Author: Glen

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Commodification: for Better or for Worse?

Are professional athletes alienated towards the original values that uphold sport?

Historically, sport had been used among other things as a means of building character, promoting the spirit of fair play, and even nation building. Now in our contemporary society, sport is budding into one of the most forceful business and entertainment franchises within our capitalist culture.

My aim: to investigate how the commodifications of sport (through cultural advancement) have altered and enhanced the social value of modern day athletes

Territory: There is perhaps no better illustration of the commodifications of professional sport than the advancements of European football. As a result, my project is particularly focused on investigating the commodifications and cultural advancements of sport within European Football

Methodology: I intend to discuss my topic of the commodifications of sport through a hermeneutical critique, engaging on the evolvement of professional sport that has led the 21st century athlete into becoming a ‘celebrity’ rather than purely a competitor. My discussion is centred upon two key philosophical theories involving the works of Karl Marx (theory of alienation) and Martin Heidegger (a question concerning technology)

The objective of my discussion is a critical dialogue in which I seek to outline the cultural changes that have caused this apparent transformation within our society, and hence altered the social value of professional athletes today. This project aims to prove that through capitalist commerce and exploitation, the business of sport and its athletes become alienated, and additionally have lost a relationship towards the original bounds that compile sports and competition.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

How Have the Concepts of Truth and Knowledge Developed Throughout History in Relation to Capitalism and Post Modernity?

Key thinkers:
Lyotard 
Foucault 
Gadamer 
Kuhn

Main texts used:
The Post Modern Condition 
Truth And Method 
The Scientific Revolution 
The Archaeology Of Knowledge

Other texts used:
The Philosophy Of Science 
Theology And Scientific Knowledge 
The Passion Of The Western Mind

I have used these texts and studied these thinkers in order to explore the concepts of truth and knowledge. Lyotard has given me an insight into the way science and technology function in the post modern condition and Kuhn has shown the alternative possibilities for the development of science. I have studied Foucault to understand the nature of power and how it relates to knowledge.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Philosophy Behind Recession: a Study of Contemporary Economics Through Philosophy

An investigation on how the US reached a destination of an estimated 200 trillion in debt. How is it that America can possibly be named the Land of the Free? In a country with a constitution claiming ‘all men are created equal’; why is it that 15% of the population live below the poverty line? Can the ‘poster boy’ of Capitalism be considered moral? The USA is an economic powerhouse with an annual GDP of 14.6 trillion dollars. However, 42% of $14.6 Trillion is controlled by just under 1% of the population.

I intend to investigate the evolution of the global capitalist economy and its current state of disarray. Marxist rhetoric will serve, amongst several thinkers such as Engels, Machiavelli, Ayn Rand, Sun Tzu and Emmanuel Levinas in investigating the evolution of the US Capitalist system.
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, a damning indictment of corporate America, will be used as the cornerstone for my arguments against big business and the ever widening gulf between the rich and the poor.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Linking Heidegger’s Essay The Question Concerning Technology to the Changes of Technology within Football from the 1960s to the Present Day

The aim of my project is to link Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology to the changes of technology within football from the 1960s to the present day.

From watching the 1966 World Cup Final, England vs. West Germany and the 2010 Tyne-Wear Derby, Newcastle United vs. Sunderland, and also with the use of some useful websites, I would be able to highlight the changes of technology within football. These are the six changes of technology within football which I have highlighted:

1. Picture Quality/Display
2. Replays
3. Capturing of the Game play/Emotions
4. Football boots
5. The Football
6. Co-commentary/Audio

I will explain Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology from his book The Questioning Concerning Technology, and relate the changes of technology within football to the relevant parts of his theory.

A few examples of linking Heidegger’s theory to the changes of technology within football

– Heidegger talks about how modern technology reveals but also challenges, and I linked this to the development in the replays from the 1960s to today in the use of different camera angles which reveals more of what just happened, e.g. of a goal scored or challenging a decision made by the referee.
– Heidegger talks about how nature’s energy has become a standing reserve and how nature is now a resource of technological exploitation. As well, we ourselves are situated in the standing reserve as human resources. I linked this to the development in camera angles in capturing more emotions in football today than in the 1960s, therefore making football more of a standing reserve. Why? More is revealed (captured) in the match for the television audience.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Poverty: How to Solve It, Capitalism or Communism?

