Seminar Paper Semester 2 Week 10

Lugwig Wittgenstein 

An Austrian-British Philosopher born 26 April 1889 and died 29 April 1951 aged 62 was considered by some of the greatest philosophers of the 20th to play a huge role in 20th century analytic philosophy. Wittgenstein’s work focused mainly in logic, the philosophy of mathematic, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. During his time as a professor in philosophy at Cambridge University, Wittgenstein published one book review, one article, a children’s dictionary and the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Wittgenstein’s work on logic began in 1913; shortly after his father died after receiving inheritance Wittgenstein became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He retreated to a small village in Norway for the winter where he began writing his notes on logic. Wittgenstein was visited in 1914 by Moore an internationally known philosopher, Wittgenstein regarded Moore as an example of how far someone could get in life with “absolutely no intelligence”. Moore acted as Wittgenstein’s secretary over the next few months, recording everything Wittgenstein said. On his return to Cambridge University, Moore asked the University to consider accepting Logik as a degree of its own but the case was refused, Wittgenstein was furious and wrote a letter to Moore in May later that year: "If I am not worth your making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to Hell directly; and if I am worth it and you don't do it then—by God—you might go there." The two then didn’t speak again until 1929.

With the start of World War I, Wittgenstein was posted on the Russian Line front in March 1916, giving his time on the Tractatus a break. Throughout the war, it has been said that Wittgenstein kept notebooks filled with philosophical reflections, alongside personal remarks about the concept of the character of other soldiers. In the summer of 1918, Wittgenstein took military leave and completed the Tractatus in late August and submitted it to The Proposition for publishing. However a series of events later followed delaying the publishing process, Wittgenstein’s uncle died, followed by his brother committing suicide, the third of his brothers to commit suicide at the time, then his dear friend was killed in a plane crash. Following this Wittgenstein was sent back to the war on the Italian front where he was captured and held in an Italian prisoner camp for 9 months. After returning to his family in Vienna, in 1919; Wittgenstein talked constantly about suicide, his family claimed he was very ill.

The Tractatus was eventually published in 1921 as part of Oswald’s journal (Annalen der Naturphilosophie); although, Wittgenstein was not happy about this in the least and claimed it to be a pirate edition. Russell agreed to write an introduction into the journal as to why it was important, because otherwise it would have been unlikely to have been published as Wittgenstein wasn’t well known in Philosophy at the time. Wittgenstein didn’t appreciate Russell’s help and felt he has misunderstood the Tractatus as a whole.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The Tractatus consisted of 7 chapters; all consisting of one sentence each. The book is seen to address the central problems in philosophy which focus on the world, thought and language and as Wittgenstein terms it; presents a solution to these problems, which are grounded in logic and in the nature of representation.

1.The world is everything that is the case. * - Wittgenstein sees the world as consisting of facts, rather than the atomistic conception that the world is made up of objects…In addition:

2.What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. – States of affairs are just combinations of objects, according to logic objects combine with one another based on their logical and internal properties. These states of affairs are based on the idea of actual and possible, they are based on the things that make up the whole of reality, they are the states of affairs which do actually exist.

3.The logical picture of the facts is the thought. – This focuses of Wittgenstein’s most famous idea that thoughts and propositions are pictures and “the picture is a model of reality”. Pictures are made up of elements which together create a picture, each element being an object and the combination of objects represent a state of affairs.

4. The thought is the significant proposition. – continuing his investigation into the possibilities of significance for propositions; Wittgenstein claimed that “Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning”, he presents two conditions for sensical language; first the structure of the propositions must conform to the constraints of logical form and the elements of the proposition must have reference. Concluding that it is logic itself which gives us the structure and limits of what can be said, as it is based on the idea that every proposition is either true or false.

5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) – Wittgenstein presents the first presentation of Frege’s logic in the form of ‘truth-tables’. These tables allow the means to go back and analyse propositions breaking them down into their atomic parts. Wittgenstein claims; “every statement about complexes can be analyzed into a statement about their constituent parts and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes”.

