Category: 2012

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.”

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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.