Category: Abstracts

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Can Postmodernist Picturebooks be Considered to be An Example of Deleuze and Guattari’s Concept of Minor Literature?

Minor Literature is that which completes three tasks: the continual deterritorialisation of major literature, the enablance of collective enunciation and the instating of non-hierarchal relationships between signifiers and the signified. This project considers whether postmodern picturebooks complete these tasks.

The term, ‘postmodernist picturebooks’ refers to a series of books co-published in Britain and America between 1994 and 2004. All of these books make use of metafictive references and narrative gaps.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Israeli Apartheid …

My project examines the justifiability of the State of Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Arab Palestinians and Israelis, which constitutes the ‘Crime of Apartheid’ under international law, in light of the conventional justification that such measures are necessary in order to maintain the freedom and security of Israel’s Jewish population. After outlining the mechanisms of Israeli apartheid, I will demonstrate that, whilst they are unjust from the perspective of both Kantian ethics and Millian liberalism, traditional utilitarianism considers them morally permissible, and thus, as some later liberals, such as John Rawls, recognized, does not provide a suitable foundation for a liberal political philosophy. I will argue that, whilst Israeli apartheid is undoubtedly unjust, and whilst many of the mechanisms of which it is constituted have no conceivable security function, putting an end to all aspects of Israeli apartheid ultimately requires a solution to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. Finally, I will briefly explain why I consider a two-state solution to be the only viable means of resolving this conflict, and outline two conditions, from Kant’s Perpetual Peace, that could facilitate the actualization of such a solution.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

A Quest for Truth: Is Propaganda the New Empiricism?

Throughout each period of history information has been controlled by a select few elite. From Alexander the Great to Martin Luther to the modern complex of mass media that provides us with information today. This project seeks to explain the way in which information has been controlled from one society to another with the advent of new technologies only perpetuating the problem. If Philosophy is a search for truth, then propaganda is the opposite of philosophy, it is the concealing of truth. Do we just accept what we are told or can we use philosophy to overcome propaganda?

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

An Exploration of the Philosophical Implications of Social Media and Online Identity Profile Building on the Formation of Identity and Selfhood

Identity will be considered in terms of the construction process and the impact that social media and the online community can have on this process in accordance with the theories listed

MacIntyre-Narrative Embedding through a socio-historical understanding. Tradition is thus key.. Dangers arise in consideration of the anonymity of the internet and fantasy of online environment distracting from this.

Giddens-Acknowledgment of importance of social background. self as a reflexive process.. Is it possible that the world of social media and online profile building provides guidance now? Does this then promote cultural relativism

Habermas -Theory of Communicative Action and Discourse Ethics. Reason amongst humans is considered to not be based in objective terms. Discussion key to understanding the self. But necessitate compliance the Rules of Discourse .

Trilling- Differentiation between Sincerity and Authenticity. Rejection of sincerity as only the role of the actor for the gratification of others.. Does the online identity building epidemic loose this authenticity and re-establish the pressure of those forming their identities in the realm of sincerity. The formatting of stating elements of our identity independently and publicly creates sincerity hoops.

Borgmann-Recognition of the role social media in modernity and the advent of Hyper-reality as a result. We become overly connected and this results in irrational behaviour and affections. We only end up disappointed at the lack of fulfilment of this strange unreal reality.

Dreyfus- Online identity formation and Social Media exist in a risk free environment. This can cause issues with personhood through desire to exist in a simulated environment and never transcend to interpersonal relationships in reality.

Risk and Potential Difficulties- Risks exist in the realms of the vulnerability of the unestablished self. This is via the advent of social consensus and a lack of objective rationality, the potential of manipulation in unequal partners, loss of interpersonal communication and inability to create relationships

There is a requirement for the self to be established prior to online engagement and necessity of return to Trilling’s Sincerity as the resulting conclusion and means from which the identity can benefit from Social Media.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

The Power of Solitude. A critical analysis of solitude as a stimulant for creativity.

The objective of this essay is to produce an accurate analysis of our understanding of solitude, artistic creativity and its origins, and to examine whether solitude can be an aid to maximising creativity.

To reach an appropriate conclusion, it will first address the nature of creativity from Plato, Kant, Freud and from various modern thinkers.

