Category: Stage 2

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Student Suicide: A philosophical investigation into whether attitudes towards ‘Suicide’ have changed over time?

Aims:
My project will examine whether contemporary society’s attitude towards ‘Suicide’ have changed over time?
Are we living in the past?
Are we scared to talk about mental health?

Territory/Object:
My territory is ‘Student suicide’
My object is the BBC Three documentary ‘Student Suicide: Real Stories’.
The documentary looks at how three students took their lives at University; but from the perspective of their loved ones.
Many students do not tell anyone, as they feel “ashamed”.

Philosophers:
This project will focus on the philosophical concepts; Suicide and Morality.
Durkheim’s On Suicide investigates whether social factors affect suicide rates.
Hume’s essay ‘Of Suicide’ illustrates his views against the traditional viewpoint of suicide.
Kant’s The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals dictates his views against suicide.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Societies that permit conscientious objection are morally superior to those which will not

Claim: Countries which permit conscientious objection are morally superior to those which do not

Aim: to establish if the needs of the of the state should ever outweigh citizens rights

Case Study: I will examine the case of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector in the second world war, and apply him to the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Rawls and Lukes.

Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Lukes

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

A Post-Modern Pilgrimage: Can any type of travel be meaningful in the same way pilgrimage is?

Is there any way in which non-religious forms of travel can be as meaningful as religion? My project aims to investigate concepts such as pleasure, disappearance, purpose and perspectivism to form a discourse for how we can talk of a post-modern pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is an important part of any religion. Those with religious beliefs seek to connect with other’s who are similar to oneself and God, to help reinforce their sense of self and their place in the universe.

Baudrillard believes disappearance is symbolic as well as physical. The absence from our normal life is crucial for personal development, as our mind needs a break to recuperate.

Sartre believes ‘existence precedes essence,’ meaning that we are not born with a purpose. Instead, we are to decide our own purpose and our own meaning for life. This can be found through travelling. We move away from the everyday life and the familiarity and we experience new objects and many unfamiliar and difficult challenges, we learn more about ourselves and so we reflect on our own meaning of life.

Mill discusses the quality of pleasures in his views of utilitarianism. The highest pleasures are the most valuable, those which exercise the mind.
When travelling, we may feel curious to learn more about the country we are in. Gaining knowledge of the world through experiencing this country’s culture directly, satisfies the human mind, as the understanding of the world can shape our ideas of the world.

All three philosophers can apply to De Botton’s views on perspectivism, which is that we begin to look at the world in a different way, by focusing and appreciating the small things. This brings in all concepts of pleasure, absence and purpose, which is demonstrated throughout this project.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Manchester VS Ataturk

With the internet and social media reforming the realm of reporting news, those that have routinely ignored developing nations are demanded to atone for biased newscasts, thus the project intends to bridge this gap and to further interrogate to what extent there exists a journalistic void, seeking out the cause and how to resolve it.

Methodology: The project concerns two cities, both of which had experienced an act of terror in connection to the Islamic State (IS). This project deploys qualitative research in the discourse of an interpretive methodological approach.

Objects:

Manchester – The first object of terror befell on the 22nd of May 2017, in Manchester’s Arena. The incident occurred at an Ariana Grande concert.
Istanbul – The second object denoting an act of terror was the automatic weapons fired and suicide bombings that occurred in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, on the 28th of June 2016.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Can one be a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Object/Territory: How should we understand the concept of ‘psychopathy’ in relation to political theory and how we should we ought to treat other individuals?

Sources: Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud and Georg Hegel provide powerful theories that can be applied to the idea of psychopathic individuals.

Project outline: The distinction of ‘criminal psychopath’ and ‘white-collar psychopath’ is crucial for my investigation because the contrast between the two opens up a kaleidoscope of questions about psychopathy. The violent explicit nature of criminal psychopaths and the charming and charismatic character of white-collar psychopaths highlight the disparity of individuals that can be considered psychopaths. Hobbes’ egotistical humanity and Smith’s doctrine of altruism provide interesting material to apply to the elusive behaviour of psychopaths.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Melissa Walker’s Masks: The History of Soldier’s PTSD and its Societal Depiction

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:
PTSD is associated with impairments in everyday attention and memory
PTSD is associated with enhanced acquisition of conditioned fears
(S. Taylor, 2017, p. 45)

Panic disorder, and alcohol and substance abuse frequently emerge in conjunction with PTSD and that is not isolated to treatment-seeking populations
(Wilson Friedman & Lindy, 2004, p. 237)

Priory Survey of 1,000 men:
77% said that they suffered from anxiety, stress or depression
40% said that they would only seek help if it got as bad as thoughts of suicide
(Priory Group, Survey: 2004)

I don’t think we are doing enough for our veterans. Their care should be a government priority, and it should not be left to charities like Help For Heroes to subsidise the cost.
(Gregg, 2015)

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Hooliganism Project

Object/Territory: Football hooliganism is organised violence between football supporters and this will be used as a case study to assess whether violence can ever be seen as justifiable.