6.     6. The general form of truth-function is: [....]. This is the general form of proposition. This is evidence for Wittgenstein’s claim that any proposition “is the result of successive applications” which means he is able to show that all meaningful propositions are of equal value.

7.      7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. – the final sentence concerns the idea or what can (or cannot) and what should (or should not) be said.

Wittgenstein claims “The book will … draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts …. The limit can … only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense” which is created on the logical construction of finding the limits of the world, thought and language based on distinguishing between sense and nonsense; Basic Logic.

Year 2 Semester 1 Lecture 5 - Totalitarianism

“Everything we know of totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality”

Totalitarianism is an imposing form of political oppression, however it is different to Dictatorship and communism as totalitarianism destroys all legal and political structures and in effect destroys society. Totalitarianism replaces these with new sets of values and beliefs which abolish any personal thought and replace it with one main ideology. Those who live in a totalitarian state do not think for themselves but are told what they should believe in and think. 

One of the best examples of totalitarianism if Hitler's Nazi Germany. Hitler's original ideology was similar to that of Nietzsche; in that society was weak because we were keeping the weak alive it was no longer survival of the fittest. Hitler claimed if the state says some citizens are enemies then it is the responsibility of the other citizens to irradiate them. The Nazi party relied heavily on this brainwashing technique; when they were first capturing the Jewish people in Germany it was mainly the local citizens that were fishing them out not the Nazi's themselves. The citizens  were being told what to believe and think; Hitler was determined to create the perfect race the 'Aryan Ideal'...he believed this would make Germany stronger. During the rise of Hitler Germany was in a terrible state after WWI and the citizens of Germany were desperate for answers and help. Hitler preyed on Germany's weaknesses and executed anyone who stood up against him. 

Year 2 Semester 1 Lecture 4 - Economics

Looking at the current global situation and society at large it is very apparent we are living; in the words of ABBA ... "in a rich man's world". Economics is predominately to do with the concerns of money and wealth, there will never be complete satisfaction in the world of economics; the money money you have the more you want, money brings out greed in people, we can never have too much money. Chris said in the lecture that getting money is easy, it's what you have to do to get it that's hard; which I completely agree with, besides seeing how money effects people I'm not too sure I'd want millions anyway.




Following the idea's of Adam Smith from last years lectures; he believed that if people were left to have 'free trade' then people would sell their skills more than personal possessions. This comes to the point of utility; utility is the reference to what people want, which we are left to our own devices. The iron laws are very important in the world of economics. The first iron law being the iron law of population; Malthus believed that as many families are having more than two children as the population increases the economy would drop as we will not have enough services, goods or money for everyone. The iron law suggests two people should only have two children and therefore the two children will replace the two adults and the population will stay at an even amount.


The second iron law is the iron law of wages; Karl Marx explain this law of economics by showing that there must be a minimum wage within the work place and if this wage is lower than the goods produced to buy then noone will be able to afford them so the factories will go out of business and people will lose their wages anyway. 


We were left at the end of this lecture with Oscar Wild's quote 'people know the price of everything but the value of nothing'. I leave this blog entry with the recent hit by Jessie J I think it explains more about today's economy then I could put into words...


http://www.youtube.com/embed/qMxX-QOV9tI

Year 2 Semester 1 Week 5 (Seminar Paper)

Philosophy of the Modern World

Chapter 3 - Freud

Freud classed himself as a scientist and had the greatest influence on Anglo-American philosophical thought throughout the 21^st century. Although very few classed themselves as Freudians those who engaged in teaching the philosophy of the mind, ethics or philosophy of religion were forced to explain and interoperate of Freud’s ideas. Born in 1856 after moving to Vienna with his family Freud later trained as a doctor in the university there where he specialized initially in brain anatomy.

In 1895, Freud published a work on hysteria which presented an original analysis of mental illness. Gradually Freud refrained from using hypnosis as a treatment and replaced it with psychoanalysis ‘nothing more than an exchange of words between patient and doctor. From these sessions of psychoanalysis Freud became convinced that the relevant psychological traumas dated back to infancy and had a sexual content.