Aims:
– Personal work on an issue that interests me
– An issue that relates to possible career path
– Increase understanding of poverty
– Look into solving poverty
– Seeing whether the systems we live by are moral
– Questioning the status quo of my society

Grounding:
– Economist Paul Collier, author of background book
– Marx, philosopher and sociologist, author of Communist manifesto

Outcome:
Capitalism is the answer to solving poverty, communism is not applicable, nor desired, it cannot come into being without capitalism. In order to alleviate world poverty, capitalist society must embrace the third world into our bosom, aid, investment, trade, military intervention and laws, will elevate the third world out of poverty.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Do the Mass Media and the Cult of Celebrity Alienate Us from Our True Selves?

In my project I discuss the effect that celebrity culture has on modern day society. The mass media have a stranglehold on what we see, what we read and what we believe through television, newspapers and the internet. It is almost inescapable but the question is does the power of the mass media and the cult of celebrity alienate us from ourselves and stunt our true desires in life?

In order to philosophically deconstruct this phenomenon my methodology revolves around the examination of the theories of Guy Debord and his notion of the spectacle, Theodor Adorno’s attack on mass culture in The Culture Industry and Karl Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism in Das Kapital.

“The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires” (Debord, Society of the spectacle 16: 2004)

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

The Dual Nature of the Artist as Genius & Madman and its Repercussions for the Theory that Art is a Source of Moral Enrichment

The aim of my project is to explore the potential repercussions of the non-dichotomous relationship between the genius, the madman, their works of art and the concept that said works of art may be used for the purposes of moral edification.

The western tradition of linking art with morality began with Plato and Aristotle, who each viewed the potential of art in a different way; Plato believed art was dangerous and should be censored, whilst Aristotle believed that art could get people to emotionally engage with traumatic events that they had not yet experienced.

However, the turning point for art originated in the 18th century with the work of Kant, who cemented the relationship between art and morality by concluding that judgements concerning beautiful things were of the same nature as judgements concerning the ethical and the good.

From Kant’s work, the concept arrived in the philosophies of Schiller and Schopenhauer. Schiller believed that art was necessary in order to heal that which he saw as the fractured human spirit; beautiful art would improve the soul and return it to its proper moral course. For Schopenhauer, the beautiful was a part of the realm of Ideas, a, concept for which Schopenhauer is indebted to Plato. In turning our intellect towards the study of the beautiful, in whose realm resides also the moral, we can cancel out the influence of the will on our lives, the will which is the source of all human suffering.

These ideas form the philosophical basis of my project, in which the next step would be to apply the concepts of Schiller and Schopenhauer’s philosophy to the work of an accepted genius/madman.

For this part of the project I chose the work of Sylvia Plath, as I think she fulfils the criteria for both the genius and the madman. After her suicide, Plath left behind a rich body of poetic works, the themes of which correlate nicely with the work of Schiller and Schopenhauer. As such, I was able to examine her poetry using their philosophy and conclude that there are undeniable repercussions associated with the study of the artwork of a mad genius.

At the end of my study, I was able to discern that art, in a moral capacity, exists as somewhat of a double-edged sword and that we should be careful not to put too much faith in its ability to lead us to morality.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

[Facebook] Promoting Authenticity or Inauthenticity. What do you Think?

Heidegger: Facebook promotes authenticity by offering people the chance to assume responsibility over their identity and realise that they are in a ‘self-making-situation’.