Philosophy: Sigmund Freud provides a basis for why humans are so interested in violence through his Narcissism of Minor Differences and the Human Inclination for Aggression. This will be used to assess whether this violence is truly inevitable and thus immoral for Kant, or whether the life of a hooligan could possibly provide the affirmative life that Nietzsche preaches is needed.

Outline: If violence is inevitable then it is surely justifiable. However why must this manifest as football hooliganism? And even if violence is taken as inevitable, does this make its morally permissible. Using the contemporary studies in football hooliganism to assess the physical cost, and combining this with the idealisation that hooliganism has, will create an answer to whether this activity is morally acceptable. If the modern conception fails, can a future one succeed?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

The failures of cosmopolitanism and international intervention in genocide

In this project I investigate why the present institutions and discourse of cosmopolitics frustrate rather than facilitate peace and resolution.

Through improperly structuring reasoning and creating subjectivity, the current cosmopolitic fails to provide the required conditions for the prevention of and intervention in genocide.

Through an examination of Kant’s cosmopolitanism and current cosmopolitical theories, demonstrated with the use of 3 case studies of Rwanda, Kosovo, and Myanmar I intend to highlight the fundamental contradiction at the heart of cosmopolitanism. Systems are either too universal and empty, ignoring important cultural fabric, or too particular and local, resulting in inaction.

As a result of these failures, intervention becomes an expression of ideology, not humanitarian interest.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Can We Own a Vibe? A Philosophical Inquiry into Our Understanding of Music Copyright.

This project aims to look at the concept of private property within the context of copyright. I will investigate current copyright law in the case of music and examples of copyright infringement. Through these cases, I will question the grounds on which they have been ruled guilty of copyright infringement. With Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ (2013) being ruled as infringing the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up’ (1977) due to copying the vibe of this song. With the idea of a vibe having not been previously protected by copyright, this challenges our previous understanding of the copyright of music and what it means to own musical property.

I will also discuss the implications copyright has upon the possibility of creativity within the music industry. Copyright law is in place to protect the original creative works of an individual and therefore protecting creativity as a whole. Through questioning whether copyright helps of hinders creativity in music, I will discuss whether copyright does protect creativity as it sets out to do so.

My project aims to question how appropriate the concepts grounding our copyright of music are and call into question whether we need to revise our music copyright system.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Are the ethics instilled within the current film ratings still attainable within our modern society? A historical insight into the progression of the rating system and the ethics applied within it

The aim of my project is to provide a historical exploration in the change of films rating system from its first code, The Hays Code, to the current classification of film ratings. In order to do this I will need to understand the ethics implemented in its change and then comment as to whether I believe it to be viable in modern society. Specifically looking at the notion of the Spectacle as a critique.

Key thinkers involved within my project will include John Stuart Mill, Jeremey Bentham. I will specifically take from their works the key idea of the Harm Principle and Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus. An interpretive analysis of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle will help answer whether the ethics within film ratings is sustainable in modern society.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Are humans destined to conform to evil?

Philip Zimbardo and the Stanford Prison Experiment

Participants were assigned either the role of guard or prisoner in a prion simulation designed to investigate the behavioural and psychological effects of prison life. From that moment they were treated according to their role and the study commenced. Rebellion, excessive punishment and a mass escape plot.

The findings showed that the guards and prisoners conformed wholly to their assigned role to the point where role and reality were blurred. The participants had lost all sense of reality . Why did this happen? Does it say something about an inherent human nature to conform?

Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil: Arendt claims that evil can occur when someone simply follows orders to the point that they no longer have their own thought process. They become a cog in a well oiled machine. She basis this theory on the trial of the Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, who she claims was not an inherently evil man but someone who “simply followed orders”. What does this mean for moral culpability? Does this change our understanding of human nature?

