figure is the god in Aristotle's Noumenon, who is thrown into a dimension beyond the object he was investigating.

[00:12:57]H, that he places philosophy within the limits of the phenomenon and God will stop to go outside. And this also has an impact. Those who read, sing, and adhere to certain precepts of singing often do so. He then says that all the synthetic principles of understanding are of immanent use, but for the knowledge of a supreme being, a transcendent use of the same is required, for which our understanding is in no way configured. So, by exposing God to nudity, this also reconfigures quite a lot of things without directly criticizing them. metaphysics.

[00:13:34]Metaphysics is flawed; we should abandon metaphysics or anything along those lines. Ah, but here we're going to have a direct critique. I've selected five important authors for us to get to know, something that was already mentioned today by h, the question of the theological state, the metaphysical state, and the scientific state in a process of development. So, the metaphysical state in August's story, we'll talk about it later.

[00:14:03]Oh, sorry, I confused the two Fredericos. Frederico dos Anjos, right?

[00:14:10]Fried Angel, he makes the point that there's a way of thinking in the modern scientific world of the 17th century, which is a metaphysical way of thinking. So he 's saying that even the development of science in the 16th century has metaphysical assumptions. Well, I think 1000 is more interesting though. He is very focused on logic. He has a book on logic whose name I've forgotten now, but in his first book, in chapter four, he mentions: "All ancient metaphysics is a fundamental error regarding the semantics of existence and the syntactic function of the copula. I am a person. And so I am with I exist. And all that mess that happened in ancient philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle is a mess of a linguistic error."

[00:15:05]Nietzsche, uh, is another character who will develop, who is there in this context, as Ricardo himself said, in this, let's say, using this mental toolkit of the critique of metaphysics to express a discomfort with Kant, Nietzsche's discomfort with Kantian ethics. And he goes to the origin of this problem, Plato. In this rather long link that he creates, he ends up making a critique of metaphysics that implies a will to truth. And this will to truth implies, in turn, a It's about values. And this value system is what he wants to overcome. So he criticizes Plato to say that this is the system he wants to overcome. And he comes with his system of will to power. And Heidegger, who is also a German philosopher, criticizes the entire history of philosophy in a way very similar to Nietzsche, following in Nietzsche's footsteps and saying that Nietzsche also did the same thing. So he also has the same error. He just took a system that was wrong and turned it upside down. He took a system of values ​​and turned it upside down. I've separated quotes that prove what I'm saying. All just to illustrate, just to illustrate, look, in the metaphysical state we're in, in Augusto Conto. I'm going to present quotes from each of these authors I mentioned. The metaphysical state, which is basically nothing more than a simple general modification of the first theological state. Supernatural agents are subdued by force. You'll see all this. What I want to show is... For you, all of this ultimately refers back to Aristotle's Metaphysics.

[00:16:55]Ah, supernatural agents are replaced by abstract forces, by true entities, inherent in the various beings of the world and conceived as capable of generating by themselves all the observed phenomena, whose explanation then consists in assigning each one to the corresponding entity. So, it's a critique of metaphysics, as metaphysics is a kind of spirit or body of understanding that advances towards abstract entities that are the principle, and it is through there that you know things. And he will say that we have to take a step forward to the community of scientific thought, which will lead to logical positivism, and even draws heavily from this type of presupposition. But then, ah, let's move on to our next character, which is what I want to show you: different traditions from different angles, attacking the same system. And what I want to defend is that Aristotle is a system, Aristotle's metaphysics is a system with various questions....and that culminates in a god.

[00:18:02]That's important, that's not irrelevant, but it's a system, look. That corresponded to the state of the natural sciences at the time. Uh, there's a context here where he's criticizing the 16th century that I mentioned, and it's the way of philosophizing connected to it, which was metaphysical. That's anti-dialectical. So, for indigenous people, it's a very simple concept to understand. There are two ways of seeing the world, the dialectical way and the metaphysical way. The metaphysical way presupposes watertight structures, and whose movement, when things transform from there to here and from here to there, which nobody remembers that there is movement, they always transform in a cycle that doesn't repeat itself.