Sartre: Facebook promotes authenticity by revealing that there is in fact a lack of identity when presenting a self due to the fact that one always has the freedom to choose to move beyond their current situation

Lyotard: Facebook promotes inauthenticity because individuals are no longer concerned with developing a sense of personal identity that is a true representation of them but only with developing an identity that will perform well within their social network in order to increase their social capital

Foucault: Facebook promotes inauthenticity because people are not concerned with developing an identity that is a true representation of them but only with conforming to a certain ideal of how a person ought to be in order to be accepted and not excluded by their social network

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

The Camera Never Lies: Exploring Interactions of the Real, the Human, and the Photographic

The cultural dominance and ubiquity of the photographic image invites an uncritical acceptance of its impact and our unconscious absorption of its information.

Knowing that it is literally a ‘trick of the light’ does little to dent our sense of its veracity – after all, our vision functions by a similar trick. The traditional problems of sense-belief apply doubly to photographs, reality is dimensionally translated and reduced, then extrapolated from the photograph by our visual and imaginative conception.

We read and imbue significance in an image, in order to make emotional and visual statements for it, without being quite aware of how we do so. Neither are we aware of what we do when we create images- selected representations of our world, isolated outside time and space – or of their violence upon us – capturing and reproducing a part of ourselves that acts as a whole, suspended in limbo; changing the way we react and perform, changing the world they are meant to mirror.

Vilém Flusser’s ‘Philosophy of Photography’, Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’, Roland Barthes’ ‘Camera Lucida’, and various works by Tagg, Elkins, Benjamin and others, explore the truth and utility of the semiotic and ontological interrelation, and the effect of its assumption, as well as the processes of communication of abstract meaning and emotion. By these processes, the apparatus of photography can become a social power without a master, which we feed and sacrifice for, forgetting that such systems, as with money, information, or legislation, are self-interested powers that ought to act for us.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Leadership

The aim of this project is to explore different styles of leadership. To discuss the legitimacy, efficiency and value of different styles that are employed by leaders.

The theories of psychologist Daniel Goleman will be explored throughout this project as he clearly identifies six main styles of leadership: Coercive, Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching. The different styles outlined by Goleman, will be legitimated against the arguments for legitimate authority laid out by Max Weber.

Christopher Hodgkinson’s work on leadership theory will have a major role in the discussion of Goleman’s leadership styles as Hodgkinson lays out his own leadership archetypes: The Careerist, The Politician, The Technician and The Poet.

In Goleman’s theory the ability to learn and develop leadership through growth and development is explored. This will be an interesting contrast to Hodgkinson’s ideas concerning The Poet archetype, an almost mystical character who weaves spells over his subordinates, a true charismatic leader.

Main sources:
Goleman. D Leadership that gets Results, Harvard Business Review, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2000

Hodgkinson. C, The Philosophy of Leadership, Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd, Oxford, 1983

Weber. M . The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. Henderson A.M, Parsons. T, Oxford University Press, New York, 1947

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Can We Ever Connect? An Investigation into the Relationship between the Human Being and the Natural World, with particular reference to Heidegger and the Akie Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania

The investigation aims to establish the relationship between human beings and their natural environment; contrasting the views of the Western world and the Akie hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Through an examination of the Akie lifestyle there is an attempt to understand the complex relationship they have with nature. Contrastingly there is a study into how the Western World considers nature, particularly in a society dominated by science and technology.

Heidegger’s original texts are referred to, along with ideas from Kierkegaard and Gadamer also. Several secondary sources and the BBC’s Tribe on the Akie (with Bruce Parry) will additionally be examined to develop a thorough understanding of the matter at hand.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Crimes of Passion: the Human Limits of Moral Convention

Could human natural intuitions ever be fully repressed by moral convention? Could our emotions ever be fully rationalized? Are we indeed rational beings? Is it necessary for us to be rational? What do our emotions mean? How do we direct them? In this project I will try to challenge conventional morality towards the feeling we have for something that is considered to be wrong, namely murder. I will use the method of reflective equilibrium in order to test moral philosophy and convention with the authentic human intuitions. Human life is indeed valuable but the main point is that human impulses cannot (or maybe, should not) be fully rationalized.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Nietzsche – Aesthetic Jesus?

