Month: January 2017

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Artificial Intelligence: What Does It Mean to have consciousness?

I aim to talk about the possibility of consciousness arising within artificial intelligence with reference to two thinkers who have not yet been incorporated into the debate: Immanuel Kant and Andres Bretton. In doing so I hope to uncover new ways of talking about consciousness in less anthropomorphic ways.

Kant: Kant’s transcendental idealism can be used to propose a theory of the minimum requirements for consciousness to arise in artificially intelligent machines. In addition to this, the distinction he outlines between ‘reason’ and ‘understanding’ can be seen as analogous to the Turing Test and the Chinese Room thought experiment and therefore can be used to show the qualitative difference between our human experience of consciousness and any potential consciousness that might arise within artificial intelligence.

Bretton: Bretton’s Surrealist thought is used as a juxtaposition to Kant formulaic and systematic approach. The surrealist practices of automatism raise the question of a difference between human consciousness and potential consciousness within artificial intelligence in that it raises the issues of intentionality and the subconscious, something which artificial intelligence.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Are the ethics instilled within the current film ratings still attainable within our modern society? A historical insight into the progression of the rating system and the ethics applied within it

The aim of my project is to provide a historical exploration in the change of films rating system from its first code, The Hays Code, to the current classification of film ratings. In order to do this I will need to understand the ethics implemented in its change and then comment as to whether I believe it to be viable in modern society. Specifically looking at the notion of the Spectacle as a critique.

Key thinkers involved within my project will include John Stuart Mill, Jeremey Bentham. I will specifically take from their works the key idea of the Harm Principle and Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus. An interpretive analysis of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle will help answer whether the ethics within film ratings is sustainable in modern society.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Hooliganism Project

Object/Territory: Football hooliganism is organised violence between football supporters and this will be used as a case study to assess whether violence can ever be seen as justifiable.

Philosophy: Sigmund Freud provides a basis for why humans are so interested in violence through his Narcissism of Minor Differences and the Human Inclination for Aggression. This will be used to assess whether this violence is truly inevitable and thus immoral for Kant, or whether the life of a hooligan could possibly provide the affirmative life that Nietzsche preaches is needed.

Outline: If violence is inevitable then it is surely justifiable. However why must this manifest as football hooliganism? And even if violence is taken as inevitable, does this make its morally permissible. Using the contemporary studies in football hooliganism to assess the physical cost, and combining this with the idealisation that hooliganism has, will create an answer to whether this activity is morally acceptable. If the modern conception fails, can a future one succeed?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Manchester VS Ataturk

With the internet and social media reforming the realm of reporting news, those that have routinely ignored developing nations are demanded to atone for biased newscasts, thus the project intends to bridge this gap and to further interrogate to what extent there exists a journalistic void, seeking out the cause and how to resolve it.

Methodology: The project concerns two cities, both of which had experienced an act of terror in connection to the Islamic State (IS). This project deploys qualitative research in the discourse of an interpretive methodological approach.

Objects:

Manchester – The first object of terror befell on the 22nd of May 2017, in Manchester’s Arena. The incident occurred at an Ariana Grande concert.
Istanbul – The second object denoting an act of terror was the automatic weapons fired and suicide bombings that occurred in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, on the 28th of June 2016.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

Everything Now, as Result of Creativity or Commercialism; Reading Arcade Fire with Adorno’s The Culture Industry.

Money + Love
Can artists make a statement about consumer culture without falling into it themselves?

Territory: Arcade Fire’s album Everything Now

Object: Consumer Culture
Philosophy: Adorno’s The Culture Industry

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Student Suicide: A philosophical investigation into whether attitudes towards ‘Suicide’ have changed over time?

Aims:
My project will examine whether contemporary society’s attitude towards ‘Suicide’ have changed over time?
Are we living in the past?
Are we scared to talk about mental health?

Territory/Object:
My territory is ‘Student suicide’
My object is the BBC Three documentary ‘Student Suicide: Real Stories’.
The documentary looks at how three students took their lives at University; but from the perspective of their loved ones.
Many students do not tell anyone, as they feel “ashamed”.

Philosophers:
This project will focus on the philosophical concepts; Suicide and Morality.
Durkheim’s On Suicide investigates whether social factors affect suicide rates.
Hume’s essay ‘Of Suicide’ illustrates his views against the traditional viewpoint of suicide.
Kant’s The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals dictates his views against suicide.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Finding Peace in a Frantic World: A Critique of Mindfulness using David Foster Wallace’s talk ‘This is Water’

Project Aims
To argue Foster Wallace’s popular talk This is Water highlights Mindfulness as an ideology.

How?
Foster Wallace highlights how Mindfulness key aspect of its thought believes in a Kantian autonomous/individualistic/ a-historical subject transcendental subject.

Implicates argument within the social context – Mindfulness is an antidote to stressful neo-liberal conditions

Economically and ideologically productive system of thought – 3.72 trillion dollar industry

Ideologically repressive – It blames you for your mental health problems!

