Category: Stage 3

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Is Moral Photojournalism Possible?

This project looks at photojournalism and the role it plays in our culture. Whether or not photojournalism is ethical and, if it isn’t, what is the function of it?

Focusing specifically on the work of Kevin Carter in the Sudan in 1993, this project explores these topics through critical examination of Theodor W. Adorno’s discourses on Culture as mass deception and Martin Heidegger’s essay On the Origin of the Work of Art.

It will explore the idea of the roles played in society by the photograph, the photographer and the media, and bring to light the idea of the ‘icon of outrage’ as a necessary feature, both for our society and culture and for ethical realisation.

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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

Embedded within Reality? A Philosophical Inquiry into Whether Photographic Practice Differs from Other Modes of Visual Representation in Terms of its Classification as Art

The discussion of this paper will be centred on the argument of whether photography can ever be considered as anything more than merely a mechanical replicate of the world. Photography is generally seen by many as an automatic unemotional means of ‘capturing a moment in time’. Art, on the other hand, is commonly seen as a hand-rendered expression of human imagination typically illustrated within a visual form.

The following questions will be asked;
 What effect has the mass production of photographic images had?
 How much does the intentionality of the artist matter?
 What is the impact of photo-manipulation on the notion of authorship?
 Can our perception of a believed photographic reality be merely an illusion?
 Is our modern consumerist world driven by the image?

We will begin with a brief outline of the ways in which photography of the past designed modes of replicating the painterly styles of the artworks of the time. We shall then discuss the notion of how photography became a product of mass production, whilst introducing the thoughts of Walter Benjamin and Heidegger who both see modern works of art, and photography, as unable to reach the previous standards of past great artworks for they have lost originality, ‘aura’. We shall consider the views of Scruton who fundamentally states a photograph is unable to be the product of aesthetic judgement for it is bound by a casual relation to the world and is an automatic technical invention which requires no thought processes on behalf of the creator to effectively formulate it. Our discussion will finally lead us to the views of Susan Sontag and Jean Baudrillard who believe that under the present age of our consumer media driven tradition, our reality is reinstated by the photographic image, for photographic seeing fundamentally alienates reality.

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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

President Kagame What makes a legitimate Leader?

Hobbes
State of Nature/ Rwandan genocide

Rousseau
One’s right to obey a power does not legitimise power

State of Peace with Sovereign Kagame

Kagame’s possible move to Democracy to legitimise his power

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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.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Non-Human Language

MONKEYS! Through a discussion of the possibility of language in non-human great apes I aim to shed light on what makes humans different to other animals. Key thinkers in this are Peter Singer, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

ROBOTS! Through a discussion of the possibility of language in computers I aim to explore the way in which language is acquired and whether it is possible to create an artificial system capable of language. Key thinkers in this are Jean Piaget, John Searle and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

ALIENS! I will also look at the possibility of language in extra-terrestrial life with the aim of demonstrating the limitations of a language which permits abstract thought when describing the world.

Following this discussion, I then aim to demonstrate flaws in philosophical methods and discourse including:
– The use of stereotypes intrinsic to sociological thought, such as that of Karl Marx
– The notion of fragmentation in postmodern thought, such as Jean-Francois Lyotard’s
– Attempts to create universal ethical or existential maxims, such as those found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s work

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Importance of Phenomenological Investigation to the Field of AI

Aim: to show the importance of phenomenological investigation to the field of AI.

Philosophers: Husserl (micro-world systems in Logical Investigations), Heidegger (being-in-the-world in Being and Time), Dreyfus (problems with AI in various papers), Levinas (the importance of the Other in Totality and Infinity).

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Philosophy of the Commercialisation of Football and the effect this has on the supporter

Thinkers:
Adorno- The notion of ‘Mass Culture’ and ‘Culture Industry’, authentic industries dissolving

Taylor- The concept of identity, commercialisation lowering club affiliation, atomism

Hegel- The consciousness of the individual, and our need to act according to the ‘good’

Marx- The exploitation of the working class within a capitalist society, the revolution of the working class

Key Concepts:
 A study into whether football in the professional era, has taken advantage and alienated the supporters
The passive nature of football supporters “There’s a mentality among supporters. They expect to be treated badly and accept it”
Why in times of recession would people spend hard earned money when it was in such short supply? Abiding to the consumer mentality that the corporate control has created

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Fairness and Proportionality in U.S. Law: HSBC Money Laundering Scandal

This project aims to explore issues of fairness and proportionality in U.S. law through an examination of the outcome of the HSBC money laundering scandal. Federal investigators found that the bank had been laundering money for years.