In 1900 Freud published the most important of his works The Interpretation of Dreams, in which he argued that ‘dreams no less than neurotic symptoms were a coded expression of repressed sexual desires’. This was followed a year later by The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

In 1923 Freud published The Ego and the Id, which presented a new anatomy of the unconscious mind. In 1927 Freud presented a deflationary account on the origin of religion The Future of an Illusion; although he was an atheist himself his did identify with jewish culture; so when psychoanalysis was banned by the Nazis Freud was forced to immigrate to England. Freud later suffered from cancer of the jaw for 16 years; on 23 September 1939 Freud died of a lethal injection of morphine administered by his physician by his own request.

Between 1915 and 1917, Freud delivered a set of introductory lectures which summed up psychoanalytic theory in two fundamental theses. ‘The first is that the greater part of our mental life, whether of feeling, thought, or violation, is unconscious. The second is that sexual impulses, broadly defined, are supremely important not only as potential causes of mental illness but also as the motor of artistic and cultural creation.’ Freud believed that the existence of the unconscious is manifested in 3 different ways; ‘through everyday trivial mistakes, through reports of dreams, and through the symptoms of neurosis.’ Towards the end of his life, Freud replaced the conscious and unconscious with the mental apparatus he wrote in The Ego and The Id with a threefold scheme of mind. ‘The id which is the repository of the instinctual impulses, ego which is the most superficial portion of the id; modified by the influence of the external world and the superego which develops out of the id, dominates the ego and represents the inhibitions of instinct that are characteristic of man.’

‘Freud has had an enormous influence on society – in relation to sexual mores, to our understanding of mental illness, to our appreciation of art and literature, and on interpersonal relationships of many kinds’.

Chapter 8: Philosophy of the Mind

Bentham on intention and motive

·        Bentham’s principles of morals and legislation contained a detailed analysis of human action focusing on people’s intentions and motives. His approach to the topic has been said to have been similar to that of Aquinas, however they differ in both terminology and moral evaluation.

·        For Aquinas action was only intentional if it was chosen as a means to an end; to solve something. Therefore if it was unavoidable: a voluntary choice but not done intentionally it as not considered an action by Aquinas. Bentham disliked the word ‘voluntary’ because sometimes it meant willing or uncoerced but could also mean spontaneous; he preferred the use of the word ‘intentional’. However, they both distinguished between two kinds of intention. A consequence may be either directly intentional or obliquely intentional. For Bentham though an incident that is directly intentional maybe ultimately or mediately intentional depending on whether it could have been viewed as a motive for a future event.

·        Betham looked at the death of King William II who died while hunting from a wound cause by Sir Walter Tyrell, Bentham looked at the possible degrees of consciousness and intentionality in Tyrell’s thoughts and actions and classified them under 5 categories: unintentional, obliquely intentional, directly intentional, mediately intentional and ultimately intentional.

·        Bentham’s terminology was to define intention in purely cognitive terms; in order understand what a person intended you only need to find out what they know not what they wanted to become a consequence of a certain action. However, an act is only unintentional only if the chance of what you intend may have unforeseen consequences. For Bentham intention is the main measure for the moral and legal evaluation of actions.

·        Bentham explains that we should not consider intentions to be good or bad in themselves, but that they are either derived from a good or bad motive or deemed to achieve good or bad consequences. The goodness or badness of someone’s actions however can only be judged if the resulting consequences are bad because the person was aware of the circumstances in his conscious mind before making the said intention.

·        Bentham classifies the different possible degrees of such consciousness in the ninth chapter of his book. He claims if a man is aware of a circumstance when he acts then his act is said to have been an advised act; otherwise an unadvised act it not.

·        Bentham makes a distinction between intentions and motives as a man’s intentions may be good but his motives bad.

