Category: Abstracts

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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.

Categories
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.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

Do all Foetuses Have a Right to Life?

Philosophy:
Aquinas: Deontological based theory.

The most basic principles to Natural Law involves a particular absolute truth: Everything has one nature that defines what it is

Aristotle: Aristotle argues that moral virtues are states of character lying at the mean between extremes of excess and deficiency.

Peter Singer: Analyses why and how living beings interests should be weighed. His ethics takes into consideration all species. He argues that not all things do have an inherent right to life, by virtue of being ‘human’.

Project aims:
To understand whether all foetuses do have a right to life, due to the fact they are a potential human being, or is this something that needs to be weighed against other factors?
To see whether Natural law theory still has a place in society? Is a strict deontological ethical theory out of tune with modern society?
Can virtue theory solve many of the problems we now face with the morality of abortion?
Is there any objective answer to such a sensitive moral dilemma?
What are the benefits of using an ethical theory over another when faced with moral dilemmas such as abortion?
Can traditional philosophy hold the solutions to modern day moral dilemmas?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Magazine Industry: are We Truly Free to Live an Authentic Life?

I aim to look at the effects mass culture has on society, particularly the influence of the magazine industry, and assess whether we are able to live authentically in keeping with the ideas of Adorno and Heidegger.

The evolution of magazines and the explosion of mass media has influenced individuals greatly.
Magazines have played a part in producing a set of standardized ideals for society to obey. Are we able to live authentically in spite of this?

Theodor Adorno; The Culture Industry
Popular culture in capitalist society is nothing more than a factory of mass produced goods which manipulate society into passivity and obedience.

Martin Heidegger; Being and Time
As humans we are thrown into a culture and society which we have no control over.

If we are all stroked with the same brush of culture then how is it possible to live an authentic life?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Animal Farm: Does the Subtle and Binary Nature of Philosophy Fail where Literature Succeeds?

IS ANIMAL FARM A COMMENT ON SOVIET RUSSIA? A COMMENT ON THE PITFALLS OF MARXIST THEORY? A COMMENT ON HUMAN NATURE WITH REGARDS TO POWER? OR IS THIS A LIMITING VIEW OF TRUTH? CAN LITERATURE SHOW US GREATER TRUTH?

HEIDEGGER:
THE POWER OF POETRY FOR A HIGHER TRUTH, A TRANSCENDANCE OF OUR SITUATION TO REVEAL THE BEING-OF-BEINGS

FOUCAULT:
SURELY THERE IS NOT SUCH A THING AS RESISTANCE OR TRUTH? EVERYTHING IS PART OF THE SYSTEM OF POWER, EVEN IDENTITY, SO CAN ORWELL BE ANYTHING MORE THAN AN IDENTITY CREATED BY POWER’S MECHANISM?

VATTIMO:
ONCE WE ACCEPT THAT WE ARE HISTORICALLY CONTINGENT AND THERE IS NO ‘TRUTH’ WE CAN WORK WITHIN THE SYSTEM OF UNDERSTANDING TO TRANSCEND OUR GIVEN VALUES THROUGH OSCILLATORY NIHILISTIC HERMENEUTICS: CRITICAL THOUGHT: IS THIS WHAT ORWELL ACHIEVES?

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” (Orwell, 1984)

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

Can American Foreign Policy Between 1945 and 1989 Be Explained? Understanding the Role of Philosophy in International Relations Theory

This paper locates the origins of international relations theory in the philosophical tradition.

By exploring these foundations I develop a complex understanding of the content, qualities and development of IR theory.

This enquiry is designed in order to demonstrate the following claim: that in order for philosophy to remain a valuable discipline it must adapt.

Over the course of the paper a number of thinkers are referenced: Hobbes, Kant and Hume are primary focuses.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Function and Utility of Disciplinary Power within the Primary Faith School

The aim of my project is to investigate the function and utility of disciplinary power within the primary faith school. In investigating this, the key differences between a faith and non faith school have been examined. The study of disciplinary power has been examined with reference to the work of Michel Foucault, who developed an in depth and striking analysis on how power functions within society. The reason I have chosen to use Michel Foucault, and in particular his piece of work, Discipline and Punish (1977), in my study is that his work on power is directly linked to the study of disciplinary power within educational institutions.

Key Points
 Is the main function of primary faith school education to educate, or is it primarily to pass on religious beliefs?
 Is a disciplinary society entirely functional?
 Do disciplinary institutions maximize utility?
 How do we maintain disciplinary power?
 Is Foucault’s theory applicable to primary faith schooling?
 Are we no longer a disciplinary society but a society of control?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Depression in an Age of Control: Towards a Phenomenology of Mental Illness

THINKERS:

LEVINAS – There is
VIRNO – Precarity
HEIDEGGER – Value of inauthentic everydayness?
DELEUZE – Discipline -> Control Individuals -> “Dividuals”

ACCOUNTS OF DEPRESSION:
– SOLOMON
– STYRON

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Identity in the Face of Our Modern Digitalised Society

For my project, I researched into the way the internet, particularly social networking sites such as Facebook and Second Life, have impacted on the contemporary project of self-identity. Does the virtual world encourage us to maintain our real identity, or instead create artificial and fake identities? From this, I looked at how the internet and virtual identities are used as a means of control and power over others. The internet is so readily available to everyone in our modern world, and people are beginning to communicate with strangers online, yet unable to determine who their real identity actually is.

THE PHILOSOPHY
BAUMAN – his concept of ‘Liquid Modernity’ and how this has affected our self-identity.

GIDDENS – his theory of ‘Reflexive Modernity’ and how it has caused individuals to engage in a reflexive project of the self. Identity as reflexive and fluid.

ADORNO – his philosophy on the ‘Culture Industry’. The ‘reification’ of language and concept of ‘identity thinking’.

HEIDEGGER – the concepts of ‘authenticity and inauthenticity. The understanding of human life as finite – the internet allows identity to extend into the infinite.

CONCEPTS
– The historical development of Identity. Looking at how it has changed since our digitalised society
– Identity as the process of ‘becoming’ not simply ‘being’
– The Real vs the Artificial ( the real world vs the virtual world) (the real self vs the protean/virtual self)
– Authentic identity vs inauthentic identity
– The virtual world as infinite vs the finitude of the real human body
– Power and manipulation of online identity
– The issue of trust

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Rise of Anthropocentrism and the Disorientation of Humanity

Jean-Francois Lyotard 19241998:
An observation of the Postmodern condition, specifically: fragmentation of knowledge and society. Rise of performativity as a direct result of capitalism.

Martin Heidegger 1889 – 1976:
Brings to light the dangers inherent in modern technology and the dangers it possesses for the human condition.

One of humanity’s largest calamities over the past century has undoubtedly been the handling and care shown to its home planet. I aim to highlight the causes and effects of this shift in man’s position, to establish how and why this anthropocentrism that seems so prevalent and embedded in contemporary society came about and to propose that bio-mimicry could be the alternative to disaster – that of living in a burnt out husk of the planet Earth. I propose that there is something fundamentally wrong with the nature that this anthropocentrism has taken over the last century and that the field of bio-mimicry could aid humanity. This aid would not be the returning or encouragement toward a bio centric world view but perhaps a method to return humanity’s cognisance that we live in a competent universe, surrounded by the genius of incredible interrelated systems that we now seem to take for granted.

Peter Singer 1946 – Present:
A consideration of environmental ethics in order to judge whether our world is worth saving or if we should carry on charging down the path of exploitation and destruction.