Category: Stage 3

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

“We’re All Born Mad. Some Remain So.”- Interpreting the Psychiatric Standards of Mental Disorder

“ About a fifth of the population of the United states are seen as suffering from a mental disorder each year and about half from at least one disorder at some point in their lives.” (Horwitz, 2002,3)

•What is the reality of what psychiatrists define as mental disorder, inside and outside the standards of the psychiatric context, in relation to convention and nature?

“The question of truth will never be posed between madness and me for the very simple reason that I, psychiatry, am already a science.”(Foucault, 2006,134)

•there are genetic and biochemical grounds for supposing that both schizophrenia and depressive disorders have a physical basis. (Gelder, Mayou, Cowen, 2001,88)

“What does man actually know about himself? Does nature not conceal most things from him – even concerning his own body?”(Nietzsche, Ansell-Pearson, Large, 2006,115)

•“A postmodern scientist does not discover ‘truth’, he simply tells stories – though he has a duty to verify them within the terms of the relevant language game.” (Rojek, Turner, Lyotard, 1998,68)

“A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch.” (Deleuze, Guattari, 2004,2)

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

“The News We Kept to Ourselves”. Can the Media Ever be Justified in Withholding Information?

This project is an investigation into when, if ever the media can be justified in WITHHOLDING INFORMATION. This is a question PECULIAR TO OUR TIME, given the fact that the press now possesses MORE FREEDOM than ever before. The implications of the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, the recent PHONE HACKING SCANDAL and the 2011 controversy over the use of SUPER INJUNCTIONS all mean that what the media should do has become TOPIC OF CONSTANT DEBATE. I examined the ethical thought of both DEONTOLOGICAL and CONSEQUENTIALIST thinkers. KANT’S answer seems to be that media deception CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED under any circumstances, on the basis that it will always involve treating someone as the MEANS TO AN END. The UTILITARIAN argument is more forgiving and can justify a lie of omission in some circumstances. These two answers CONTRADICT each other. As such, I moved on to a more MODERN ANSWER, in the form of FOUCAULT and argued that a newspaper can be considered a discourse and as such, can set its OWN STANDARDS OF TRUTH.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Avatar Selves: Ontological Implications of Fluid Identity in the Virtual Age

“We are becoming fluid and many-sided. Without quite realizing it, we have been evolving a sense of self appropriate to the restlessness and flux of our time.” – The Protean Self (R.J.Lifton)

What is the nature of Being in the burgeoning age of virtual networks?

How are modes of relating to one another, spaces, and information changing?

Our society is fast evolving from centering on hard modern technologies to soft postmodern technologies in tandem with a move to a postmodern identification with complexity and flexibility,

Our capacity to project our identity into an interactive cyberspace of other projected identities raises new questions about boundaries of intellect, collaboration, agency, authorship, self-knowledge, transhumanism, identity, shifts in neurological and social function…

Heidegger saw technology as enframing our way of being in the world. It can enable us to satisfy our desires, but there is always the danger of letting it obscure our essence as human beings. We must continually return to this always-already essence of being, and resist becoming functionaries for technology.

This is all the more applicable in an information-based society in which we present ourselves informatically through the medium of technological interfaces we have no understanding of.

The ontological, social and autobiographical implications for self-knowledge and agency in the novel complex networks of our virtualised society.

Philosophers and thinkers: Heidegger/Borgman/Nietzsche/Zizek/Harman/ Eagleman/Gorny/Self/Stirling/Lifton

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Feminism: What Can We Learn from the Feminism of the Past about the Strategies and Values We Should Apply Today?

This project explores the three waves of feminism leading up to the present day.

It breaks the feminist debate into three sections; political, biological and social and explores each wave in this way.

Some of the thinkers I’ve used are;
Michel Foucault, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Mary Wollstonecraft.

What can we learn from the feminism of the past about what strategies and values we should apply today?

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Deconstructing the Narrative of Psychiatry: An exploration into how psychiatry has hindered its own progress.

Psychiatry is an admirable and important profession, but one which is regarded in very different ways depending upon which side of the fence you sit; a patient may resent psychiatry or praise it, a psychiatrist may feel comfortable or uncomfortable within their profession, and a lay person may or may not understand the need for psychiatric practice.

My project is focused on an exploration of the component concepts of psychiatry.