U.S. Senator Carl Levin : “Due to poor AML (Anti-Money Laundering) controls, HBUS exposed the United States to Mexican drug money, suspicious traveller’s cheques, bearer share corporations, and rogue jurisdictions.”

Justice?
The bank admitted to having laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for drugs traffickers and having circumvented procedure to permit transactions with sanctioned countries including Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Yet the Department of Justice did not criminally indict the bank for fear of the failure of this key financial institution and potential detriment to the global economy. Instead it was given a $1.9bn fine; the equivalent of four weeks’ earnings for HSBC.

Rawls – A Theory of Justice
Rawls’s Theory of Justice will be used to analyse whether the Department of Justice have upheld their moral duty as a legal institution in deciding to grant the bank amnesty for its crimes on the condition of it paying a fine. His concept of justice as fairness is invaluable in my own assessment that in the light of this case, all citizens are apparently not treated as equals before the law.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Identity and Relationships on Social Networking Sites

Is the intermediation of identity and presentation, that is so predominant on Facebook, being prescribed as confrontational and uncompromising interaction OR is there a discrepancy between the “online” & “offline” self?

How do we identify ourselves and others on Facebook?
Do we alter our identities- for better or worse- as we re-create ourselves online?

Facebook links millions of people, in new spaces. It is changing the way we think, the form of our communities, our very identities.

If Facebook has such a significant influence over users, does it have an influence on how we identify ourselves and other people?

In Heidegger’s essay entitled, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, he studies modern technology. He attempts to prepare us for a “free relationship” with the existence of technology. However can we have “free-relationship” social networking sites?

“The strange feature of the Facebook friendship raises an immediate question: is it really a “friendship” at all?”
‘From boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially.’ Nietzsche
“A genuine friend is someone who loves or likes another person for the sake of that other person.” Aristotle

Taking in Aristotle’s account of friendship would the relationships on Facebook be justified?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

“The Moment You Are Old Enough to Take the Wheel, Responsibility Lies with You” – J.K. Rowling. Is This Always the Case?

This project sets out to examine the concept of responsibility with particular reference to the way in which certain individuals behave. It is perhaps a common assumption that we are all responsible for our own actions, however, this can be difficult to justify if an individual’s actions are out of character or unusual. Furthermore different situations may influence how we act and how we view our responsibility. Using pertinent case studies to provide examples, the intention is to analyse and synthesise factors that can be said to influence behaviour and impact on responsibility. Following on from this the philosophical thoughts of Kant, Foucault and Lyotard will be examined in an attempt to reach an understanding as to whether moral responsibility stems from what is within us or the environment in which we live.

Immanuel Kant –
1785 Grounding for the metaphysic of morals
1788 Critique of practical reason
1797 The metaphysics of morals

Michael Foucault –
1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
1982 The Subject and Power
1954-1984 Power

Jean-Francis Lyotard –
1962 Dead Letter
1984 The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

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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 Hegemony of the Housed. A Foucauldian Reading of Homelessness in Modern Britain

Foucault’s focus on discourse notes language as establishing structures within society that exercise power.

Power/Knowledge reinforces social control and normalization of people – including the exclusion of those outside desired social norms – these are constructs of language and culture

Post-structuralist ideas reminiscent of the panopticon of Jeremy Bentham – in which all people/employees are observed at all times by those in control. This leads to the hegemony of the normalized people (in this context – the housed)

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

An Enquiry into the Nature of Animal-Human Distinction and its Effects on the Ethical Treatment of Animals

• HYPOTHESIS- Theoretical explanations of the nature of animality through the use of distinctive measures and qualifications which serve to diminish ethical consideration of animals in modern scenarios. Improved ethical consideration of animals needs to take place and so these distinctions should be considered.

• AIMS OF ENQUIRY- Explain the nature of animal through the animal-human distinction from the perspective of Heidegger. Attempt to show that these theoretical accounts are unworthy of providing ethical formulations for the treatment of animals. Consider the idea of ethical reform in the works of Peter Singer.

• Use of primary data and analysis from Heidegger (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics), Derrida (The Animal That Therefore I am) and Singer (Animal Liberation) as evidence for nature of human-animal distinction that leads to influence of ethical treatment of animals

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Mental Illness as a Social Construct

Key Concepts
Stigma of mental illness in society – The effects this has on the modern day sufferers & the effect of the overall illness within society itself.
Mental Illness as a social construct – How it is seen to be created by social influences and what this means for the illness.
Public Conceptions of Mental Illness from historical and modern media influences.
Is there even such a thing as mental illness?
What is an illness of the mind?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Is Man Beast? Does Instinct Exist in Human Beings? Are We as Different from Animals as We Have Been Led to Believe?