Reason, Understanding, and Will

·        Kant’s theory distinguishes between understanding and reason from his studies focusing on the differences between human and animal cognitive faculties. ‘Understanding, as well as, sensation is something animals share with humans’ however humans unlike animals have the ability of reasoning, they can reflect on their actions which places humans above animals in ‘both power and in suffering’. Animals only live in the present where as humans live in the past, present and future. Reason does however, confer three ‘gifts’ on humans; language, freedom and science, of which language is the most important and essential.

·        Abstract knowledge is not always needed for everyday tasks we do not always need to understand the functioning of every action. We don’t always need to know how something works but instead how to make something work. Although when long-term planning is necessary abstract knowledge is essential.

The Freudian unconscious

·        The majority of our daily actions and thoughts are from our unconscious mind.

·        There are 3 levels of Freudian unconscious and 3 ways that reveal the Freudian unconscious in itself; trivial everyday mistakes, recalling dreams and neurotic symptoms. However he claims that these are parapraxes and although unconscious they may not be a ‘mistake’ as they could have a hidden motive. By understanding the beliefs from the person who has made a ‘Freudian slip’ it helps us become aware of these hidden motives.

·        Freud claimed dreams were almost always the fulfilment of a repressed wish, although they are not always obvious as we dream in ‘code’, however nightmares seem to show the opposite.

·        Freud does claim that he doesn’t believe in a universal coding for dreams. It is only possible to ‘un-code’ a dream if you are aware of the specific symbolic meaning to each dreamer, it is easy to put any sexual references in to un-coding dreams.

·        Neurotic symptoms can be understood when it becomes apparent the subconscious reasons as to why we are doing something. There is always an underlying reason as to why we do something that we are not consciously aware of.

·        The 3 levels of Freudian unconscious ‘id, ego and superego’ ; id is the unconscious which is ruled by the pleasure principle, ego represents reason and common sense and superego punishes the behaviour of the ego.

Philosophical psychology in the Tractatus

·        Wittgenstein constructed a different model of the mind. He claimed a thought was a logical picture of facts.

Intentionality

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of mind

Year 2 Semester 1 Lecture 1 - Modernism

Modernism in the 19^th and 20^th was a new concept claiming that everything occurred in relation to something else and there were no definite answers. The most useful example to explain this is the idea of time; time is seen as relative, we have no real understanding of when it began or when time will end. This new perception of time in modernism contradicted the previous ideas presented dring the enlightenment and renaissance. Modernism’s roots were changing the technology and the theories of the past; there were some key personalities during this period which brought new ideas and revolutionized the way of thinking.

Sigmund Freud revolutionized the way the western world’s understand the way they identify the mind and human behaviour. Freud simplified human individuality to an animalistic sex drive. Freud’s 1899 book The Interpretation of Dreams highlighted how dreams are a way of understanding true thoughts and emotions. He believed in the unconscious and tried to prove that humans have no control over their thoughts and behaviours. We will look more heavily into Freud’s theories in later lectures….

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer from the 19^th Century; Wagner was famous for using sexual and erotic music in order to create emotion from his audiences during his operas. The way he composed his music was revolutionary; music before modernism was created to express happiness and love, Wagner’s music was completely incredible. Wagner’s operas were performed in Germany at the theatre Bayreuth Festspielhaus; his most famous opera Tristan and Isolde comprised of harmonies which expressed sexual pleasures and fantasies but also tragedy and death.

Friedrich Nietzsche, a composer from the 19^th century also had a huge influence on the concept of modernism. Nietzsche also studied theology looking at how mankind evolved from being primitive creatures to civilised human beings within a constantly changing society. Nietzsche strongly believed that by keeping weaker people alive, mankind was destroying itself as in concurrence with Darwin’s theory of evolution it should be a case of survival of the fittest. As the evolutionary theory had been stopped by the introduction of medicine; Nietzsche showed that mankind had to evolve in other ways through technology and education, breeding a new generation of super people and killing disabled and seriously ill children (ergonic breeding). Nietzsche spent the final years of his life staring at a blank wall as he became mentally unstable.