Deconstruction is a term given to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, which resembles an intimate reading of a text, and I call psychiatry a narrative in relation to the work of Jean François Lyotard, referring to its tendencies to create a type of reality into which its patients and practitioners must assert themselves. It is my view (and that of others), that such a thing that makes its own reality must be in total accord with itself and so I decided that the best way to uncover any disharmonious concepts in psychiatry was to deconstruct it.

A deconstruction of psychiatry consists, in my project, of looking the way that psychiatry tends to favour finding instances of insanity over instances of sanity; the way psychiatry appears to suffer from a form of ‘diagnostic creep’; and the imbalance of power that runs through the structure of psychiatry.

My conclusions are that although psychiatry is fraught with problems, it is capable of becoming a fully functioning profession, if it would be willing to receive critical review from an outside source.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

The Philosophy of Facebook and its Use of Advertising

THE TWO DIMENSIONAL SELF: The way in which people use Facebook as a ‘second life’ is compromising our attempt to discover an authentic self-understanding. Facebook provides us with a ‘flattened’, ‘two-dimensional’ identity, where our account could be seen as a ‘living advert’ in which we only promote the positive aspects of our life and hide away the bad. When we fill in forms at the Doctor’s, we do not claim that is our whole self. However, our attributes, basic details and interests wholly define our ‘Facebook Identity’. This leads us to the question, how are we able to act freely and reasonably whilst retaining this false reality?

HOW DOES FACEBOOK MAKE A PROFIT?: Facebook is a free service that is accessible to all Internet users. Therefore, in order to maintain this service and to create a successful business, Facebook provides us with advertisements. It tempts us with products we didn’t even know we wanted. Facebook uses targeted advertising through the knowledge of our personal details and interests.

TARGETED PHILOSOPHY AND KANT: With a consideration for Kant’s position, one could argue that presenting the subject with targeted advertisements is not immoral as we are able to judge and act upon what we encounter in life, freely and through reason. Through a consideration for Kant’s moral philosophy, I will aim to deduce the extent to which we are manipulated to buy products placed upon us in Facebook.

SPONSORED STORY AND KANT: If I choose to ‘like’ a brand’s page, then I can be used in a sponsored story on one of my friend’s pages. This is a service that one cannot opt out of and brings into question the idea that the user is fundamentally exploited as a ‘human advert’. Facebook argue that when I like something, I am associating myself with that specific brand or service. However, in my project, I will be arguing whether it is ethically right to use others as a means to making a greater profit for the company.

DEATH OF ADVERTISING? AND LEVINAS: Levinas states that most art is fundamentally materialistic in that matter overpowers form. Through a consideration for his philosophy, I will provide a critical evaluation of the artistic nature of this type of advertising. Also, I will discuss whether Facebook has resulted in the death of advertising or instead it is simply part of the natural evolution of the revolutionary marketing strategies of the 21st century.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Is Music Worth Saving? How Changing Social Norms and Conventions have Contributed to the Decline of the Music Industry.

Aims
 To gain an understanding of how largely capitalist organizations, such as Apple, Sony BMG and Warner are slowly eliminating the competition – smaller independent record labels and stores and alienating the musician from their art
 To investigate whether the use of free illegal downloading and file sharing websites can ever be justified in the current economic climate?
 To decide whether or not we should care about the demise of the record industry and whether music is a good that is worth saving?

Thinkers + Texts
 Mark Fisher— Capitalist Realism
 Immanuel Kant—Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals
 Karl Marx—Capital
 Arthur Schopenhauer—The World and Will as Representation

“It is easier to imagine a total catastrophe which ends all life on earth than it is to imagine a real change in capitalist relations” (Zizek, 334: 2011)

“We could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; this is the reason why music makes every picture, indeed every scene from real life and from the world, at once appear in enhanced significance” (Schopenhauer, 262-263: 1969)

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

MI5: Applicability in a Democratic Society

My project is based on an examination into the role and appropriateness of MI5 in light of the perceived democratic value of an individual’s right to privacy, which MI5 necessarily violate for the sake of national security.

My question is whether MI5 is justified in its approach to violate an individual‘s right to privacy, thereby determining its applicability within a democratic society.