Human Nature vs. Animal Nature
Does Instinct exist in Human beings? Are we as different from animals as we have been led to believe?
“If man has no instincts, all comparison with animals must be irrelevant.” – Midgley

Does EVIL exist in nature? Are humans in denial about the fact that they may well be the most dangerous beasts of them all? We have much to learn from the animal kingdom… Is wickedness an unavoidable element of human nature?

Mary Midgley (1919-) Beast and Man
W.H. Thorpe (19021986) Animal Nature and Human Nature
Sigmund Freud (18561939) The Ego and The Id
John Locke (1632-1704) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

“I’m Gonna Make Him an Offer He Can’t Refuse … ” A discussion concerning the definition of political legitimacy and its features, comparing the Sicilian Mafia with Sicily’s central governments of the 1860’s and 1920’s

Can the notion of political legitimacy be effectively applied to the Sicilian Mafia? What defines a legitimate authority? Can the Mafia be seen as legitimate if the state is not? These concerns will be discussed within the parameters of two central points in Sicilian history; the Unification of Italy during the 1860’s and the Italian Fascist regime of the 1920’s, allowing for a comparison between the Sicilian Mafia organisation and Sicily’s governments.

Philosophy
MARX; is the state merely an illusion, disguising our real interests? I must have self-mastery in order to be free and rational; is the Mafia therefore legitimate?
RAWLS; There must be a publicly recognised universal and fair distribution of justice in a well-ordered, liberal society; does the Sicilian state achieve this?
The thought of HOBBES and ROUSSEAU regarding the definitions of ‘authority’ and ‘political legitimacy’ will be used as framework to the discussion.

Sources
Historical interpretations and genealogies; including Pantaleone’s The Mafia and Politics , Dickie’s Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia , and Duggan’s Fascism and the Mafia . Coppola’s The Godfather films were used for inspiration.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Set Guitars to Kill: a Musical Examination of Post-Rock

The aim of my project was to examine Post-Rock music and to answer the question ‘is post-rock a philosophically sound musical genre?

To answer this question I looked at the Aesthetic Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer using his work The World as Will and Idea primarily. I applied his thought to the music by a number of the bands from the Genre such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, 65daysofstatic, Explosions in the Sky, And So I Watch You From Afar, Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Slint among others.

I also looked at the social and cultural philosophy of Theodor Adorno found in his works Dialectic of Enlightenment and The Culture Industry. I applied this philosophy to the general attitude of the genre, a genre that tends to be antilabel, anti- capitalist and anti-corporate. I used a number of interviews with bands and also with the founders of Record labels who sign a number of post-rock bands such as Constellation Records.

‘Cause this music can put a human being in a trance like state and deprive it for the sneaking feeling of existing. ‘Cause music is bigger than words and wider than pictures. If someone said that Mogwai are the stars I would not object. If the stars had a sound it would sound like this. – Mogwai – Yes I am a Long Way From Home (Opening Monologue)

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Proliferation of Contemporary Capitalism in the Art World: Between the Global Market and the Business of Art Production

Since Sotheby’s auction house opened in 1744, the art market has grown and now sells pieces for millions of dollars every day. My project explores the societal and technological changes which have occurred throughout modernity to understand why paintings like The Scream were bought for over $119 million.

Commodity fetishism and the global art market
Using Marx’s exploration of capitalism I focused on what constitutes a commodity and how art has been fetishized. I then incorporated Vattimo’s use of telematics and globalised media to demonstrate capitalisms more recent developments; this enabled me to discuss the role paintings have played in a global billion dollar market. In contrast I also looked back to 15th century artists, to understand if art has become a commodity only with the advent of capitalism and technology.

Mechanical technology and mass production
I used Benjamin’s philosophy of mechanical reproducibility to highlight the importance of technological advancement, especially that of mass reproduction, in selling the image of a work enabling fame and exposure to a wider market.

I also looked to how these factors of the current market affected the minds and work of artists themselves using the philosophy of Andy Warhol, and the artwork of Damien Hurst, Warhol himself, and Julian Opie. All of these artists demonstrated the drive of a capitalist mind-set, have benefited from global exposure, and produce pieces using technology invented in a postmodern age such as laser printing and spinning. My goal was to ultimately demonstrate that the market has changed both the nature of the art which is produced and opened the art world up to everyone on a global scale.

Internally replicable model of the art market
Mass reproduction of famous classical/modern works (such as The Scream and No.1)
Original work becomes more valuable as its image and fame is spread over a global market (both sold for millions)