How far can we know ‘truth’ From artistic works? Comparing Nietzsche’s thought that we are living in delusion with Ayn Rand’s bitter Objectivism. Can we know and reflect an external reality through painting? Using Nietzsche’s ‘On Truth and Lies in a non-moral sense’ and Rand’s ‘The Romantic Manifesto’. In essence, we cannot attain rigid truth, but there are degrees of truth which we can have access to through our senses, even if delusional, these hold some consistencies. With Euclidean geometry, traditional versus modern art, Adorno, and quantum art…

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

The Punishment of a Serial Killer. Is Utility Morality?

CONCEPT: The mind behind serial murder and the influence of mental illness on our judgement of correct punishment.

PHILOSOPHY: Mill’s Utilitarianism and Mill’s Speech in Favour of Capital Punishment; exploring contradictions, claims of morality and the influence of human nature.

SOURCES: newspaper reports, true story based films along with texts on Capital Punishment by Hodgkinson and Schabas and secondary texts on utilitarianism such as Utilitarian ethics by A. Quinton.

It was the relationship between mental illness and crimes of murder that first inspired my investigation into the punishment of a serial killer. I began to question what evidence of mental illness meant for the responsibility of the crime and how the law ought to respond to this. My initial intuition is that regardless of this, murder rates MUST be reduced, and so the introduction of a harsher punishment is necessary. Although, I am aware this causes problems when bringing up any causes that may have influenced the murder.

My aim is to use various reactions to the controversial issue of the death penalty to construct whether it is right to make judgements and decisions based purely on the ‘utility’ of the outcome.

Our reasons for and against capital punishment may not have an outcome of utility in mind but purely ‘what is right’. As well as the mental state of the criminal, many of us cannot but care for the right to life of the criminal, even for he who commits the worst crime imagin

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

What is True Beauty and How Does the Media Effect this View?

What is beauty in today’s society? Beauty should not be based purely on physical attributes. Essentially, my project argues that the media is wrong for constantly portraying unattainable body images of young men and women. The media persistently tells us what we should wear, how we should look, what size we should be; giving us a normative dimension that is not beauty as a fact, but as a value; something we want it to be.

We need to set ourselves free from the media’s conception of beauty and perfection. We need to use our philosophy to understand and discover what beauty really is; for it is more than what we presented in the media. If we disregard the media’s perfectionist views on beauty, we will be happier. A better understanding of what beauty is can liberate us from the obligation to look ‘perfect’. In the same way that when I do not believe in God, the Priest ceases to have power over me; when I do not believe in the media’s representation of beauty, the images cease to have power over me.

I aim to conclude my project firstly by agreeing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I certainly agree that beauty can be many different things to many different people. I shall use Plato, Kant and Hume to support my view.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

It’s Better if You Don’t Own Land

Aim: to determine if humanity has a right to own land

When progress is interpreted in respect to potential living standards, it is undeniable that examples such as the developments made in medicine are evidence of humanity’s progress.

BUT: 10% of the world (0.88 billion) live on an income of under $1 a day
20 years leading up to 1997 child poverty doubled worldwide.
Mortality rates: North America (7) VS Africa (88).

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Is it Right for an Editor to Have so Much Influential Power?

In my project I aim to discuss whether or not individuals have too much power when it comes to the media and journalism. I will look particularly into the jobs of the editors and owners. I will do this by investigating several case studies including the 1992 general election that Murdoch believed was won due to The Sun’s Headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”

I will mainly be focusing on John Stuart Mill’s novel On Liberty. Mill focused on freedom of speech, believing that no matter what position or job you have in society you should always be allowed to have your own opinions. However, he also believes that individuals should not spread their opinion if it will be harmful to others. I will be looking into and analysing both of these claims.