[00:18:40]So I like to cite, for us to have an understanding of Aristotle's politics, of Plato's politics, you have political schemes that go from one to another, but nothing new is born. So there are, as if there were basic structures, and matter, organizations, they transform from one thing to another. To another point. But what Engels is criticizing here isn't Greek philosophy. In fact, Engels has a passage in Antidotes where he mentions that Aristotle is the greatest of the ancient minds, who were very dialectical, and at the same time he's making a metaphysical critique, and he's taking this metaphysical critique with the exact conception I'm talking about. And the problem is that there's a line of thought where structures are formed in certain ways and they are static. You don't presuppose development. That's what he's expressing. That's why he's going to characterize it as 17th-century materialism, mechanistic materialism. Which I find very funny, there are people who say that God is mechanistic, he invented the word. I find that incredible. But nature was conceived in an eternal monotony, because things transform, but always in a static way. I'm going to show that this also refers to the metaphysics of... There wo n't be time. Ah, John Stuart. John Stuart, he presents that semantic confusion.

[00:20:03]Again, the phrase is indicative for those who want to later pursue these reflections made by the authors themselves.

[00:20:10]The ambiguity of the verb "to be," the word "to be," has been the source of more egregious errors in philosophy than any other single cause, due to the fact that the same word has been used to express the copula in a proposition and also to signify real existence. This is an interesting topic that I think, reflecting on it, begins to seem complex, the possibility of conceiving being with these two dimensions.

[00:20:35]Ah, and this will be in discussions that will generate existentialism, right?

[00:20:40]Existentialism exists because of this notion of the bifurcation of these two beings. So, real existence.

[00:20:47]Philosophers were led to believe that whenever the word was used as a copula, some kind of existence was actually predicated. This is so interesting that if you take some books that are understood as mature works by Plato, uh, they are quite complex and you become... I'm completely lost, and the feeling I sometimes get is exactly that, that there's just a confusion of words. But anyway, this plural meaning of "being" gave rise to the entire system of ancient metaphysics, which consisted of treating abstractions as if they were self-existent substances. What I would like to do, if I manage to complete my presentation, is to show you that these confrontations make sense, these statements, these criticisms make sense, but that Aristotle's work—what I wanted to do is try to show that Aristotle's system is a highly sophisticated system. That was my intention. So, for now, let's move on to the penultimate selection I made. So, uh, Nietzsche presenting the problem of metaphysics as this will to truth, uh, it leads to this phrase here, as something originating from being its opposite? For example, truth from error, the will to truth from the will to deception. This way of judging constitutes the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times have come to be known. This mode of evaluation.

[00:22:08]It is fully in the background of all his logical procedures. But the fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in the antithesis of values. Ah, so what Nietzsche is criticizing when he makes this critique, criticizing truth, criticizing metaphysics, what he is trying to say is that this structures a system, which is what he questions at the present moment, this construction of an understanding of the world that also implies an ethical understanding.

[00:22:38]And Heidegger will observe this and say: "Hey, but just turn it upside down." So what is he doing? He is linked to the same precepts of the metaphysicians. You could say that Nietzsche is a metaphysics of the will, a structure in which the basis of reality is established from a first principle called will.

[00:22:57]As Nietzsche conceives metaphysics as the inversion of Platonism, his own philosophy remains entangled in the essence of metaphysics. As the metaphysics of the will to power, Nietzsche's thought is the culmination of Western metaphysics. It announces What is even more extreme to consider in the history of the forgetting of being?

[00:23:17]Poor translations aside, misplaced quotations, the system I'm trying to present, as a general rule, which is that these criticisms somehow refer to the work of Aristotle. And that concludes my presentation, and now we would talk specifically about Aristotle. I think a large part of the reason why this text sounds so confusing is because of translation problems. As these terms were translated into Latin, which was the first language used to disseminate these elements, this crystallized, and the meaning of these words changed. As time passes, we no longer speak Latin; we speak Portuguese, which, by the way, is much more beautiful than Latin.

[00:24:03]Ah, you're wrong, right? It's more beautiful, but the Portuguese we have now, sometimes it causes confusion. Sometimes it causes confusion.

[00:24:14]Some rigidities don't allow a person reading for the first time to understand. Instead of understanding what the author himself meant, the argument I wanted to make is that the meaning of Aristotle's metaphysics is a system of understanding reality. At the beginning of the book, he gives the precepts, which is what the analytic philosophers still want to preserve today, talking about the first principles or the most general structures, and that's preserved in what the analytic philosophers want to do. But in Aristotle, it wasn't just that. I think it's good for people to understand what he was trying to do, and if they're going to criticize the Aristotelian system, to know the Aristotelian system. That was my intention. Of course, I'm an atheist, right? So when I see that he culminates in God, I want to sweep it under the rug, never read it again. But I'm saying, that's a bad position. It's interesting to understand that system and, as you find some flaws within that system, to present objections based on those points to create a system, which I think is... One thing I want to announce to you is the project, which is that it's cool to have a system of thought. Emilio was talking about biology, and sometimes we talk about biology disconnected from notions of ethics, and we build our conception of politics without engaging with our understanding of physics. And I think the idea of ​​creating a system, like great men such as Aristotle, Spinoza, and Baron von Rouba—who I would say is the first systematic atheist— was something that became fashionable after the 16th century. Higger is another figure who created a system, and sometimes we look at systems with a kind of disdain. I think the idea of ​​creating a system is cool, I think it's beautiful. And so, I wanted to say that in my presentation, how much time is there?