Lecture 1 Screening - Citizen Kane

The first screening of the semester was Orson Welles’ 1941 film; Citizen Kane. The film is about an American newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, who creates his own newspaper empire to gain wealth and power. His aspirations lead him into 3 divorces and his final ended marriage to Susan Alexander, leads his to a life of misery until he finally dies a rich lonely old man. Below is the original clip of the trailer for the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyv19bg0scg

the history of the vinyl record

Commercial music has widely become a daily pleasure across the western world. Tracing back the history and timeline of the gramophone record, or vinyl record as most commonly known in the UK, is somewhat fascinating to see a huge change in the record industry over especially the last 30 years.

In 1857 Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville created what was known as the phonoautograph, it simply played variations of sound in discs of paper by a simple vibration from a pen in the device, the sound could not be played back. In 1877, Thomas Edison built created the phonograph which unlike the design it had the ability to record and reproduce the sound, however there is no official evidence that suggests Edison built on Martinville’s idea. Edison experimented with several ways of creating the ‘records’ that played the music; starting with a wax coated paper tape. By the end of 1877 the device used foil cylinders; it dominated the recorded sound market in the beginning of the 1880s. In 1888, Emile Berliner created lateral-cut disc records, which were improved later by Eldridge R. Johnson which produced sound as good as the earlier cylinders. Edison then introduced the amberol cylinder in 1909, which generated the expiration of them lateral-cut discs which opened a market for a huge launch in the production of disc records which dominated the market from 1929. Various sizes, materials and speeds were experimented with; there was a boom in record sales after WWII. By the 1960s record players were affordable to the average household, the players improved gradually over the years. However, by the turn of the early 1990s it was not uncommon for households to have CD players and eventually there was less of a demand for vinyl records and CDs took over. Although in 2008 vinyl record sales hit a huge 36% increase in sales.

It wasn’t so much the records themselves that had such a huge influence on society but the record cover artwork, it impacted on social values, lifestyles and fashion. In 1939, Alex Steinweiss was hired by Columbia Records as an art director to produce the artwork which soon increased the sales. Since then many artists have worked with record labels to produce many ‘historic works of art’. Andy Warhol created the famous iconic rolling stones logo of Jagger’s mouth with a zip in the tongue. Originally the album cover actually had a real zip but damaged the other records when they were stacked and shipped.

Nowadays vinyl records are seen as historical documents for preserving audio versions of events in time. Many of them are seen as rare and collectable, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s signed record of Double Fantasy is considered the rarest of them all valued at $525,000.

To Quote Henry Jenkins; ‘I will argue here against the idea that convergence should be understood primarily as a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices. Instead, convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content.’ It is clear that the change in the way music has been changed and distributed over the years has for I become evident that it is due to the constant demand of change by consumers that companies have to keep up with.

Conversely, despite being such a huge ‘artefact’ as such in history and being taken over by the CD in record sales; it is more popular to download music and audio files in the current 21^st century. Illegal downloads of music are said to be ‘killing the music industry’. I think maybe in the future records will only be sold as collectables which will increase prices and the demand for records again.

References

Jenkins, H., Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. 2006. New york University Press. Pp.3

Seminar Paper Semester 2 - Zola J'Accuse

The Dreyfus Affair has been labelled as the most famous case of miscarriage of justice. At the end of the 19^th century secret documents were found in a waste paper basket in the German embassy about the French’s future plans of military action. The French had a spy working in the embassy; a cleaning lady, who brought back the documents to the French, in which a trial was then held to convict the criminal on the account of treason. Dreyfus not only a captain of the French army but a Jew was framed and was secretly court marshalled. He was degraded and embarrassed; stripped of his medals and his sword was broken in front of the entire army and was then sent to Devil’s Island in 1894, and remained in a cell in which he couldn’t see anything; he was chained while he slept; he wasn’t allowed exercise; he was given rotten food and was never spoken too so eventually lost the capability of speech. This man was innocent. Later an officer delves further into the case and concludes that the evidence against Dreyfus is wrong and in fact Esterhazy, another officer was the actual culprit. His superior dismisses the evidence and claims: “What is it to you if a Jew rots on Devil’s Island?” showing the true anti-Semitism of the French army at this time. A court put Esterhazy on trial in a military court from which he is acquitted. It was during this that the famous French journalist Emile Zola became involved and wrote the J’accuse.