It will then address theories on solitude from Thoreau, Artistotle, Descartes and Koch, followed by an analysis of the extent to which it can stimulate artistic creativity. I also see it necessary to briefly examine the role of technology in today’s society and the use of drugs to see how these two factors can influence solitude and creativity.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

An End to the Exam Factory Process

An application of Virtue ethics to education, and through this, an understanding that UK education should be about the flourishing and development of character over and above the passing of exams

The use of Nigel Tubbs and Thomas Arnold to support my thesis

My objective of this essay:
• Through the study of Anthony Seldon’s eight aptitudes, Aristotle’s Virtue ethics, and interviews of teachers in UK education, I wish to grasp an understanding of how virtue should be practised within education.

“Education in schools, and indeed universities, has become more formulaic as the tyranny of exams has been allowed to become overly dominant.” Anthony Seldon

“I judge that the task of the school in the moral development of the child can and should be of greatest importance.” Émile Durkheim

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Can We Ever Truly Escape Our Past Or Is it a Precondition for Selfhood?

The concept of past is intimately connected to our perceptions of identity and the question of whether we can ever escape this often intrusive and suffocating hold on our person is central to my thesis of whether or not the past of an individual defines who they are and who they will become.

Object: Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby will be applied to both psychology and philosophy.

Beginning with Psychology, specifically the work of Sigmund Freud to show how our identity is determined.

Turning to philosophy with Jean Paul Sartre, exploring his views on freedom which oppose those of Freud.

Finally Friedrich Nietzsche’s work on ‘becoming’ and ‘overcoming’, discussing the ability to overcome our pasts and celebrate them.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

‘The War on Drugs’; an account of Marijuana throughout the history of the United States and how constant law reform is a product of postmodernity, with reference to Foucault.

My objective in this essay is to produce a detailed account on the history of Marijuana within the United States and to distinguish whether or not constant law reform is a result of postmodernity and the concentration of power within a society.

Firstly, I will examine Cannabis throughout the history of The United States and by doing this it will allow me to depict how the ebb and flow of acceptance has come about. Then I will address law reform and correlate it with the workings of Postmodernity in order to show how a concentration of power is able to alter the perception and experience of a social phenomenon. Lastly I will underline how the strategic, critical and rhetorical practices performed by those in power creates a clouded perception of reality.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Is Proportionality Disproportionate in Our Consideration of Other Nations’ Actions?

This project aims to explore the disparity between a fully-functioning international model of Hegemonic Stability and the reluctance to intervene in a country so belonging on the ash heap of history as North Korea.

By the end of this project I hope to have fully elucidated the current geopolitical state of affairs with regards to the censoring of information traffic and the contemporary misuse of a benevolent world leadership. In order to fully construct or reject the argument for intervention in the Korean Peninsula, I shall be referring to Hobbes ‘, Hegel’s Sittlichkeit and the State and Kant’s Perpetual Peace Essays.

Furthermore, in order to fully understand the political weight of such allegations, the Bush administrations’ actions in 2002 will be critically assessed, in light of present day hindsight.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Philosophy in the Boudoir. The taboo of sex: an evaluation of the significance of sexual discourse in society

Why has society repressed sexual discourse and what does this mean for an individual?

Foucault and Beauvoir explore the historical repression of sexuality and the classifications of the Enlightenment and scientific discourse. Individuals have not been able to express their sexuality publicly, as discourse of the erotic was under taboo.

How can we liberate society from the consequences of sexual repression?

Marquis de Sade asserted the importance of sexual liberation to combat all social repressions. His pornographic works, despite being violent and cruel, are fundamentally pivotal in the emancipation of sexuality from the private realm.

What was the result of the sexual revolution for sexual emancipation?

The 1960s sexual revolution is said to have begun with the publishing of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and had a major impact on sexual liberation, specifically for women, as prohibitions on discourse were protested.

What impact does the culture industry have on sexual liberty?

Adorno’s writings on mass consumerism in our capitalist society explore the limits of sexual liberty as in the public realm as they begin to cater only to the needs and desires of our consumer society

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Is the Existence of Public Schools Justified?

I investigate the notion that the existence of public schools in the UK is not justified, as they are linked with social immobility – if they are a cause of social immobility, perhaps there are grounds to abolish the public school system.

Is it the right of an individual to own a disproportionate amount of private property? Should that be any different to purchasing a public school education?

