Category: 2012

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

The Moral Status of Animals

‘Animals obviously cannot have a right of free speech or a right to vote because they lack the relevant capacities. But their right to life and to be free of exploitation is no less fundamental than the corresponding right of humans.’ – Julian H. Franklin

In this project I have looked back through the history of animal rights and the way in which the consideration for them is evidently growing. Will this care for the animals ever grow until their rights become equal to ours? Descartes believed that animals were merely muscular machines, unable to feel pain due to the fact that they were lacking in mind and soul. Bentham began the fight for animal rights in the 1800’s. Today, vivisection continues…

‘Speciesism’ – The argument for putting the rights of humans over those of animals – Peter Singer.

‘How we ought to treat animals depends first of all on the relationship we have with them… There is our relation with pets, who are promoted to honorary membership of the moral community. They are an exception, in a sense a perversion, and a temptation too. There is our relation with animals that we keep for our uses, where we have a clear duty of care but we are not trying to establish quasi-personal relations. Then finally there is our relation with animals in the wild. My argument is that we have duties to animals in all these three areas but they are of a different kind depending on the structure of the relationship.’- Roger Scruton

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

Honda: the Power of Dreams

The Advertising of Honda – Popular and life-affirming, but is it just a capitalist front designed purely for selling and promoting the spectacle?

Popular and life-affirming, but is it just a capitalist front designed purely for selling and promoting the spectacle?
The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord) – claims our society is dominated by the spectacle (TV for e.g.) but is it too cynical?

‘The Power of Dreams’ or ‘the glitter of the spectacle’s distractions’? Through this project, I aim to examine the theory Guy Debord asserts in his The Society of the Spectacle in detail, in order to discuss the relevance of a Debordian analysis with relation to Honda’s advertising.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Deconstructing the Narrative of Psychiatry: An exploration into how psychiatry has hindered its own progress.

Psychiatry is an admirable and important profession, but one which is regarded in very different ways depending upon which side of the fence you sit; a patient may resent psychiatry or praise it, a psychiatrist may feel comfortable or uncomfortable within their profession, and a lay person may or may not understand the need for psychiatric practice.

My project is focused on an exploration of the component concepts of psychiatry.

Deconstruction is a term given to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, which resembles an intimate reading of a text, and I call psychiatry a narrative in relation to the work of Jean François Lyotard, referring to its tendencies to create a type of reality into which its patients and practitioners must assert themselves. It is my view (and that of others), that such a thing that makes its own reality must be in total accord with itself and so I decided that the best way to uncover any disharmonious concepts in psychiatry was to deconstruct it.

A deconstruction of psychiatry consists, in my project, of looking the way that psychiatry tends to favour finding instances of insanity over instances of sanity; the way psychiatry appears to suffer from a form of ‘diagnostic creep’; and the imbalance of power that runs through the structure of psychiatry.

My conclusions are that although psychiatry is fraught with problems, it is capable of becoming a fully functioning profession, if it would be willing to receive critical review from an outside source.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

The Ethics of the Hero: Can Comic Books and Graphic Novels be Used for Moral Guidance?

My project was an examination of Comic Books and Graphic Novels and whether or not they can be used to give us Ethical and Moral Direction in our lives. I focused on the Comic Books Kick Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. and also on V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. I looked at the Ethical Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, looking at his Utilitarian theory from his Book titled Utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant and his theory from Groundwork for the metaphysics of Morals and also Thomas Hobbes’s theory seen in the Leviathan. I also looked at the Aesthetic Theory of Arthur Schopenhauer. I applied the Philosophy to the actions portrayed in the comic books to see if there was any ethical guidance to be taken from the comic books. Also looking at the Comics as works of art to see if there is any element of Aesthetic pleasure to be gained from them.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Consumerism and Advertising used in the Housing Industry in Britain

Our Commodity Fetishism has led to a growing consumer culture which advertising capitalises on and helps generate.

We are bound by our desperate consumer culture according to both Philosophers. Marx believes that humanity has created a culture of ‘Commodity Fetishism’ where use and exchange value have been warped by our capitalist culture. Where Debord despairs that: ‘all that was once directly lived has become mere representation.