J’accuse meaning ‘I accuse’ was published on the 13^th January 1898 in a popular newspaper; it was an open letter addressed to the president of France at the time Felix Faure. The letter accused the government and the army of anti-Semitism and highlighted the innocence of Dreyfus. Zola had two objectives to writing this piece; firstly he wanted to provide the public with a brief outline of the facts surrounding the Dreyfus case and therefore change the public’s opinion into the favour of Dreyfus himself. Secondly, Zola needed to provoke the government authorities enough so they would prosecute him meaning new evidence was produced and public interest of Esterhazy’s guilt was increased. J’accuse shows legal errors and emphasizes the serious lack of evidence the army hand against Dreyfus. The article caused a huge uproar in both France and across the world. Zola was found guilty of libel but fled to England to avoid imprisonment. Zola argued that "the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was based on false accusations of espionage and was a misrepresentation of justice." And accuses Major du Paty de Clam as being the real man behind the injustice itself as he was the man who came up with the idea of framing Dreyfus in the beginning. "He was the one who came up with the scheme of dictating the text of the bordereau to Dreyfus; he was the one who had the idea of observing him in a mirror-lined room. And he was the one whom Major Forzinetti caught carrying a shuttered lantern that he planned to throw open on the accused man while he slept, hoping that, jolted awake by the sudden flash of light, Dreyfus would blurt out his guilt." Zola defends Dreyfus in every way possible explaining "These, Sir, are the facts that explain how this miscarriage of justice came about; The evidence of Dreyfus's character, his affluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of innocence combine to show that he is the victim of the lurid imagination of Major du Paty de Clam, the religious circles surrounding him, and the 'dirty Jew' obsession that is the scourge of our time." Zola continues to explain that Esterhazy was in fact the culprit and he is the one who should have been convicted of treason. However, Zola explains that if Esterhazy was to be condemned then the entire general staff would also have to be known as guilty and which was enough motive for the war office to have covered Esterhazy’s act of treason. Near the end of J’accuse Zola mentions General Billot had known evidence that would have proved Dreyfus’ innocent. He further accuses General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of anti-Semitism purely framing Dreyfus because he was Jewish.  Zola’s finally accuses the court martial for convicting Dreyfus with treason on evidence that was kept a secret. Zola knew he was going to get a reaction from this letter and finishes it with the words ‘I am waiting’.

After Zola was convicted the army recognise a weakness in the case and Dreyfus is brought back from Devil’s Island  and re-trailed, being found guilty under “extenuating circumstances” and was sent back.

History and Context journalism Lecture 4- Hume; Causation, Induction, Inference

Our lecture today was focused around David Hume, possibly the most important philosopher ever to write in English. He can be seen to have started the original establishment of contemporary cognitive science, his methods and believes are hugely contemporary with Freud and the practice of Psychoanalysis. Hume was incredibly captivated with Newton’s ideas so began his thinking with trying to apply a utopian theory to human behaviour. Hume employs Machiavelli’s scientific explanations of human behaviour though he tries to emphasise the influence of liberal realism.

If we look at The Vienna Circle; including its members we become aware that logical positivism underpins social science. Einstein followed this idea of logical positivism; he didn’t believe there was such thing as law with regards to the universe. Hume used the sun to comprehend Einstein’s thesis, claiming the sun rising could be purely a mental illusion, there is no absolute truth, everything that exists and occurs is all due to probability.