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Money: A Social Network Ontology, Complimented by the Abstraction of Theoretical Monetary Units Throughout Time.

This project argues for Georg Simmel’s Sociological account of money through two means:

Firstly, its ability to explain changes in monetary theory through time.
Secondly, the fact it can explain a nuanced human economic agent in a social network.

Money in a Simmelite Social Network:

My project explored the account of the human subject in Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money and applied this to the network theory from Dodd’s The Sociology of Money. Thus, the essay was able to create and analyse a framework that could both argue for the creation of money through a tool of desiring subjects, and how this interacts with society at large through a societal network.

Changing Monetary Theory Through Time:
This project explores the history of economic philosophy from the enlightenment onwards through four defined periods.

Smith and Classical Economics – Using An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations I was able to explore monetary theory that is reliant upon substance, and the ways Smith’s economic theory often ends up with a reductionist view of human agency.

Friedman and Neo-Classical Economics – Using Capitalism and Freedom I explored monetary theory and the belief that money is simply an economic lubricant, while also contesting the fact that Friedman truly believes in the imperfect being.

Post-Modern Economics – Using Lazzarato, and his influences, I was able to analyse the idea that digitised economics represent power and the desire of the subjects in this network as the creation of this power.

Bitcoin and the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute – This conception of money is a commodity guided by the rules of blockchain, however Bitcoin itself is only substantiated by ideological belief of a small number of active traders.

Throughout this project I argue that the Framework of the Simmelite Social Network can not only explain the beliefs of these four types of theory through time, but also why the path of history towards further abstraction has occurred.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Artificial Intelligence: What Does It Mean to have consciousness?

I aim to talk about the possibility of consciousness arising within artificial intelligence with reference to two thinkers who have not yet been incorporated into the debate: Immanuel Kant and Andres Bretton. In doing so I hope to uncover new ways of talking about consciousness in less anthropomorphic ways.

Kant: Kant’s transcendental idealism can be used to propose a theory of the minimum requirements for consciousness to arise in artificially intelligent machines. In addition to this, the distinction he outlines between ‘reason’ and ‘understanding’ can be seen as analogous to the Turing Test and the Chinese Room thought experiment and therefore can be used to show the qualitative difference between our human experience of consciousness and any potential consciousness that might arise within artificial intelligence.

Bretton: Bretton’s Surrealist thought is used as a juxtaposition to Kant formulaic and systematic approach. The surrealist practices of automatism raise the question of a difference between human consciousness and potential consciousness within artificial intelligence in that it raises the issues of intentionality and the subconscious, something which artificial intelligence.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Journalism, Ethics and Brexit: An Exploration into our Democratic Abilities in a Post-Truth Age

Project Outline

-This project was undertaken to determine whether the Brexit vote was a result of unethical journalism and whether we can remain democratic in today’s society.

-In order to be democratic citizens, the population needs to be correctly informed from factual evidence and I believe that throughout the Brexit referendum this was not the case.

-This project looks at journalism within the context of the free market to highlight the issues journalists face when companies prioritise money over the truth.

-This project will also use the ideas of Baudrillard to determine the nature of truth in the 21st century and how the phenomena of fake news found its way into Brexit.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Fight the Power: An Interrogation of Sovereign Authority

The objective of this project is to investigate the validity of the Grand Jury process in the United States of America, which selects a group of citizens at random to become involved in legal proceedings and make judgements if the suspected criminal should go to court.

The discussion therefore investigates whether it can be justified to give power to individuals in society or if power should remain with the government, or sovereign authority.

The philosophers studied in the process of the dissertation are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

What can Immanuel Kant and Voltaire reveal about women’s place in society after the revelations of Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar?

“I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue” Oprah Winfrey, Golden Globes Speech 2018).

This project aims to explore the territory of women’s position in society, after the scandalous revelations of Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar. The study of the sexual abuse allegations made against Weinstein and Nassar employs a comparative analysis of arguably the two highest profile cases of the 21 st century.

Initially, this project will delve into the inner workings of Immanuel Kant, and his maxim of ‘a means to an end’, in order to derive a sense of how women are still being treated. Following this, it will look into the deeply embedded issues in which our society is at fault for.

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2017 Abstracts Stage 2

Dance Music as Culture

Territory: Music, Culture

Object:
Dance music, in its authentic form, with Disco as it’s predecessor — authenticity established by a continuum from Disco to electronic dance music, cultivating ideological resistance, sonic variation and club cultural context.