[00:26:22]There's no more time, right? There's no more time. So, do you want me to do it?

[00:26:25]No. So I want 4 minutes, right? So I want to show you the project. What I was doing. So, I started doing this work. Oh, if the presentation were a single unit. No, no. Of course. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, if the presentation were a single unit, I think it's appropriate to do that, because it's actually a presentation of a specific project of mine. I want to generate a system of philosophy. I don't see why it would be a negative thing to create a system of philosophy. It's a long, large work, and it would begin exactly with... can you show me the... the Word document I made? So, what I want to tell you is this: the first thing I would have to do to create this system of philosophy would be to critique the Aristotelian system, to say that the Aristotelian system... has some problems, right? And before we do the... let's say, critique of the system, first you have to try, honestly, with an open heart, to truly understand what this person, or this person in the plural, or whoever wrote this text, was trying to do. And my defense is simple. There is a... The system. If you try to draw an argument, "Oh, I like Aristotle because of act and potency," no. And potency makes sense within a system that closes in, that culminates in God. Right? And God is fundamental to understanding. That is, he unfolds arguments and arguments and arguments to arrive at the point. Oh, and that's what I wanted to present quickly. I wanted to, I 'll just do the following, I'll just show these first two so we can understand what metaphysics meant in the beginning, how it changed over time. First, there's a story that everyone in philosophy here knows, which is the story that Aristotle, he never talked about metaphysics, that's not actually in the text. And we call the work Metaphysics because Andronicus of Rhodes organized the library, etc. In fact, this is a philological construction to explain a kind of alaconia that we have. For example, in George La, you don't find the text. Metaphysics. George Laess is a guy who wrote about ancient philosophers and talks about their works. And there's no such thing as metaphysics there. There are some texts that seem to touch on the subjects, but there isn't a metaphysical text. And then, ah, we have this mention of Porphyry who said, look, I'll just use bold here, forget the text before. Ah, the second one, in the case of Andronicus of Rhodes, separated Aristotle and Theoprassus by subject, grouping the themes in a clue. So I have this information, I'll just skip to the next one. Ah, the second relevant piece of information is about Nicoacion in a text found much later, that is, choose something written like this on the back of the text, ah, which says: "Where is what it says about Aristotle?"

[00:29:23]Actually, you'll forgive me. I made a mistake. It's another text. This here is a text. This here is a text.

[00:29:29]This here is a text. Don't choose.

[00:29:30]Choose Next. This is a text about the life of Aristotle, which is very similar to the writings of Georgenis Laetius and was found in the 17th century. This here, okay? This was found in the 10th century. It talks about Aristotle, this, this, and this, and it appears here, see, from metata fisicar. So, in 10 books. So this description here appears talking about Aristotle's metaphysics, a certain metaphysics of Aristotle. And then, uh, it goes down to the next one and then we finish what I wanted to present, which is this one here, which is the scholium. So, in this scholium you have, ah, in his examination of the writings on the metaphysics of Aristotle, Nicholas of Damacena from the 10th century. So this character who wrote a scholium at the end of the text, he was saying that he had access to this text by Nicholas and Nicholas was making a metaphysical critique.

[00:30:22]So we have a metaphysics.

[00:30:25]Probably, possibly already in antiquity, perhaps organized by Androicus. He doesn't even know that. This is a philological construction, right? This is a philological construction, but only for the first text, and then I'll conclude, okay? So, what I think is interesting? To analyze these questions that are presented here in this book. And then I'll do the analysis. Uh, I selected a passage from each book, right? Those are the books of organized metaphysics. And then I'll show a backbone of the system to try to demonstrate how Aristotle, from his understanding of the things in the world, the organization of knowledge, comes to believe that to explain material things you need certain concepts.