I consider the opinions of Nozick, Rawls, Locke and Hegel, as I inspect whether a public school education is a piece of private property.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Relationship between Art, Politics and Architecture in a ‘Post-Political World’

With reference to:
 Rancière’s metapolitical framing of architecture and the reconstruction of Brodsky

The intention of this project is to outline three independent topics concerning: (1) Rancière’s ‘metapolitical’ framing of architecture, (2) Alexander Brodsky and Illya Utkin’s ‘Paper Architecture’, and (3) Ralph Erskine’s ‘democratic’ architecture, with the aim of analysing and assessing the question as to whether there is room for a political enquiry into the philosophy of architecture in a ‘post-political’ world.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Dream and Nightmare. A critical reading of Fukuyama’s End of History with reference to the events of September 11th, 2001 and the aftermath.

This paper is primarily a sustained critique of Fukuyama’s work on the Universal History of Mankind. It aims to explore developmental trends in global politics by interrogating the philosophical roots of perhaps the most dominant theory of the last twenty five years, extending the study I undertook in my previous project. It takes the form of a comprehensive study of Fukuyama’s theory, from its Hegelian roots to its implications for Western foreign policy. I examine this material through the prism of the events of September 11th, 2001 and the consequent aftermath. I draw from a number of secondary sources, most notably Zygmunt Bauman, Jean Baudrillard, Sam Huntington and John Gray.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

The Priest and the King: an examination of the Iranian Revolution using the outlook of Foucault to analyse the causes, course of events and outcomes.

‘As an “Islamic” movement, it can set the entire region afire, overturn the most unstable regimes, and disturb the most solid. Islam – which is not simply a religion, but an entire way of life, and adherence to a history and a civilisation – has a good chance to become a giant powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men.’ Foucault predicted that the revolution in Iran would not follow the model of other modern revolutions, writing that it was instead organised around a greatly different concept which he called ‘political spirituality’. He acknowledged the huge power of the new discourse of militant Islam for the world, not just Iran. Foucault indicated that the new Islamist movement pointed at a fundamental cultural, political and social break with the modern Western order, such a discourse would amend the ‘global strategic equilibrium’. – Foucault

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Has the Sexual Objectification of Women Led to Them Being Regarded as Silent Objects and Consequently Aided the Creation of a ‘Rape Culture’?

Project aims:
To explore different areas of the media (such as advertising, TV and films) to assess the level of sexual objectification that people will view on a daily basis.

Explore the inequalities that women still face in modern society and assess whether the situation is improving or growing worse.

Assess rape statistics – especially in respect to how many rapes occur and how many are reported – to see if sexual objectification could have removed the female voice to the point of silencing them completely.

Finally discuss if the situation can be resolved and potentially how this could be done.

Philosophers:

Catherine MacKinnon,
“Pornography makes women into objects … Objects do not speak.”

Jean Baudrillard,
“In the ‘eroticized’ body, it is the social function of exchange which predominates.”

Simone de Beauvoir,
“The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history.”

Immanuel Kant,
“The human being… exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that will”

Thomas Hobbes,
“The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin.”

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

I Shop Therefore I am

KEY THINKERS
– Joseph Heath
– Tim Kasser
– Charles Taylor
– Jean Baudrillard

“Consumer society sold us dissatisfaction, then sold us the cure” (Lawson, 2009).

“This massive squirrel-wheel cannot but generate a certain amount of stress, not to mention incredible amounts of waste”

With both nutrition and materialism, Kasser states that “they are full for only a short time, as the promise is false and the satisfaction is empty”.

The level of consumption in Britain is so extraordinarily high that if the entire human race had the same levels we would need 3.1 planets to cope with the demand for resources (Lawson, 2009, p.98).

Researchers have found that on average we see around 3,500 advertisements a day. That is a shocking 1, 277, 500 a year.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

The Double

This project aims to argue that the doppelganger in cinema represents a fear in society. The project will aim to chart the change in this fear. Deleuze’s work offers a psychoanalytical perspective on this whereas Giddens and Beck look at modernity more generally. Science fiction cinema is a cinematic cousin of the double film and works in a similarly reflexive manner. As film projection is digitized so is our society, meaning that we both rely on and resent technology. So is the prevalence of double films in 2014 related to our increasingly strong links to machines?