I will also be studying Dale Jacquette’s novel Journalistic Ethics: Moral Responsibility in the Media, Heinz Steinert’s novel Culture Industry, and Political Freedom (Problems of Philosophy) by George G. Brenkert, along with many others. As well as Mill I will be critically analysing Debord’s work on the media and comparing it to other philosophers.
Overall I aim to come to a conclusion about whether or not the editors and owners of newspapers have the right to print fabricated stories, whether the facts are true or whether they are lies.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

The Means-End Mindset of Modernity and Beyond: How Capitalism is devaluing the Education System

This project serves to assess the contemporary situation that education finds itself in within our Western Capitalistic society, before analysing the makeup of Capitalism itself. This will provide the platform for an attack on the system, where arguments will made critiquing Capitalism’s inherent characteristics; the characteristics that quash out independent thought, rational judgement and wisdom in favour of ticking boxes and tangible exam results. Education’s value as a nurturer has been lost: it has morphed into a tool for gain rather than an intrinsic virtue that has value in and of itself. The subtle and deep-rooted power systems that Capitalism makes inevitable are the cause of this.

‘Browne Report’ Lord Browne’s report on Higher Education will provide the context for this project. The report is indicative of attitudes towards education as a means, rather than an end in itself.

Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ The father of communism will be used to outline the inherent flaws of Capitalism in terms of private property and the free market and how these affect education.

Gadamer’s ‘Treatment and Dialogue’ This hermeneutical thinker’s arguments regarding the nature of intelligence will be assessed and made relevant to the situation that education finds itself in today. Contemporarily, our education system marginalizes traditional concepts of wisdom so that independent thought becomes devalued.

Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’ The climax of this critique will come with Foucault and his advocacy that, though less obvious, brutal and violent than the past, we are subject to deep-rooted power systems within the West that indirectly control our desires and actions. These affirmations will be used to highlight education’s impartiality – and the deeper consequences the way we are taught has on society as a whole.

Today, we are a docile nation with a docile mind-set. This needs to stop: education is the cause; education is the cure.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Singularity, Freedom & Chaos: Sartre’s Philosophy in a Backwards Universe

The object of my project is the premise behind Machine of Death, an anthology of stories about a world where people can know in advance how they will die.

The aim of my project is to establish the nature of existence as singular, through an examination of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontological work Being and Nothingness in tandem with the collection of stories presented in Machine of Death. The question is: what is ‘singular’ existence in Sartre’s philosophy? What does it entail? And what are its implications for human existence, freedom and responsibility?

The thesis behind this endeavour is that, by examining the ontological status of the world found in Machine of Death in light of Sartre’s philosophy, we can both establish answers to these questions and open up for ourselves a new possibility; the possibility of conceiving of an existence whose fundamental state is not a stable mode of Being, but patterns of organisation in a sea of fundamental differentiation and chaos. In so doing, we point ourselves towards a new ontology: the ontology of Deleuze in Difference and Repetition.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 2

Does the Revived Television Series “Doctor Who” (2005-Present) Provide a Positive Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Moral Philosophy?

“God is Dead”

Stephen Hawking stated in “The Grand Design” (2010) that “philosophy is dead”, and certainly as far as furthering our understanding of the physical nature of the Universe, that job seems much better suited to physicists than Priests and Theologians. However this increasingly empiricist attitude of society has lead to a crisis of values and an onset of nihilism.

It’s my opinion that of all the philosophers I’ve studied Friedrich Nietzsche, despite dying over a Century ago, grasps and provides the most convincing answer to the potentially valueless existence we face today. Nietzsche’s answer isn’t a normative one however but is in need of personal study and analysis by all who seek to learn something from it.

Go Beyond Good and Evil by journeying through time and Space

I’ve chosen to use “Doctor Who” (2005-present) as a way of interpreting and critiquing Nietzsche’s moral philosophy.

I feel I’m justified in this comparison given the immensely positive critical reception of this series which is often praised for being innovative and challenging, recently being described as a show that: “makes your mind work…” by the site www.avtoday.co.uk.

And Crucially the head producers Russell T Davies and Stephen Moffat have not only got a reputation for exploring deep philosophical issues with their dramas in a way that often borders on the unnerving, but both their runs of “Doctor Who” have been characterized by an undeniably existentialist and atheistic edge. Going so far as to pit the protagonist against the devil itself!