Could Mindfulness be self destructive?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

The Case for Drag: Exploring drag performance and culture through the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Given the rapid rise of drag performance in pop culture, it is now one of the most popular and varied forms of entertainment. But isn’t seeing drag performance and culture as nothing more than a source of amusement, to obfuscate swathes of its political, emotional and metaphysical potential? How might we do drag justice? How might we unlock this potential? The answer lies in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, an engagement with whom, will help us see the potential drag offers.Early Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy helps us understand drag’s potential in revealing a harsh reality, and in making it possible to bear by transfiguring suffering into beauty. Middle-period Nietzsche: Nietzsche sews the seeds for the ideas which develop in his mature work. Mature Nietzsche: Nietzsche’s critique of the Kantian subject helps us understand how drag pulls us towards a less anxious, less restricted and more emancipated subjectivity. Thus Nietzsche helps us appreciate drag as more than a piece of entertainment, as offering us a more tolerable and healthier way of being in the world.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Free Internet Pornography and The Under Eighteens

An investigation into how ideologies within Ancient Greek philosophy may pre-empt the impact of negative influences within free online pornography on the large number of under eighteens who regularly consume it.

The aim in engaging with the material I have chosen it two fold. Firstly, I intended to further my understanding of pornography within my society and not only that but to further expand upon my own understanding of the philosophies proposed by Plato and Aristotle. Secondly, I intended to better my ability in applying philosophical concepts and attempting to find solutions to real world issues.

The object of this project is free online pornography and the messages and attitudes that are resembled within in. The issues raised by pornography is the masculine ideology portrayed in the videos that the younger consumers are likely to adopt themselves. I will be looking for solutions to this problem within Plato’s idea of a good education and Aristotle’s idea of virtue.

I will make direct references to Plato’s The Republic, Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics, and finally, Robert Jenson’s Getting Off: pornography and the end of masculinity.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

An Investigation into the Meat Industry and its Impact on the Environment

Territory: Environmental Ethics
Object: The impact of the Meat Industry on the Environment

Philosophers/Key Thinkers:
James Lovelock; Mary Midgley; Arne Naess; Anthony Weston; Jonathan Safran Foer

The aim of this project is to discover the impact the meat industry has on the environment and to question whether vegetarianism could help minimise Global Warming. To do this, the Hermeneutic and historical approaches will be used.

Throughout this project two main questions will be explored: What is the main contributor to our carbon footprint? and Is environmentalism justified?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Desire for Fame: The motivation behind reality TV stars in Geordie Shore.

In my project I want to assess why people desire fame and how reality TV has made this desire for fame more achievable. Reality TV has become more popular in recent years. Studies show that in 2010 worldwide viewers watched more reality TV shows than fictional TV dramas, making it a huge part of popular culture. The reason it is important is because we need to assess the kind of aspirations reality TV is creating. Why do people desire fame and are willing to go to great lengths to achieve this.

My object is Geordie Shore. This is a British reality TV show, aired on MTV, often gaining over 700 thousand viewers per episode. Leading to the fame of people you don’t normally see on TV: Young, lower middle-class Newcastle locals. I will ask why these young Geordies want to be on this reality TV show?

My methodology for this project is Interpretative Approach, Axiological Approach and the Historical approach.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

“Mrs. Dalloway. Not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.” Does Changing your Surname mean Forfeiting your Identity?

Object: ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Aim: To discuss the implications of marriage in feminist theory and attempt to decipher if loosing your surname means loosing your identity.

How: Use main themes from the novel, modern articles, De Beauvoir, Woolf and Butler, Friedan.

Methodology: Structured with quotations from the novel. Therefore methodology is interpretive.

What are the implications of taking your fiancés surname/ marriage and how does Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ connect us to these issues?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

On Bunnies: An Interpretative Approach to Playboy in the Sphere of Art

PLAYBOY
The use of nude photography does not exclude a work from the sphere of art

Featured Articles

Rose: The Paradigm case of Pornography-Playboy does not possess the same explicit sexual characteristics of other ‘adult’ entertainment.
-In the production of Playboy, there is no violation of liberty or victim.

Noë: ‘strange tools’ -art is purely the subversion of function and purpose, that calls into question the surrounding presuppositions -Playboy does not have his same subversion intention.

Hegel- the closest instance to absolute truth within art is the human form “we must search out that in Nature which on its own merits
belongs to the essence and actuality of the mind…The human form is employed…exclusively as the existence and physical form correspond to themind” (Hegel, 2004)

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

The Right to Privacy: A philosophical investigation in to the notion of a right to privacy in contemporary society; looking at the ways in which this right is upheld/struck down

“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world”
–
Anthony Burgess

We live in a society today in which privacy concerns seem to be cropping up more and more frequently. This essay basis its’ notion of a right to privacy on Warren and Brandeis’s article for the Harvard Law Review titled The Right to Privacy, and investigates the ways in which the culture today strikes down this right.