I intend to investigate this applicability with respect to the concepts of secrecy, security, and privacy rights. From this, I will establish the condition that we implicitly agree to neglect the transparency of MI5’s operation for the preservation of national security, that through accountability provided by the government will uphold one’s rights to privacy as far as possible. However, we can never guarantee that MI5 do not unlawfully violate one’s rights to privacy. Therefore, through a philosophical investigation of:

1) Kant’s public and private reason, universal principle of Right, external freedom, and the necessity of coercion from authority;
2) Hegel’s conception of the ethical life, citizens disposition to trust the state, freedom between the suffusion of the objective and subjective wills;
3) Marx’s ideological critique, commodification of intelligence, and questioning to what extent individual rights exist; I will deduce to what extent such a condition can be affirmed, thereby determining the applicability of MI5 within a democratic society.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Do We Have the Right to Bear a Genetically Related Child? A Study into in vitro Fertilisation and its Moral Implications

In my project this year I examined in vitro fertilisation which is a procedure invented in 1976 for infertile couples which involves removing the woman’s eggs and fertilising them outside the body with the sperm of her husband or a donor. This often results in spare embryos being formed, which is a subject which divides England.

I looked at the status of the embryo and argued that it had no raised status to an egg or a sperm based on the philosophical arguments of ethicist Peter Singer.

I also looked at the work of Martha Nussbaum who is a modern contemporary thinker and has strong opinions regarding bodily health and bodily integrity.

The main thread of my argument was that we have a right to a genetically related child and these two thinkers helped me prove this.

Books and websites I used included
Nussbaum, M. (2011) Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Harvard University Press, USA
Singer, P. (2002) Unsanctifying Human Life. Blackwell Publishing Company, Oxford
Singer, P. (1998) A Companion to Bioethics. Blackwell Publishing Company, Oxford
Smith, R. (2012) Statistics Explained. Westminster, London.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

The Morality of Violent Video Games

Links between violent video games and highly publicised violent crimes have resulted in society continuously questioning the morality behind violent games such as Grand Theft Auto III. From a philosophical perspective can violent video games be deemed moral?

Mill: An action is moral if its consequences result in more good than harm for the majority. Mill therefore would not have condemned violent video games as there is not enough evidence to suggest a link between violence in games and violence in reality. However, video games are classed as a lower pleasure and so must be played in moderation.

Kant: Kant was concerned with activities that result in an increased propensity for one’s duties to be violated. As with Mill, Kant would not condemn video games as not enough evidence exists to suggest one is more likely to violate their duties as a result of violent game play. In multiplayer gaming one can use other players as means to an end, which goes against Kant’s categorical imperative. However, Kant would view this purely as bad gamesmanship.

Aristotle: Aristotle’s main concern with violent video games would have been the effect they have on one’s character. He proposed that overexposure to violent acts damages one’s personality. Therefore Aristotle would have condemned violent video games purely for the effect extreme violence has on one’s character

The current world of violent video gaming with its age limits may fall successfully into the category of moral but what future technology has in store will bring with it a whole new set of issues.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

Altruism vs. Egoism: a Debate through the Life of Simone Weil

Described by Albert Camus in 1951 as the only great spirit of our time‘, Simone Weil was a philosopher, writer, teacher and social activist who dedicated the majority of her life to helping others. However, her altruistic nature progressed into an incessant need to share the suffering of others. As a result, Weil neglected her own health and died in 1943, aged just 34.

Weil was a hugely admirable person, but in this project, I am going to put forward an argument in favour of the need for an egoistic moral structure to ensure the progression of society.

After providing an account of Weil‘s life, highlighting her troubles and endeavours along the way, I will use Mill‘s Utilitarianism to demonstrate an altruistic account of morality. However, I will go on show the flaws in Mill‘s theory in order to illustrate why an altruistic structure to society is implausible.

I will then assess Barbara Oakley‘s study, Pathological Altruism, to address her idea that altruistic acts can become harmful when taken to an unhealthy extreme. Many of Weil‘s characteristics match up to Oakley‘s studies, providing an understanding behind her eating and mental disorders.

So next I will turn to Hobbes‘s account of morality, Rational Egoism, to see if that could provide a more comprehensive ethical structure. His recognition of individual‘s self-interest ensures the basis of a productive society, where people would look to employ their strengths in order to further themselves, which is something I feel Weil didn‘t fully achieve.

