Category: 2010

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Is Cooking an Art According to Kant’s Aesthetic?

My project is an investigation into gastronomy. My aim is to investigate whether cooking is regarded as an art or a craft or even maybe both. My territory is looking at two famous British chef’s Heston Blumenthal and Jamie Oliver. My philosophical concept is going to be using Kant’s aesthetic judgement from his third critique.

According to Kant art cannot be part of an aesthetic judgement, however there is a sense of ambiguity when it comes to the ideas behind Blumenthal’s molecular gastronomy. What is the difference between the two chefs? Why can one make it more acceptable for gastronomy to become close to an aesthetic experience?

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

How Deceived Are We by Our Own Mind?

The aim of my project is to explore the tricks (problems) the mind plays on us and how a technique can overcome that problem. I would use Freud to explain the problem of the mind and use a Derren Brown technique which could overcome that problem. I will also show how they both share some similar views in certain areas. So do you know how deceived you are by your own mind?

Here are a few areas I will explore.
• I will explain Freud’s theory on forgetting ‘Proper Names’. I will then suggest a technique by Derren Brown which could overcome this. In this case, a technique called ‘Remembering Names’.
• ‘Forgetting Names and Sequence of Words’ by Freud can be related to the ‘Linking System’ by Derren Brown. This technique allows you to move onto the next word without any worries.
• A view which Freud and Derren Brown share is on superstition and the supernatural. They both disapprove of it. Derren Brown’s controversial programme, the Séance showed his rejection of the supernatural through psychological experiments which shows the illusions of it.

I shall use Freud’s book Psychopathology of Everyday Life to explore the problems of the mind. For Derren Brown, I shall use his book, Tricks of the Mind, and include his programmes as well, such as Trick of the Mind, Trick or Treat, and the Séance.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Property Magazine: the Realities of the Market

Many would acknowledge, that in some form, the contemporary financial landscape is separated from what we would consider ‘reality’. The money which is exchanged within in the financial markets seems to have no grounding outside the markets in which it is exchanged. This edition looks at the problem and enquires to what extent this is a problem.

Capitalism. Can capitalism and the markets that work within be justified on moral grounds? A Property Week special report puts aside our intuitive moral assumptions and looks in greater depth at the concept of capitalism and the ethical dilemmas that arise out of this system.

Hyperreality. By commencing deregulation in the global financial institutions, have the governments of Thatcher and Reagan of the 1980s created a new economic domain of hyperreality? This edition looks at whether responsibility can be placed back into the financial markets.

Questioning the economic realities of the market with particular reference to the commercial property market

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Free Will in Relation to Advertising in the Modern Society.

In my project I hope to achieve an understanding of the free will problem and through this explore how various elements of society may subconsciously coerce us into action that we do not want to take.

I will look into elements of;
• Causal determinism
• Libertarianism
• Compatibilism
• Self determination
• Coercion
• Desires

I will also be looking at Hobbes and Kant to compare and contrast their views on freedom and then look at the modern society and explore how the concept of freedom can change and also how it is relative to the self. I will then look at political coercion and various forms of advertising to show how we can be controlled and our freedom can be easily threatened, I will then ask if we even truly have freedom for it to be threatened or is this coercion essential to society and is it even important that we have a totally free will.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Consumer Culture. What’s in It for Me?

Territory.
The consumer culture/Modernity /Postmodernity/Commodity and the role of the individual experience. Essentially the current capitalist world in which we live.

Object.
The various theories brought forward by philosophers and sociologists such as Horkheimer and Adorno, Giddens, Lyotard, Marx, Featherstone, Slater, Baudrillard, Debord and Bernstein. The theories of Modernity and Postmodernity, their consequences when related to the concepts of Consumer Culture and a world of Commodity.

Change.
I am to chart the change from traditional world view through to modernity. The extent to which capitalism is affected by the culture industry and its movement towards postmodernity. Mass culture and the effect of industrialisation. The Influence of the Media industry, and the various problems we associate with advertising and marketing culture in contemporary society.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Why the Trends in Suicide Rates?

New Religious Movements?

Aims: philosophically interpret the graphical data. Understand firstly why, since the beginning of postmodernity, suicide rates have dropped so significantly, halving in number on average. Secondly why they were inclining prior to this?

Sources: Oliver James’s ‘Affluenza’, Durkheim’s ‘Suicide’, and antisecularization theses.