Methodology:
Unlike most art forms, dance music achieves its ultimate potential in only a moment of euphoria shared by the cumulative joy of a crowd of people. I aim to prove that in these moments, all aspects of authentic dance music come together to form a unique autonomy in the context of the culture industry. I will do this by identifying, using critical analysis, weaknesses in the theories that will be discussed and presenting dance music’s unique ability to exploit these.

Theory:
The Social Theories of Theodor Adorno in The Dialectic of Enlightenment and G.W.F Hegel in The Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of Mind. Hegel’s theory reinforces the concept of an artistic freedom restricted by the Culture Industry.

Application:
Adorno engages in the idea of ‘autonomous art’ against the culture industry. To an extent, this will remain the position of authentic ‘dance music’;ideologically resistant to the culture industry in the way that Adorno idealises. However, a study into Adorno’s own perception of authentic art, a result of his complex, often pretentious Aesthetic Theory, demonstrates why he doesn’t actually believe autonomy can be anything other than illusory in relation to its social context — Adorno is too negative.

Conclusion:
I have thus presented ‘dance’ music’s authentic features as holding the potential to actualise Adorno’s illusory ideal. Whilst I also understand this cannot be maintained, in brief moments, dance music is at least the perfect representation of Hegel’s utopian union of the subjective and objective, yet also, can achieve an independent utopia.

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2016 Abstracts Stage 2

The figure of Jesus in Mark’s gosel: Do humans have an existential need for hope and illusion?

Territory: Mark’s Gospel The Bible is culturally strange and scientifically inadequate, so it is typically dismissed as nonsensical. If the Bible accounts were literal, they would all match up-but they do not. This means you can see which data has been redacted and manipulated, for the author’s particular purpose. Looking at this information, you can begin to infer the authorial intention for writing the text. This is a task that historians, biblical interpreters and theologians have undertaken. In most accounts, it is understood that Mark’s gospel as the first Gospel to be written and that he wrote in Rome during emperor Nero’s persecution Nero burned down Rome and to avoid the consequences he blamed the people, meaning they were tortured and killed as punishment. Mark was writing for this suffering community, to provide them hope and courage to continue through life. Now, we can understand why the Gospel emphasized belief in miracles and the afterlife- it was so these people had hope. Even if the hope came from an illusion.

Concept: Hope
Bloch develops a human ontology that points to a future orientated utopian consciousness. Human’s dream and wish for world improvement. Bloch says man is Not-Yet-Conscious and Not-Yet-Become. Hoping in such way, drowns out our existential anxiety about life. This is relevant in looking at all the myths of utopia in the gospel, i.e. miracles, afterlife, and our potential ‘homeland’ the Kingdom of God.
Concept: Illusion
Early Nietzsche says that humans need metaphysical comfort in myth. He creates an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian which when perfectly combines embraces tragedy. This is relevant mainly for looking at Jesus as a ‘suffering servant’ and at the figure of him as a necessary illusion. Later Nietzsche would claim that living based of illusion distracts from striving and creating our own meaning in life

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2016 Abstracts Stage 2

From Concert Halls to Kurt Cobain: Investigating a Loss of Value in Contemporary Popular Music

Where do we place value in music?
TRADTIONALLY TRAINED or CULTURALLY INCLINED
Has music regressed in value? Is music rendered inauthentic by its standardised, repetitive structures?
Of the Origin of the Work of Art VS
On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening

Music “is the becoming and happening of truth…with extraordinary awesomeness”.

“The aim of [music] is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. ‘Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,’ the eunuch-like sound of the [boy] band both mocks and proclaims, ‘and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.”

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2016 Abstracts Stage 2

Conservation or Cruel…Is it right to keep animals captive?

Territory: I will discuss whether it is right to keep animals captive. In particular, if it is right to keep them captive for our entertainment. Animal captivity raises many important moral questions: Is ever right to restrict animal’s liberty and if so, under what conditions? Do human beings have the right to keep other animals captive? Are we the superior species and if so, why is this the case?

Concepts: Peter Singer: humans are animals but language makes us overlook this. As a utilitarian and hedonist, Singer looks towards the end result, where like human beings, other animals choose pleasure over suffering. Kant: we do not have any direct ethical duties to non-human animals. We only owe ethical duties to rational beings, and nonhuman animals are not included in this group.

‘If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?’ – Peter Singer, Animal Liberation