[00:31:16]And he evolves from that to the affirmation that if things move—that's where I was going to get to—if things move, they reproduce, if animals live, they reproduce and perpetuate in some way that formulation that exists in the species, that subject that was being discussed here, this replicated formulation... It's nature's own attempt to imitate eternity, you understand? The reasoning. So, if a plant dies, it dies, but it leaves behind the plant form that passes to its offspring, which passes to its offspring, which passes to its offspring. So, this replication structure is nature itself tending towards eternity. It tries to maintain itself in this way. Aristotle's system, God as a motor that makes things perpetuate, leaning towards eternity. I wanted to say, you know, so I wanted to say that the project of confronting this, taking it seriously, saying that there is a rational system that, when understood, seems to make sense, and that if you want to confront religious views, you should take this into account. That was the message I wanted to leave here today, that when there are certain disputes that appear in public life, in internet discussions related to political issues, some specific authors in these disputes, they speak about these things, they talk about these things, and they convey a sense that, being endowed with this tradition, they have... Legitimacy, they know reality better, the whole of reality, from how the plant moves to how politics is structured. And that's why, therefore, as I know and I'm explaining to you how the world is, vote for this guy here because he's a great guy, you understand? So, uh, I think there's a certain negligence in the importance of this tradition. And it's this importance of this tradition that I wanted to focus on today, to say that these works here may have one point or another, as my colleague said, uh, well, David was wrong about a number of things, Aristotle, much more so, right? He was wrong about how things descend to Earth, like saying that the structure above the stars has a different nature and there's a lot of things that are banal to say that Aristotle was wrong, but in this system he deals with themes that are quite intricate in some very current treatments, and contemporary metaphysics addresses themes that were opened up by this car. So he opened These are issues that are important to address today. If they weren't, we wouldn't even be in this organization calling ourselves atheists. We call ourselves atheists because atheism, in a way, not only exists, but we are a tiny minority within Brazilian society. So, not only does it exist, but to look at this and say, "It's a huge mistake." It's a huge mistake. Not only because it's a very interesting system, but because in the topics, when dealing with this whole structure, it talks about the nature of time, that time, probably, in Aristotle's view, is eternally cyclical, has always existed and will always exist. God has a different function than in Cala's argument that we saw yesterday.

[00:35:15]Now, this topic of time and so many other topics of the structure of reality are addressed in metaphysics, in contemporary analytics. And Alfredo, can you present a little about this topic to us?

[00:35:31][laughter] [applause] Uh, you can... ximizar? I'm just passing through here. Wait a minute. I think this is good.

[00:35:51]Yes.

[00:35:58]Well, good night, everyone. Well, I'm going to talk a little bit about the possibility of compatibility between atheism and metaphysics, or thinking metaphysically, thinking about themes and topics of metaphysics, especially considering how this is discussed in contemporary times, right? So, I'm going to try to explain a little, in a brief way, how these two themes can be related in common culture, in how people deal with this topic. And then we'll talk about some problems that inspired people to try to eliminate metaphysics, and then the resurgence that happens in the mid-20th century.

[00:36:56]Well, the current conception, right, that we hear about is more or less this: that atheism is strictly linked to a certain empiricism, to being restricted and limited to very concrete conceptions, and that resorting to abstract forms would be a way of approaching conceptions of... right? So, metaphysics is always connected to the idea of ​​dogma, or precisely, you know, considering that metaphysics is what is not empirical, what has no evidence, what, you know, we don't have something supporting its validity, then it would be associated with a kind of dogma or empty speculation about things. So, uh, we're going to discuss here this relationship that gets a little obscured in the dialogue, in the common use of these words, right? So, uh, we'll try to answer that.

[00:38:13]Hey, trying to improve this.

[00:38:15]No need. Okay, okay. It's necessary or not necessary. It's the whole screen, everything's fine, the letters are large and there's nothing much to see.

[00:38:23]If you switch to... Ah, better.

[00:38:29]Ah, well, so my thesis in general is that metaphysics is not reduced to rational theology, that is, simply a rational way of doing theology, as it was understood in the past, but rather constitutes an indispensable conceptual framework for the sciences, as we will see very briefly, of course, here in this presentation. Well, yes, in the 20th century, as Pedro mentioned, it was already a topic that people had been debating for some time, regarding the rejection of metaphysical thought, this dogmatic thought.

[00:39:14]Well, in the 20th century, this will begin to take on the appearance of opposition to more empirical, rigorous, and scientific conceptions. Well, and that's why, well, we're going to have things like, well, conceptions here that I've gathered into three sentences that bring together ideas about how people thought about metaphysics and what anti-metaphysics is trying to do in the 20th century, right?

[00:39:52]So the world is trying to answer questions like how physics exhausts the totality of reality.