To explain this concept further it justified by Hume’s theory of Causation.  Causation is the relation of two or more events occurring only after the first event has taken place. Hume using the example of billiard balls to explain this theory, he claims there is no evidence of causation, you cannot prove that one thing i.e. the white ball moving towards the black ball, then hearing a click, is the cause of another i.e. the black ball moving. According to Hume nothing in nature actually occurs it only occurs in your mind. For Hume everything is a miracle; "Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country." (Taken from section X of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning human understanding entitled “Of Miracles”)

The idea of testing an event to see if it actually occurred by a causation or if it was purely a miracle is drawn from the simple method of logic; logic is a specific scientific method for analysing truth claims, we use logic to find if a claim is integrally logical. There are two types of logic; analytic logic and synthetic logic. In analytic logic the conclusion is drawn from the subject i.e. all bicycles have two wheels – this is always true by definition as ‘bi’ stands for two.  Synthetic logic is based on non-identity and contradiction; when someone has made a claim you must add knowledge, the claim can only be true if the axiom is true. This falls down to the logic of scholarism; we may claim ‘all swans are white’ although this is deductively invalid, it may be possible that there is one swan that may not be white – there discovery of black swans in Australia proved this statement to be false.  

Drawing a conclusion based on synthetic logic is called induction; Hume claims induction is never possible as there will always be doubt. Hume maintains that just because something has happened once or even concurringly there is no absolute certainty that it will happen again. For example we may all believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning cannot be falsified therefore we must accept that it may be true that it won’t happen. Hume sticks purely to facts, he believes synthesis is dangerous, the thought at ideas are mixed to create something new i.e. the idea of a horse and a rhino created the myth of the unicorn. Similarly to Locke, Hume doesn’t analyse his beliefs.

This leads on to the verification principle on method of social science; it is the most important aspect of the movement. The principle was proposed by Freddy Ayer in his work ‘Language, Truth and Logic’. Ayer argues that most things are not verifiable thus they cannot be proven true.

“The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express—that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as true, or reject it as being false.... To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.”

Karl Popper follows Hume very closely; he states however that the verification principle is not scientific. He supports Hume in saying just because an event is repeatable does not mean it will always be repeatable. A statement which is unfalsifiable can never be scientifically valued; if it cannot be falsified then we must expect the possibility of the statement being true. 

A good journalist will always verify then falsify before criticising something to see if it is false.

Seminar on John Locke, ‘Epistle to the Reader’ from 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'

In 1660, John Locke wrote ‘An essay concerning human understanding’, it is one of his two most famous works; consisting of 4 books. The essay concerns the topics of human knowledge and understanding.

In his first Treatise Locke attacks the divine right of kings, the idea that God gave Adam the right to rule; quoted in the bible… “Let them rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Locke opposed to James II and Hobbes he wrote “men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.” Basically meaning because of the divine right of kings the power which comes from the people is given all to the ruler, seen as a ‘mortal god’. Locke held a strong belief that religion should be a private thing as it tears countries apart; it should be separate from politics and shouldn’t influence it and the divine right of kings will be the downfall of all governments.  Hobbes, Locke and Russo all focus of the idea of the state of nature before politics was prevalent. 

In his second treatise he expresses that he sees the mind as a blank slate in which we learn everything we know in life from experience alone and we discover natural laws. Locke didn’t believe in any innate ideas, he says the natural laws we discover we learn instinctively; the knowledge between ‘right and wrong’ was “interwoven in the constitution of the human mind which was given to us by God”. This led to conflict with the Catholic Church as they believe that everyone is born with original sin which was completely dismissed in Locke’s beliefs .However Locke did believe in god but wholly believed our brains had be placed in our head by God giving us the ability to think. Locke claims ‘Taking away false foundations is not to the prejudice but advantage of truth, which is never injured or endangered so much as when mixed with, or built on, falsehood.’

This week however we are just focusing on one part of the book; ‘The Epistle to the Reader’. The Essay originated in 1671, it was the genesis on the Books which followed. Locke expanded his comments repeatedly before publishing the book nearly twenty years later and continued to add to them with more material for the four further editions. It was originally written only for Locke himself and a few of the friends he had talked about these concepts with, however Locke merely wanted his ideas to be known ‘I desire it should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read it’.