However, there are also flaws to Hobbes‘s account, and so I will conclude by asserting that currently no entirely adequate moral-political exists. I will then look at Williams‘s interpretation of morality, as he suggests that comprehensive moral philosophy is empty and boring‘.

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

As a Product of Free Market Capitalism Does Advertising Reinforce Inequality in the Current, British, Free-marketed, Democratic Society?

I resent others for having more!
Why can’t I have what I see on television!
Advertising constantly reminds me of what I don’t have.
I’m just a commodity
I cant escape advertising and my desires for money!
I’ll never get to the top of the ladder.
I want what my neighbours got!

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2012 Abstracts Stage 3

How Legitimate is Industrial Action and What is its Purpose?

I have looked at KARL MARX and his theory to try and decide whether strike action is legitimate and what purpose it plays.

Marx would have supported the miners’ strike and seen it as legitimate as it was the working class seizing the means of production. However he would not see the teachers strike as legitimate as it was too individualistic and too led by capitalist values.

Within my project I have focused on how legitimate strike action is. It seems that public perception had changed in the last 30 years and I have endeavoured to uncover why this is.

Despite feeling that industrial action is legitimate I found it difficult to show this in regards to the teachers strike … but it just feels somehow wrong.

The other philosopher I have focused on within my project is JOHN LOCKE. He again would see the miners’ strike as legitimate as their rights were being threatened and therefore it was their duty to show discontent for this. After all, we only enter into a society to have our natural rights protected. Yet, Locke was unable to justify the teachers strike.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Can True Ethical Business Practice Exist in a Capitalist Society?

Aims:
To come to a conclusion whether a capitalist society is a breeding ground for unethical business practice.

What is capitalism?
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and profit is the incentive for motivation

Philosophers: Rawls and Marx
I shall investigate how Rawls and his ‘Theory of Justice’ can be applied to a system of capitalism. Also how Marx and his stance against a free market may or may not be correct.

Enron:
The case study of Enron will be my example of how the free market may give too much freedom to independent companies. It also shows how Marx to some extent is right, but furthermore how Rawls can be seen with the workings of this major meltdown.

Why Business?
I chose business and its ethics because I hope to further my knowledge in the field of accounting as this is the profession I one day hope to enter. Both Rawls and Marx have great influences on the decisions faced in this profession.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

How Are Franz Kafka’s Novels Ethical?

Aim: I aim to demonstrate how Blanchot’s ethics can be found within literature. Specifically, in Kafka’s work.

Philosophy: death of a subject is, ultimately, Blanchot’s ethics. It is instigated by the interruption of the ‘Il y a’. Here, all former values (everydayness) is replaced by those of the other (otherness). This motion is mimicked in literature, particularly in Kafka’s work. My project will assess why.

Anti-thesis: Is Kafka’s work symbolic (stubbornly independent) or allegorical (autobiographical)? That is, is Kafka himself present throughout his work?

I will argue that Kafka’s work is allegorical; he is everywhere in his work.

Blanchot’s Texts: Reading Kafka, Kafka and Literature, The Language of Fiction Literature and the Right to Death, Death Sentence.
Heidegger’s Texts: Why Poets?, On the Essence of Truth, The Origin of the Work of Art, Way to Language.
Kafka’s texts: The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Are Holidays Part of Our Real Lives or an Escape into Unreality?

LOOKING AT NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITQUE AGAINST THE `’REAL” AND “APPARENT” WORLD

IS THERE ONLY ONE WORLD? IF SO WHICH ONE ARE WE LIVING IN?

IS A HOLIDAY A FORM OF AN ILLUSION?

ARE WE BORN INTO A CULTURE OF ESCAPISM?

IN OUR ESCAPISM CAN WE STILL FIND TRUTH?

The Schopenhauerian man voluntarily takes upon himself the suffering involved in being truthful.’

The quote is bound up with Nietzsche’s view that most people don’t like seeing reality as it is, i.e. the one and only reality there is. People prefer all the illusions, which the apparent world gives us by way of hope that we will enter the real true world where everything will be alright; for example heaven or even on holidays.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

New World Order: Atheism in Religion, Anarchy in Politics and No Property in the Economic Sphere, Possible or Improbable?