[00:39:59]In other words, is there something beyond what can possibly be experienced, something that can be described by things of a physical nature? And you realize that this type of question can't be answered by experience alone, right? It cannot be answered by its own nature through experience. Why?

[00:40:18]Because experience is included within the physical world, right?

[00:40:24]So, another thing, right, that goes in one direction has to do with mentality, which is also a very important issue of the 20th century. There are necessary truths that are independent of cognition. There are mathematical entities with automatic, autonomous existence, meaning they exist independently of whether we are considering them or thinking about them. What if we all left, right? This is a question that arises in Aristotle himself and is a famous point of disagreement between Plato and Aristotle, namely that Plato believed in autonomous existence, while Aristotle did not believe in the autonomous existence of forms in general. Forms need to have a present instance in the world in order for them to actually exist, right?

[00:41:17]Well, so these concepts are linked, right? This anti-metaphysical approach is linked to the idea of trying to avoid dogma, right? Things that cannot be tested can only be accepted dogmatically. And so, a school is born from this. Ah, I mean, and before that, just for us now, things got a little strange here. That 's because it's not meant to be Zoom. There's no need to use Zoom. [laughter] He was bothered, and he shouldn't have been bothered.

[00:41:55]Yeah, it's okay if it doesn't fill the entire screen.

[00:42:00]Well, I don't know how to use it here.

[00:42:05]Yes, then that's a good number of times.

[00:42:08]That was good. AND.

[00:42:10]Ah, so as an example, we can look at the experience, the scientific experience, and the metaphysical proposition related to it here so we can understand it a little better. I know that not everyone here is from the philosophy field or has knowledge about how these things work, but think about it, a scientific proposition is always linked to very concrete and observable elements, right? So, water boils at 100º when it has a pressure of one ATM. On the other hand, every contingent event has a determining cause. So, right? In other words, I'm talking about something that's linked to the overall structure of reality and therefore cannot be observed, because in order to observe it, I would somehow have to step outside of reality, right? You could think of it that way. So here we have, in fact, an observational method of verification, of concrete analysis of the variables involved. While for a metaphysical proposition we can only use conceptual analysis, we can only think about these concepts in a logical and coherent way, we will see that there are also some other methods that have become clearer now at the end of the 20th century, this sort of thing.

[00:43:40]Beauty? Ah, so, uh, I'd like to talk a little about the project of logical positivism, which is, in my humble opinion, one of the most important projects of the early 20th century, precisely a project attempting to establish a foundation for the elimination of metaphysics. And why do I think they are so important? Because their failure was the failure of a truly honest attempt to carry out that elimination. And consider that, fundamentally, this elimination of metaphysics is linked to the elimination of dogma, right? Why do I want to eliminate metaphysics? Because these are things that I can't determine by any method other than my own choice and ultimate analysis, right? So, that was the main motivation. Therefore, within that universe, there were some important ideas in that conception. The first is the concept of meaning, right, that, for example, this connects even with what Pedro said about Stuart, right?

[00:44:53]Start 1 talks about the problem of the existence predicate, and this becomes increasingly clear, becoming absolutely crystal clear with the work of Fred Russell at the end of the 19th century, where he sees that many metaphysical propositions are in fact confusions about the use of a somewhat unclear language, or confusion about the fact that our grammar is not transparent with respect to the logical form of sentences. So, in that sense, you're going to assign meaning to sentences based on your verification method.

[00:45:45]So, what does it mean to say that the chair is blue? It's tied to the question of how I would know or determine if it is blue or not, right?

[00:45:57]So the case needs to be clearly defined in those terms. It is also a scientific conception of the world that accepts universal propositions or ideas only when they are the result of logical analysis, and not when they go beyond an analysis of our language. When they go beyond the analysis of our language, then, well, that's just speculation, that can only be accepted dogmatically.

[00:46:28]And, ah, finally, in that case, therefore, the task of philosophy would become one of conceptual clarification; it doesn't produce theses, it only produces clarification for those who will actually write theses about the world, questioners, right? So, it's also a position of epistemic humility, in a certain sense, that the role of the philosopher is only to assist scientists in conceptual clarification.

[00:47:05]Ah, the problem is that, and here the story is very beautiful, I invite you to learn more about it, but this program faces some very important limitations, right? And these very important limitations, they have to do with much of what the scientists themselves needed to do. We are beginning to realize that discussing counterfactual concepts, for example, is a fundamental scientific activity.