Comparing luxury development One Hyde Park with affordable Norfolk Homes one I have found that advertising capitalises on and helps generate the commodity fetishism. The advertising feeds the audience response not the product through signs of satisfaction; these satisfactions are different for diverse audiences. Gap in luxury and price is maintained through specific target marketing.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Is Music Worth Saving? How Changing Social Norms and Conventions have Contributed to the Decline of the Music Industry.

Aims
 To gain an understanding of how largely capitalist organizations, such as Apple, Sony BMG and Warner are slowly eliminating the competition – smaller independent record labels and stores and alienating the musician from their art
 To investigate whether the use of free illegal downloading and file sharing websites can ever be justified in the current economic climate?
 To decide whether or not we should care about the demise of the record industry and whether music is a good that is worth saving?

Thinkers + Texts
 Mark Fisher— Capitalist Realism
 Immanuel Kant—Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals
 Karl Marx—Capital
 Arthur Schopenhauer—The World and Will as Representation

“It is easier to imagine a total catastrophe which ends all life on earth than it is to imagine a real change in capitalist relations” (Zizek, 334: 2011)

“We could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; this is the reason why music makes every picture, indeed every scene from real life and from the world, at once appear in enhanced significance” (Schopenhauer, 262-263: 1969)

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Exploring the Influential Powers and Effects of Social Media

My project aims to demonstrate how manipulated we have become by social media. It questions, in what ways and how much does modern social media affect our lives? Is it a harmless distraction, or has it become too ingrained within our daily lives?

Social media is in my opinion, part of a popular culture that as modern individuals, we desperately want to fit in with. Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives. In my project I shall also explore the need we feel as modern individuals to be a part of mass culture and to avoid alienation. Consequently, I shall argue, social media holds a great influence over even the smallest parts of our daily lives. The things we observe and gain from social media in all its forms affect and influence us in a number of ways, occasionally positively but also negatively. Its influence promotes a certain way of life, a life by which we are largely consumed and engulfed by the internet. I shall use Adorno’s concept of mass culture to support my investigation into social media as deception, along with Deleuze’s view on new technology. To conclude I shall use Van Dijk’s view that social and media networks are indeed shaping the prime mode of organisation and stand as the most important structures of modern society, adding to this that we have become almost too dependent on social media, and that we must be aware of the dangers of social media as a whole.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Can a Banker Be a Philosopher?

Using the philosophy of Pierre Hadot and by comparing and contrasting the figures of Socrates and Plato with Siegmund Warburg, is it possible that Warburg could be just that: A Banker and a Philosopher?

Most people imagine that philosophy consists in delivering discourses from the heights of a chair, and in giving classes based on texts. But what these people utterly miss is the uninterrupted philosophy which we see being practiced every day in a way which is perfectly equal to itself. . . . Socrates did not set up grandstands for his audience and did not sit upon a professional chair; he had no fixed timetable for talking or walking with his friends. Rather, he did philosophy sometimes by joking with them, or by drinking or going to war or to the market with them, and finally by going to prison and drinking poison. He was the first to show that at all times and in every place, in everything that happens to us, daily life gives us the opportunity to do philosophy. (Plutarch, Whether a Man should Engage in Politics When he is Old, 26, 796d. Cited. Hadot, 2006, p.38)

With this in mind, we see immediately that philosophy is something you do and that perhaps it is something available to everyone at all times.

Siegmund Warburg: “happiness in life consists in fulfilment of duties and not of desires.”

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Do We Have the Right to Bear a Genetically Related Child? A Study into in vitro Fertilisation and its Moral Implications

In my project this year I examined in vitro fertilisation which is a procedure invented in 1976 for infertile couples which involves removing the woman’s eggs and fertilising them outside the body with the sperm of her husband or a donor. This often results in spare embryos being formed, which is a subject which divides England.

I looked at the status of the embryo and argued that it had no raised status to an egg or a sperm based on the philosophical arguments of ethicist Peter Singer.