My essay focuses on the primary ways in which the notion of privacy has been struck down in the post 9/11 society that we live in. In doing this, I was able to use the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and John Rawls, among many other philosophers, to formulate a response to this abolition of privacy in the society we live in. Their philosophies provide us with a thoughtful response to the factors affecting our right to privacy, and henceforth allows for a thorough investigation into the notion of privacy from a perspective not entirely common.

‘Perhaps the most striking thing about the right to privacy is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is.’
– Judith Jarvis Thomson

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

An Attempt at Altruism? An Evaluation of Consumer Boycott’s Motivations and Outcomes.

This project aims to evaluate whether consumer boycotts are truly altruistic or an egoistic attempt to save reputations and adhere to social pressure out of self-interest. Do consumers and corporations really care about the impact of their actions or just want to look like decent caring people?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

Does Technology Merely Distort or Substantially Change Law and Justice?

Does Technology Merely Distort or Substantially Change Law and Justice?

The Media:

Common-held belief was that – because of Simpson’s celebrity- he would not be prosecuted.
Despite the incriminating evidence against him, the public supported Simpson. As noted by Bugliosi, there were “people carrying sings outside the courtroom during the trial declaring “Free OJ” and “Save the Juice”

The Pharmaceutical Industry

Euthanasia:
Technological advancements have made it considerably more comfortable for us to watch someone “slip away”

The Death Penalty:
At this present- day, advancements in the pharmaceutical industry ensure that ‘the shelf life of benzodiazepine’ also plays a role in this process.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

No-Platforming and UK Campus Censorship: The Liberal Dream. Progression or Regression?

Project Aims:

My project tends towards an understanding of No-Platforming and UK campus censorship (the object of investigation) within the context of Liberalism. In attempting to explain this relatively recent, and so-called Liberal, political phenomenon, I explore the way in which contemporary Liberalism functions as a political modality; and weather in fact it can be seen as Liberal at all. I Align the Liberal dream, as conceived, to Thomas Hobbes’ explication of a polity predicated on negative liberty (a term popularised by Isiah Berlin, and very much applicable to Hobbes). Hobbes’ thought serves as yardstick by which to measure the hermeneutic development of Liberalism. Leviathan is a primary text I refer to throughout the project. Berlin’s Two Conceptions of Liberty is also a primary source of information; providing the framework by which the debate between Classic Liberalism and Contemporary Liberalism takes shape. Classical Liberalism is affiliated with Hobbes’ emphasis on freedom from interference, and thus, in Berlin’s terms; negative Liberty. The question surrounding contemporary Liberalism, as symptomatized by No-Platforming and UK campus censorship, is whether it is a negative libertarian ideology or weather it has regressed into a political system that makes freedom possible only within the restrictions of prevailing beliefs, even if those beliefs, somewhat confusingly, concern freedom of oppressed groups. If the latter, contemporary Liberalism bears resemblance to pre-Liberal political ideologies with positive liberty at their core; and has thus regressed.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

The Reality Of ‘Generation Snowflake’ In Relation To The Contemporary Situation Facing Free Speech

Generation Snowflake and The Contemporary Situation

Defined in the Collins English Dictionary – ” the generation of people who became adults in the 2010’s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generation”

How has ‘Generation Snowflake’ come to be?

Foucault’s analysis of the kind of power at work today in Generation Snowflake is the interference and dominance of medicine, a discreet mode of power facilitating the set-up of this transactional reality.

Does Free Speech Exist Today in ‘Generation Snowflake’?

Mill’s Harm Principle – to safeguard liberty and free speech, ” the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

Data-Mining

What is data-mining?
In the case of Cambridge Analytica, data-mining is extracting data from people’s social media accounts to gather information on them.

What is micro-targeting
Micro-targeting is using data and information gathered on people to identify their interests and beliefs and then use this to try influence them, in this case their political decisions.

Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics company founded in 2014. They manipulated Facebook in order to access millions of people’s personal details and information and used it to influence elections.

Democracy in the age of technology: a philosophical enquiry exploring the effect data-mining and micro-targeting has on a democratic government.
Philosophy used to explain this: Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Rousseau’s Social Contract.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 3

From Selfie to Surgery: The Impact of Technology on Human Self-Worth

An investigation into the ways that technology is used as a method of creating insecurities with the self, leading to cosmetic surgery and the sustainability of capitalism.

My aim of this investigation is to explore the effects of technological apps such as Snapchat and Instagram on self-esteem and confidence. Also to investigate how far there is a link between beautifying apps and the cosmetic surgery industry, in a 21st century society where the conception of beauty is given great importance.

In this investigation, I conduct a survey to understand the effects of technology. I ask questions regarding frequency of usage, confidence levels after usage and pressure in society surrounding beauty.

Philosophical Concept 1: Adorno and the Culture Industry
Philosophical Concept 2: Freud and ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’