[00:47:42]Look, if event A had occurred, event B would have followed. We do this all the time, not necessarily, for example, when we 're doing history, right? That would be too speculative, but we want to understand what would happen. It does n't either. I'm just saying that maybe some of you can't do your job, I don't [laughs] know. Well, when we're doing something, like physics, for example, we imagine conditions and want to understand the consequences of those conditions. We think against the facts, right? In other words, if you, for example, or, for example, if we want to understand an airplane accident.

[00:48:30]We want to understand a plane crash. Ah, so how are we supposed to understand the plane crash? You have to think counterfactually, that is, if this had happened, the other thing wouldn't have happened and, therefore, the accident wouldn't have occurred. This is eminently a scientific statement. If it is eliminated in our attempt to defy metaphysics, then it is our attempt to eliminate metaphysics that is wrong.

[00:48:55]So, for this phrase to have meaning, for this phrase to have scientific meaning, seems very fundamental for us to do science. Oh, another related thing is the idea of ​​talking about dispositional properties.

[00:49:10]Dispositional properties are properties that things apparently possess, for example, solubility or fragility, etc., etc. These are things, properties that we attribute to things, but which can only be realized if they actually happen. So, it's a possibility that something could happen.

[00:49:30]This also causes great difficulties in describing what is actually happening, and therefore we ca n't get past this and avoid a metaphysical discussion about these topics.

[00:49:46]and formal limitations. These are also very important. One of the important points in eliminating metaphysics is to try to transform mathematical activity into a purely logical activity, that is, an activity of simply manipulating symbols. The problem is that we're going to encounter a series of limiting results, most famously Gedle's incompleteness theorems, but there are a number of others. which shows that there is a very important limitation in the description of mathematical objects, which relies only on logical issues, right? In other words, there seems to be something in mathematical activity that, apparently— at least widely accepted by mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics— goes beyond what is purely logical, right? This is quite well established in contemporary times.

[00:50:47]Well, so what happens is that three, three, three [snoring] movements will occur in the direction of the rehabilitation of metaphysics, and the first of these is the resumption of a modal metaphysics. In other words, we discovered that much of what metaphysics does—explaining counterfactuals or dispositional properties, the properties of cause— can be described in a very precise language that speaks of the terms necessity and possibility. So, for example, ah, given, we're going to say that X causes Y, because X not only implies [clearing throat] Y, but necessarily implies Y, right? Ah, but what does " necessarily" mean? This necessarily emerges first with Carnap's interpretation, but then it becomes... uh, he was a logical positivist, okay? Just a reminder. In other words, the logical positivists themselves abandon the project and begin to do contemporary metaphysics. Well, Carn's proposal is to say that interpreting something like necessity implies that it applies not only to this world, but to all possible worlds. What are these possible worlds? For example, in the concept of carna, there are variations, linguistic conceptions of variations of what's happening in this world. In other words, if I change something in this world, will I be able to analyze it in such a way that it still continues to happen? If I make another one, etc. And there are methods, yes, quite well- established methods, for dealing with these predicates, right? This marks the beginning of a great revival, a great rehabilitation in the study of contemporary metaphysics.

[00:53:00]Well, then, speaking here about the atheistic conception of postulating the idea of ​​possible worlds, it can be something subject to doubt and not necessarily put to the test by experience, but it provides a conceptual framework so that we avoid a discussion that is based on the idea of ​​God, as is very common in traditional metaphysics, to describe things that reality seems to require to be described.

[00:53:42]H, another problem, right, a very important one, is that we have a scientific problem linked to certain paradoxes of induction. One of the points, this is one of the points, uh, a super interesting point when we consider the following example, right, we have a paradox related to the property versus, right, we want the principle of induction to hold. What is the principle of induction? The principle of induction states that things that apparently are or repeatedly hold true seem to indicate that they always hold true. We do this all the time when you're doing science, right? We play a game, which everyone does, so I threw a stone, it fell, it fell 10 times, 50 times, I threw another type of stone, it fell. So I conclude that the stone always falls. This reasoning is what we call inductive reasoning. The problem is that when you start thinking about it very seriously and you consider the following property, Verzul. What is Verzul? Verzul is the property of being green before 2010 and being blue after 2010.

[00:55:02]Exactly. That's the reaction I expect. The point is that it's a property.

[00:55:07]If I checked 50 times that things are Verzul ah in 2005, in 2005, 2010, 2000, 20005, etc, etc. I checked it several times. What does the idea of ​​induction allow me to say that this will always be true? The problem is that Verul's own definition says that it only applies before 2010; after that, it becomes blue. Therefore, it won't be valid, and it doesn't seem like the induction for the property verzu should be valid. In other words, if I see something with the Verzul property multiple times, I shouldn't be able to—I shouldn't expect—that this property to continue to hold true for things like Verzul.