I also looked at the work of Martha Nussbaum who is a modern contemporary thinker and has strong opinions regarding bodily health and bodily integrity.

The main thread of my argument was that we have a right to a genetically related child and these two thinkers helped me prove this.

Books and websites I used included
Nussbaum, M. (2011) Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Harvard University Press, USA
Singer, P. (2002) Unsanctifying Human Life. Blackwell Publishing Company, Oxford
Singer, P. (1998) A Companion to Bioethics. Blackwell Publishing Company, Oxford
Smith, R. (2012) Statistics Explained. Westminster, London.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Is the Grass Always Greener on the Other Side? A Look into Marriage and Infidelity, in Reference to Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut

I aim to explore the concept of how we act morally in marriage and what motivates us to do so. I chose to use this film as my object, as in the film, the character of the ‘wife’, Alice, is honest about her psychological desires for other men and claims she believed herself incapable of controlling this desire and that it was only though accidental luck that it did not happen. However, the ‘husband’, Bill, claims that he simply does not fulfil the desires he has for other women out of consideration for Alice and out of respect for the commitments made in their marriage.

In my project, I want to investigate whether the concept of marriage holds any value and if a faithful, monogamous relationship is possible in our modern society today. With the factor of temptations surrounding us, are we able to resist and rationally control our inclinations of overwhelming desires and manipulate our will in order to follow the duties inherent in marriage. The philosophers I will use are: Immanuel Kant and his duty based ethics, Soren Kierkegaard and his views on marriage and St Thomas Aquinas relating to lust as a sin.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Can I Morally Justify a Career in The British Armed Forces?

– For my project I’m going to be answering a question very close to my heart, of whether or not I can morally justify a career in the British Armed forces.

– I’ll be challenging whether or not I can justify such violence through primarily referencing Levinas’ phenomenological conception of the other in “Totality and Infinity” (1961)

– I’ll be judging the politics of the current operations of the British Armed Forces through Rawl’s political conception of Justice as Fairness based upon his “overlapping consensus”

– I’ll also be attempting to “deconstruct” Derrida style the true meanings and purposes of our nation’s political actions overseas that are behind the political rhetoric we find ourselves in.

– Though I’m asking whether or not I can join the British Armed forces I’ll inevitably be focusing on American and NATO foreign policy as in the present climate our military action seems inextricably linked to these foreign interests

– The current war in Afghanistan will be my primary focus, as it’s a highly controversial conflict that could either legitimise NATO as a force for justice or as a power-hungry aggressor in the 21st Century depending upon the outlook taken and the yet-to-be-seen outcome of the conflict

– I’ll also be tentatively trying to judge the moral justifications of conflicts that look likely in the near future as these will have a direct effect on me should I join the British Armed forces

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Altruism vs. Egoism: a Debate through the Life of Simone Weil

Described by Albert Camus in 1951 as the only great spirit of our time‘, Simone Weil was a philosopher, writer, teacher and social activist who dedicated the majority of her life to helping others. However, her altruistic nature progressed into an incessant need to share the suffering of others. As a result, Weil neglected her own health and died in 1943, aged just 34.

Weil was a hugely admirable person, but in this project, I am going to put forward an argument in favour of the need for an egoistic moral structure to ensure the progression of society.

After providing an account of Weil‘s life, highlighting her troubles and endeavours along the way, I will use Mill‘s Utilitarianism to demonstrate an altruistic account of morality. However, I will go on show the flaws in Mill‘s theory in order to illustrate why an altruistic structure to society is implausible.

I will then assess Barbara Oakley‘s study, Pathological Altruism, to address her idea that altruistic acts can become harmful when taken to an unhealthy extreme. Many of Weil‘s characteristics match up to Oakley‘s studies, providing an understanding behind her eating and mental disorders.

So next I will turn to Hobbes‘s account of morality, Rational Egoism, to see if that could provide a more comprehensive ethical structure. His recognition of individual‘s self-interest ensures the basis of a productive society, where people would look to employ their strengths in order to further themselves, which is something I feel Weil didn‘t fully achieve.