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Mindfulness: a Philosophical Perspective

Mindfulness has been described by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn as a particular way of paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non judgmentally.Three assumptions the theory of mindfulness makes, which I aim to philosophically investigate, are:
1)As humans we have access to a direct primary experience free from conceptual thought, which constitutes secondary experience.
2)As humans we have the capacity to be impartial to our thoughts and bodily experiences, observing them from a vantage point rather than ‘becoming’ them.
3)As humans, we have the capacity to hold plural aspects of our experience in our attention simultaneously.

The Reflection Thesis
In this model, self-awareness is the consequence of a second-order consciousness taking a discrete, first-order conscious experience as its intentional object.

The Reflexivity Thesis
In The Reflexivity Thesis conscious states concurrently reveal both the object of consciousness, and the awareness of oneself as a subject in the conscious state itself. According to this model therefore, any occurrence of consciousness involves the sense of ownership over the state, that there is a phenomenality of what it is like for the subject to have that experience.

Higher-order theories
Higher-order (HO) theories propose the notion of a “conscious mental state in terms of meta-mental self-awareness.” (Van Gulick.) For these theories what makes a mental state conscious is the fact that it is accompanied by a simultaneous and non-inferential higher-order state whose content is that one is now experiencing M.

1) Higher order perception (HOP) Theory
Inner sense theory
The most popular version of higher-order perception theory- the inner sense theory- holds that humans have additional inner senses and sense organs, with the duty of scanning the outputs of the first-order senses to produce equally fine-grained, but higher-order, representations. This model takes basic self-awareness to be a form of inner perception, which involves two separate acts of awareness; a first-order intentional mental state directed externally, and an inner-directed higher-order awareness targeted at this first-order mental state.

2) Higher order thought (HOT) theory
I will now investigate the second type of Higher Order theory, which holds that our self awareness is in the form of a thought rather than a perception.

Actualist:
Actualist HOT theory concerns the nature of state-consciousness. Its main proponent has been David Rosenthal whose proposal is that a conscious mental state M, of mine, is a state that is actually causing an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M. A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with non-conceptual intentional content, which is the object of a higher-order thought.

Dispositionalist
On the Dispositionalist interpretation if a subject is aware of an object, then necessarily, it is possible that she is aware of being aware of that object. According to all forms of dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, the consciousness of a perceptual state consists in its availability to higher-order thought: a conscious mental event M, of mine, is one that is disposed to cause a belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and to cause it non-inferentially.

Mindfulness has been described by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn as a particular way of paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non judgmentally.

Three assumptions the theory of mindfulness makes, which I aim to philosophically investigate, are:
1)As humans we have access to a direct primary experience free from conceptual thought, which constitutes secondary experience.
2)As humans we have the capacity to be impartial to our thoughts and bodily experiences, observing them from a vantage point rather than ‘becoming’ them.
3)As humans, we have the capacity to hold plural aspects of our experience in our attention simultaneously.

The Reflection Thesis
In this model, self-awareness is the consequence of a second-order consciousness taking a discrete, first-order conscious experience as its intentional object.

The Reflexivity Thesis
In The Reflexivity Thesis conscious states concurrently reveal both the object of consciousness, and the awareness of oneself as a subject in the conscious state itself. According to this model therefore, any occurrence of consciousness involves the sense of ownership over the state, that there is a phenomenality of what it is like for the subject to have that experience.

Higher-order theories
Higher-order (HO) theories propose the notion of a “conscious mental state in terms of meta-mental self-awareness.” (Van Gulick.) For these theories what makes a mental state conscious is the fact that it is accompanied by a simultaneous and non-inferential higher-order state whose content is that one is now experiencing M.

1) Higher order perception (HOP) Theory
Inner sense theory
The most popular version of higher-order perception theory- the inner sense theory- holds that humans have additional inner senses and sense organs, with the duty of scanning the outputs of the first-order senses to produce equally fine-grained, but higher-order, representations. This model takes basic self-awareness to be a form of inner perception, which involves two separate acts of awareness; a first-order intentional mental state directed externally, and an inner-directed higher-order awareness targeted at this first-order mental state.

2) Higher order thought (HOT) theory
I will now investigate the second type of Higher Order theory, which holds that our self awareness is in the form of a thought rather than a perception.

Actualist:
Actualist HOT theory concerns the nature of state-consciousness. Its main proponent has been David Rosenthal whose proposal is that a conscious mental state M, of mine, is a state that is actually causing an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M. A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with non-conceptual intentional content, which is the object of a higher-order thought.