[00:56:01]So this also brings us back to a very important metaphysical discussion that reality seems to have fundamental elements, that is, fundamental folds in reality. For example, how come we don't bend the human body in half at the forearm? We don't bend the human body in half at the forearm. The human body bends where it has folds, right?

[00:56:31]So you can say that seeing blue is not a fold in reality. Green is a fold of reality. In other words, you could say that properties that are linked to the folds of reality are those that are subject to being induced. And a discussion about what those properties are, the natural types of reality, is a fundamentally metaphysical discussion. So, it 's also very important because we want to use inductive principles to do science.

[00:57:07]And finally, ah, the ontological status of abstract entities, right? As we say, there seem to be fundamental problems in the idea of ​​trying to say that the use we make of mathematics is linked to the fact that it is simply an analysis of language. We've already mentioned this, and I know I haven't demonstrated it, it's quite complicated, but there are fundamental limitations to trying to reduce mathematics to a merely logical activity, that is, the analysis of meanings. How do we deal with this? We could say: "Okay, so we're not going to use this mathematics, we're going to try to use a mathematics free of metaphysics to do physics." But then we can't do physics. This mathematics that gets rid of the metaphysics of... the metaphysics, it's not capable of helping us do physics. We need more mathematics to be able to do physics. So, we need metaphysics to do physics, right? In some senses. Ah, this caused quite a bit of discontent, didn't it? And some people said, for example, "Ah, so this anti-physician project is doomed to failure and we're going to have to accept being dogmatic in some sense, right?" But there were also... naturalist theses began to emerge. One of the most important naturalist theses of the 20th century, in this direction, is that of Kim and Putin, which says what? Ah, that it tries to legitimize in the opposite sense, right? And that is, if you stop to think about what I'm saying... So, what I'm trying to convey with this presentation is the idea that metaphysics seems indispensable.

[00:59:10]So, the criterion for admitting entities, these abstract entities, is to accept these things into the framework of our ontology, but as a consequence, not as a priority, right? So you accept the existence of these things precisely because our best explanations of the world involve them, right? Therefore, the proof that numbers exist isn't Plato's reflection in his room thinking about abstract forms; it's that, in order to reflect on the world, these entities begin to emerge as necessary elements in our descriptions, and that is their criterion for existence, and only that. So, the important thing here, in reflecting on the compatibility of metaphysics with the atheist position, is that the main point isn't the elimination of metaphysics, but rather the elimination of a metaphysics that promotes dogmatic thought, thought that prioritizes reflection not grounded in experience, so that we can then speak from there. about the world. Something very similar happens in theistic conceptions, right? You have the theistic conception and from now on you look at the world and then you interpret, uh, the dinosaur fossil that has, uh, that has some flesh there, which, as Emilio said, is soft tissue, sorry, that has soft tissue, uh, a fossil that has associated soft tissue. Then you interpret it in the light of that conception, right?

[01:01:10]And then you say about it what?

[01:01:14]It's because, uh, as he himself put it, I found it so interesting.

[01:01:19]Oh, so, does that mean that dinosaurs have existed for less than 6000 years?

[01:01:23]So, the problem with metaphysical thought is not properly its priority over reality or the fact that it is unobserved, but rather the care we must have with these conceptions, because they can lead us down dogmatic paths, right?

[01:01:53]And therefore, metaphysical theses, instead of being attributed to reflection in the fourth, right, they They should be attributed to explanations of the world, how it happens. So, they come from the world to abstract conceptions and not in the opposite direction.

[01:02:14]Right? So, that's what I wanted. Uh, and with that I conclude, right? So I'll just summarize what I just said in metaphysics, sorry, I just finished speaking and I got to the slide, but uh, so traditional transcendental metaphysics adopts a priori axioms, right?

[01:02:35]So you start the discussion of your metaphysics and then you look at reality through this prism precisely because they have, by their nature, priority over reality, so your reflection on them should also follow this method. And no, they have priority over reality, but the method for discussing them is inverted. You look at reality, infer what is happening in it through the best explanation. Therefore, a naturalized metaphysics that takes as its starting point the experience and the predictive success of the sciences to infer, via inference, the best explanation, the necessary ontological framework. So, finally, I will Read, just read my conclusion so I don't get bogged down more than necessary. Ah, the conceptual shift consists of inverting the methodological priority.

[01:03:27]Metaphysical theses are not unfounded dogmatic assumptions, but ontological conclusions demanded by scientific rationality itself. Atheism, therefore, does not presuppose ontological emptiness, but rather conceptual rigor.