However, there are also flaws to Hobbes‘s account, and so I will conclude by asserting that currently no entirely adequate moral-political exists. I will then look at Williams‘s interpretation of morality, as he suggests that comprehensive moral philosophy is empty and boring‘.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

A Discussion of Ronald David Laing as an Existential Psychoanalyst in the History of Madness

Laing was a psychoanalyst in the mid sixties who was a revolutionary and controversial character. Within my project I will discuss the impact Laing had on the liberation of the voice of madness in the 60’s. Even though his practices were not well renowned towards the end of his career, at his peak Laing was the ‘pop star’ of the psychological world. His medical practices were considered to be revolutionary in that he took madness out of the asylum and created a home within a city where the mentally insane were housed. His practices were controversial in that he condoned excessive drug use in order to access a ‘higher reality’ and due to the fact that he considered psychotic regression to be a necessary stage within the healing of madness. For example, he allowed one of his patients to smear her walls with her own faeces and to be fed out of a bottle like a baby.

Once I have explained Laing’s position within the history of madness I will focus the rest of my project on Laing’s first book: ‘The Divided Self’. Within, he explains the existential view of madness from the stages of the schizoid condition to schizophrenia and psychosis. I will relate Laing’s discussion of madness to Sartre’s views on Bad Faith and the Other, as expressed within ‘Being and Nothingness.’ This will allow me to have a detailed discussion of Laing’s existentialism of madness as expressed as the loss of the self to the point where the patient can be considered to be existentially dead.

“The self, being transcendent, empty, omnipotent, free in its own way, comes to be anybody in phantasy and nobody in reality.” – R. D. Laing

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Brechtian Techniques in Contemporary Cinema

In my project I will be investigating the use of Brechtian techniques in contemporary cinema. I will look into why Brecht first developed his techniques. I will look closely into one of his most famous plays Mother Courage and Her Children. 

I will then investigate more contemporary cinema producers. I will do this by looking into Jean-Luc Godard’s comedic film Pierrot Le Fou and Michael Haneke’s cruel and sadistic film Funny Games. 

I will explore whether or not they use Brechtian techniques in the same way that Brecht wanted them to be used. I will be arguing that although the producers tend to use Brechtian techniques to convey different emotions and messages it is only because the producers are living in different societies. They, therefore, want to express different issues that relate to their society. For example, while Brecht wants to criticize how the society is run Godard wants to criticize the role of the cinema and Haneke wants to criticize certain individuals in the society, those who take pleasure from watching cinema put together through violence and torture.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

How Legitimate is Industrial Action and What is its Purpose?

I have looked at KARL MARX and his theory to try and decide whether strike action is legitimate and what purpose it plays.

Marx would have supported the miners’ strike and seen it as legitimate as it was the working class seizing the means of production. However he would not see the teachers strike as legitimate as it was too individualistic and too led by capitalist values.

Within my project I have focused on how legitimate strike action is. It seems that public perception had changed in the last 30 years and I have endeavoured to uncover why this is.

Despite feeling that industrial action is legitimate I found it difficult to show this in regards to the teachers strike … but it just feels somehow wrong.

The other philosopher I have focused on within my project is JOHN LOCKE. He again would see the miners’ strike as legitimate as their rights were being threatened and therefore it was their duty to show discontent for this. After all, we only enter into a society to have our natural rights protected. Yet, Locke was unable to justify the teachers strike.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Can the Exclusion of Women from Becoming Priests in the Roman Catholic Church be Justified?

Key points to consider:
– What are the reasons why the Roman Catholic Church prevents women from joining the priesthood? 
– Why do other Christian Churches allow and encourage women to enter their priesthood? 
– Can the exclusion of women be considered in any way just? 
– Is it fair that the Roman Catholic Church do not treat the role of men and women as equal? 
– Is this justifiable according to John Rawls and his theory of justice?

Why don’t the Roman Catholic Church ordain female Priests?
Reasons include: 
– Church Traditions. 
– Religious Beliefs and Teachings. 
– The role and duty of women is different, but equal to men. 
– The main reason for this is due to their belief that Jesus was a male and those who become priests are carry out the work of Jesus. 
– Also the 12 apostles chosen by Jesus were all male and therefore priests should all be male. 
– This is a deep rooted teaching within the Roman Catholic Church which has yet to be changed or even considered for alteration.