Understanding NWO is a giant geo-cycle political picture. Things are happening with the use of subliminal indirect and reversed psychological propaganda Some say it is made to be confusing. It is theorised that the Illuminati, the ones who call themselves the enlightened ones, had gained positions of power; through means such as controlling the banking system.

The coined phase ‘New World Order’ is the term used to describe a unity of the world’s superpowers to rule, secure, and maintain the principle of “global peace.” The concept is to bring the world under submission to one supreme government, enforce one controlled common religion and one worldwide economic system. (The EU has already instituted this with the ‘Euro’ currency.) The common conspiracy theory about the New World Order is that there is secret power elite with a globalist agenda that is conspiring to eventually rule the world with an authoritarian government. Absolute Obedience. In actuality, it is a move towards a socialistic, controlled, and godless world.

Preliminarily, this dissertation is focused on the concept of emancipation and capitalism and how the New World Order is apparently attempting to overcome such issues. Involvement of the banking system and especially the role of power in relation to money has been considered as the state of the economic society can tell us a lot about the New World Order regime. It has referred predominately to the work of Karl Marx ‘father of communism’ and his work on Capitalism. Throughout this work on capitalism, the concept of religion and attack on society will come into play as the New World Order presents us with a new atheistic view on religion. The main material to be used and referred to throughout this dissertation is that by A. Ralph Epperson “The New World Order” and Marx’s “Capital and other writings”. Hegel also shows us the importance of his Dialectic theories in relation to the new World Order by presenting us with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis that can be applied to conflict throughout history.

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

True (?) Romance. How has the Ideal of Love Been Lost in Contemporary United Kingdom and What Are the Ramifications?

Current relationships are under strain due to the gap between fictional love (the ideal) and genuine love. Marriage and monogamy are the metanarrative structures and institutions of the ideal of love that are causing tension in love, requiring paramours to be more consistent than their identity allows for. As identity lacks an origin without the ideal, it becomes relative to the Other in a cyclical relationship that causes identity to be in constant flux. Without a stable base on which to love, the ideal can longer function.

Therefore if agents still want to love, then they must accept that each moment is unique and the only ground for love is the individual’s experience of the other in the Other. The essay is heavily influenced by the works of Jacques Derrida (Violence and Metaphysics), Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness) and Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and Infinity).

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

A Questionable Interpretation: a study into John Nash’s Game Theory, its reliance on a dubious interpretation of Adam Smith’s economic theory, and how it has been detrimental to competition in modern day economics

The aim, as such, of this writing is to examine the idea that there is a questionable interpretation underpinning modern economics and if it is attacked we are left with the notion that the economics we have is not the economics it should be. This is because the theory of capitalism that we have today is not exactly the one argued for, by its founder, Adam Smith. I also wish to show that we cannot go back to the more true form of capitalism however nor can we move to any other system because of the damage already done. This shall be hinted at by using some segments of Capital by Karl Marx.

The object which has driven me to examine such an idea that something has gone wrong in economics is the film A Beautiful Mind. I believe the portrayal of John Nash in this film is biased and unjustifiable as I believe his wrong interpretation of Smith may have led to an unending cycle of greed that will slowly pervert and consume any form of morality.

My territories of discussion are economics and the application of game theory and within this writing the concepts that I wish to discuss are: Nash equilibria, game theory and competition.

The thinkers and relevant sources that I shall use within this writing are:

Karl Marx – Capital
Adam Smith – Wealth of nations
John Nash – non-cooperative games and two person cooperative games (contained within issues of Econometrica, the economics journal)

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2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Social Luck versus Social Mobility. Is it OK to be Told the World isn’t Fair?

– Objective/Territory: The ‘American dream’: What is the ‘American dream’ and is it just a product or propaganda process of the capitalist society in which we live? 

– Sources: Karl Marx, Deleuze and Guattari, Charles Taylor and Adorno. 

– Project Outline: Leaving education and entering the ‘real world’ in a time where one’s ideals and ambitions are centred on seeking wealth; why is it that we think this way? I hold the belief that to succeed, it is about whom you know not necessarily what you know. So, I want to prove that wealth is down to social luck. My territory is society and culture and I am trying to show that our basic intuition (one gets what one deserves) is a herd mentality in order for a specific class to benefit. If we think everyone has what they deserve, then we don’t think that it could be redistributed.

Through a method of hermeneutics, I endeavour to seek why it is we think the way we do and why it is we desire wealth. E480