[01:03:42]Thank you.

[01:03:44][applause] I'll pass now. Who's there?

[01:03:56]Oh.

[01:03:57]It's open for questions here.

[01:04:06]Let me take this off too.

[01:04:09]Yes, you speak up there.

[01:04:09]This is the microphone.

[01:04:11]Yes, it 's the microphone. Well, I thought both presentations were very good, but my question is for Pedro.

[01:04:20]I became very interested in this philosophical system you want to create.

[01:04:25]And so, all these authors you mentioned, who intend in a way to overcome metaphysics, or at least almost all of them, there's the question of whether they actually manage to overcome metaphysics or whether they continue or fall into another metaphysics or remain trapped within thought.

[01:04:47]Metaphysical, right?

[01:04:50]Uh, in creating this philosophical system of yours, do you intend, in a way, to overcome metaphysics, to escape metaphysics? Do you, or do you have an idea of ​​metaphysics close to what Alfredo said about inferential metaphysics, anyway, uh, how do you want to do this? There's a question that would arise if I had had time, okay? Uh, in all my reading about Aristotle, there's something that coincides with what Alfredo commented on. When Aristotle creates his system, he seems to be doing much more science than what happens later with the use of his system by other authors. So he tries to make demonstrations that start from general notions, from observations of how the world works. He infers certain things from that.

[01:05:54]The question is, he didn't call his work metaphysics. Uh, it appears in his text called first philosophy. Ah, and first philosophy culminates in his system, in the consideration regarding This figure, which is the thought of thought, which is God, right? The thought of thinking. Then, when people use it in language, when they talk about metaphysics, they can infer it. There's even a Heidegger. Heidegger even comments that at a specific time philosophy turned to talking about—he's talking about the Middle Ages.

[01:06:36]But even the turning point of the Middle Ages makes sense in light of Aristotle's text, because Aristotle crowned his system with God. So he even says that he has a system and he ends with God.

[01:06:50]But the whole process he goes through, for example, has a discussion that Alfredo touched on that I think is incredible, which is very trivialized in many discussions, which is the ontological existence, the very existence of numbers. Do numbers exist or do numbers not exist? Are numbers human creations, mental constructs, or whatever interpretation is valid? This is an essentially metaphysical discussion. That is to say, and this is a topic that was Aristotelian, that Aristotle confronts Plato precisely because Plato thinks about universals and... The universals stem from numbers, from the Pythagoreans, which is the question Aristotle formulates, that there are universals separate from the structure of reality, right?

[01:07:35]They exist somewhere, which Plato doesn't explain exactly where, but it's presupposed in Plato's philosophy.

[01:07:41]That's it. What I want to draw attention to, right?

[01:07:44]So, when you ask me, will your system be a metaphysical system?

[01:07:48]Well, the name doesn't matter to me, no, no, it 's not interesting to me. What is interesting to me is that a systems philosopher or a systems thinker, first of all, will not exhaust the system. I don't know biology, I don't know physics, I don't know sociology, I do n't know all areas of knowledge, but the idea is to build a kind of exoskeleton so that when I don't know, I have to go and look to someone who does, because I am not a human being alone. My system is the skeleton upon which people should build Frankenstein, and in a constructive way, because that was the elementary statement. Regarding Emilio, I think this is fundamental. The idea isn't for me to say, "I'm going to create my system and after Peter the world ends," right? It's about how we should think about the relationship between different areas of knowledge, where one thing shouldn't ignore the other. For example, talking about the elements of mathematics, as I was suggesting, or talking about the question of universals, or talking about these elements. Some people say, "No, I'm not getting into that topic." We should be open to connecting people's knowledge to present a notion of the whole. I think there's no problem in wanting a notion of the whole, the desire for a notion. I have a system of understanding, I have this comprehension about politics because I understand biology in this way. People say they don't have a system, but deep down they do. So, whether you want to call it metaphysics or not, what matters to me is the return to the idea that it's okay. It's okay if you don't want to, but it's okay if you do.

[01:09:33]To create thoughts systematically, you connect branches of knowledge, even if they don't belong to you, but you know that one thing influences another.

[01:09:44]If I change a conception I have about biology, it's obvious that this will change a conception I have about sexual rights.

[01:09:56]That's the idea.

[01:09:57]Uh, so, thank you very much, Pedro. Let's just, since time is a little tight, let's stick with just this question. Anyone who wants to can chat with us later in the hallways. Uh, so let's call on Professor Juliana Cavalcante to give the last talk today.