Why do the Church of England allow women to become Priests?
 Equality in the Church.
 Fairness in the religious teachings.
 Trust in the individual’s faith rather than the gender.
 A belief that the Bible contains the core of all Christian faith and thought.
 They belief that the gender of the individual does not matter as long as they have the faith it takes to become a member of their priesthood.
 A firm commitment to the ministry of all of God’s people both lay and ordained together.

John Rawls.
– Leading figure in moral and political philosophy. 
– Published his Theory of Justice in 1971. 
– Rawls aimed to outline what is justice. 
– From his theory we can understand which actions are justifiable and which are not.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

The Legalisation of Drugs: The Case for Socio-Cultural Relativism

Aims
– To outline the key philosophical, social and legal theories which are integral to the debate about the legalisation of drugs.

– To consider some of the most salient and persuasive cases for the legalisation of drugs, including:
o Medicinal cannabis use
o Spiritual or religious drug use

– To make recommendations for changes to the extant legal and social policies with regard to certain types of illegal drug use.

“In our societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain ‘political economy’ of the body […] it is always the body that is at issue – the body and its forces, their utility and docility, their distribution and their submission.” (Foucault)

The War on Drugs

Key Thinkers
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
– Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Reality Mining and Technology: a Postmodern Reflection

Reality Mining collects the digital breadcrumbs of our daily activities, to understand and predict social behaviour.

The territory shall outline up-and-coming advances in technology and communication and what we can learn from analysing these networks through reality mining. It will look at specific areas of communication development and reality mining. This discussion looks at the work of Lyotard, Baudrillard and Vattimo. With reference to these specific postmodern thinkers, this project shall discuss whether reality mining furthers the commodification of knowledge, alienates the individual and blurs the distinction between subject and object.

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 2

The Authenticity Blues. A Study in Heideggerian Authenticity in Blues Music

In this project I shall explore the idea of authenticity in the blues, using both the idiomatic definition of ‘authentic’, and martin Heidegger’s theory of authentic and inauthentic existence

As a case study I shall use the career of Huddie ‘lead belly’ Ledbetter and his working relationship with the folklorists John and Alan Lomax

Are the blues authentic?
Is the life of a bluesman?
Can we appreciate the blues in an authentic way today?

Categories
2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Karl Marx without the Prejudice. A Critical Evaluation of Karl Marx using Henry George to Defend Private Property

Karl Marx refutes private property because:
1. It leads to an illegitimate division within society.
2. It alienates the labourer from their objectified labour (property owner takes from the labourer).

Henry George highlighted the following problems with Marx’s position (all of which stem from his prejudiced original position, namely, Communism must be right):
1. The removal of private property contradicts the values of independence and self-reliance.

2. Marx accepts property to be important in determining identity but then refutes property. There needs to be an alternative source of identity which is not provided.

3. The problem of alienation remains unresolved because the product of the labourer is still taken from them.

4. The relationship between objectified labour being necessary to maintain society and identity stemming from objectified labour means objectified labour is necessary for the continued existence of society. Therefore:
a. Either, private property should not exist, in which case society will no longer exist.
b. Or, society emerges that does not require objectified labour.

5. Marx forgets the importance of incentive for human production. Without a selfish incentive humanity will reduce its productivity and thus be unable to sustain the growing human population.
a. Valuing labour by time is a prime example of Marx’s ignorance of incentive.

A possible alternative to the system that causes the growing division of society:
1. No longer an income tax

2. In the place of income tax is land value tax (user of the natural resource pays a percentage of the resources value in order to attain the ability to utilise the resource for his benefit)

3. Retain VAT (Value Added Tax) for internet transactions and other transactions the government seeks to control.

Benefits:
1. Increased utilisation of natural resources.

2. Simplification of tax system.

3. Increased accountability for tax obligations.

4. Increased benefits received by the local communities.