Dispositionalist
On the Dispositionalist interpretation if a subject is aware of an object, then necessarily, it is possible that she is aware of being aware of that object. According to all forms of dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, the consciousness of a perceptual state consists in its availability to higher-order thought: a conscious mental event M, of mine, is one that is disposed to cause a belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and to cause it non-inferentially.

Mindfulness has been described by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn as a particular way of paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non judgmentally.

Three assumptions the theory of mindfulness makes, which I aim to philosophically investigate, are:
1)As humans we have access to a direct primary experience free from conceptual thought, which constitutes secondary experience.
2)As humans we have the capacity to be impartial to our thoughts and bodily experiences, observing them from a vantage point rather than ‘becoming’ them.
3)As humans, we have the capacity to hold plural aspects of our experience in our attention simultaneously.

The Reflection Thesis
In this model, self-awareness is the consequence of a second-order consciousness taking a discrete, first-order conscious experience as its intentional object.

The Reflexivity Thesis
In The Reflexivity Thesis conscious states concurrently reveal both the object of consciousness, and the awareness of oneself as a subject in the conscious state itself. According to this model therefore, any occurrence of consciousness involves the sense of ownership over the state, that there is a phenomenality of what it is like for the subject to have that experience.

Higher-order theories
Higher-order (HO) theories propose the notion of a “conscious mental state in terms of meta-mental self-awareness.” (Van Gulick.) For these theories what makes a mental state conscious is the fact that it is accompanied by a simultaneous and non-inferential higher-order state whose content is that one is now experiencing M.

1) Higher order perception (HOP) Theory
Inner sense theory
The most popular version of higher-order perception theory- the inner sense theory- holds that humans have additional inner senses and sense organs, with the duty of scanning the outputs of the first-order senses to produce equally fine-grained, but higher-order, representations. This model takes basic self-awareness to be a form of inner perception, which involves two separate acts of awareness; a first-order intentional mental state directed externally, and an inner-directed higher-order awareness targeted at this first-order mental state.

2) Higher order thought (HOT) theory
I will now investigate the second type of Higher Order theory, which holds that our self awareness is in the form of a thought rather than a perception.

Actualist:
Actualist HOT theory concerns the nature of state-consciousness. Its main proponent has been David Rosenthal whose proposal is that a conscious mental state M, of mine, is a state that is actually causing an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M. A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with non-conceptual intentional content, which is the object of a higher-order thought.

Dispositionalist
On the Dispositionalist interpretation if a subject is aware of an object, then necessarily, it is possible that she is aware of being aware of that object. According to all forms of dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, the consciousness of a perceptual state consists in its availability to higher-order thought: a conscious mental event M, of mine, is one that is disposed to cause a belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and to cause it non-inferentially.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

The Hubris of Medicalization

A considered look into the social transition from ‘madness’ to ‘mental illness’ and the possible connotations of our choice to embrace such medicalization within the Western World, inspired by a reading of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted.

Concepts: Foucault Madness and Civilisation, Szasz The Myth of Mental Illness, Potter The Authenticity Hoax, Davies Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good, Kaysen Girl, Interrupted.

Aspects considered: Within this project I intend to discuss and analyse the value of medicalization, and will thus discuss how it came to power and why we choose to maintain it. Through Foucault I will challenge the concept that we have always been ‘mentally ill’ rather than mad, wise or even Dionysian.

In discussing this topic further I will touch on the technological era’s impact on medicalization, and thus the glamorisation of ‘mental illness’ within YouTube and Facebook culture. I will also aim to discuss and challenge the pharmaceutical nature of ‘therapy’ which is so widely experienced and commonly accepted.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

The Phenomenology of Mental Disorder: the Subjective Experience of Scizophrenia

Phenomenology urges closer scrutiny of our experiences. A phenomenological approach to mental disorder concerns an acute study the patient’s experience; its conditions and its structure. My objective is to gain insight into the refined and perplexed experiences of the Schizophrenic mind. Philosophy has traditionally been concerned with issues of subjectivity and the first-person. In order to facilitate a dialogue between philosophy and psychopathology I will be referencing specialists in the field such as Dan Zahavi, Karl Jaspers and Christopher Frith.