 Locke records in his epistle to the reader that a group of five or six friends met to discuss a point in philosophy and when they got stuck with their ideas, Locke came to realise that people struggle with the pursuit of knowledge mainly because they are completely unaware of their own limits of understanding. Locke wanted to figure out more; ‘it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with’.  Locke goes on to explain how he studied the foundations of rational thought in his own mind, and so generated instructions for the possibility of a reasonable treatise. Locke understood everyone grasped things differently, purely because of our own meanings and personal understanding; ‘but everything does not hit alike upon every man’s imagination. We have our understandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery.’ This inspired Locke to consider the limits of understanding and the dangers of going past our limit, causing our thoughts to ‘wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing.’

Personally I think Locke makes an important point which should be considered by all journalists ‘for it is truth alone I seek, and that will always be welcome to me, when or from whencesover it comes’ Locke shows the importance of basing all our beliefs and understandings on the aspect of truth, although Locke does admit ‘I know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the variety of ideas that enter into men’s discourses and reasonings’.

History and Context Journalism Lecture 1 - Renaissance - From Scientific Revival to Descartes' Cogito

The first lecture for the module History and Context Journalism was on the subject of the Renaissance period in which we familiarised ourselves with several philosophers; Plato, Aristotle and Descartes to name a few and formed a very brief understanding of the Renaissance period itself. 

Florence coat of arms

The Renaissance period began in the 14th century in Florence, Italy and later spread throughout Europe when Scholars in both North and South Europe became more interested in the world around them. There are three main divisions in the periods of history during the middle ages; the classical period, the medieval period, and the modern period. During this time it is thought that there was a huge deviation from classical learning, the Renaissance was the beginning of its rebirth; hence the translation of the French word 'Renaissance' meaning 'rebirth'. You could argue that the Renaissance was the beginning of modern history itself; it was a desperate attempt to combine the classical world with Christian teachings, it completely revolutionised politics, literature, science, philosophy, art and religion, it was the self-conscious rejection of tradition and scholastic-ism, it argued more for a humanist world view. The idea that "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras) up until this point man and the body was seen as a fallen creature, in need of salvation. 


The North of Europe was much more pessimistic, unlike the south who were hostile to scholasticism, the north tried to combine Christianity and classical learning.Although the scientific renaissance held other opinions, Gallielo argued that the bible shouldn't influence science. He followed Pythagoras who put the idea of numbers at the centre of understanding, he believed you could understand the universe through numbers. Gallielo believed that "nature was the book of god and it is written in the language of mathematics". 

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans

Machiavelli however, were representative of southern Renaissance humanism, he formed the beginning of political science.He was fascinated with political rarity and had an intense ambition to see the Medici family assume a similar role in Italy as former royalty. Machiavelli used a ration approach avoiding getting involved in ethics and morals to write 'the prince' a guide to the Medici rulers of Florence. He claims 'It is better to be feared than loved, for fear is constant and love is fickle'.In 1527, Machiavelli died which was followed by the end of the Italian Renaissance.

Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito

During the Renaissance we see the age of discovery begin when Christopher Columbus departed Spain on August 2nd 1942 on a voyage in which the 'new world' was sighted on 2am on 12th October later that year. Columbus' contract, with conformation of his discovery, was abided by he was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and began the owner of 10% of any new found wealth, however this never really worked out as he planed. Travel tales became a mundane tradition; one example is Moore's 'Utopia', a fantasy in which he describes the 'ideal' society. It is based on an imaginary island where all work is for the common good, in forming this country of Utopia, Moore points out many problems that he has seen in society. In the story Moore brings in the idea of dualism proposed by Descartes; "They (the Utopians) reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true ones: some belong to the body and others to the mind."

Portrait after Frans Hals, 1648

Descartes despised Aristotle, he believed his system was full of errors. Descartes is often credited as the "father of modern philosophy"; the basis of his philosophy was to consider anything untrue if it falls to the slightest bit of doubt, this is know as 'the method of doubt' (Cartesian doubt). He came to the conclusion that if he was not to life life under false ideas then he would need to dismantle his entire belief system to begin at an epistemological ground-zero and build it up again. He believed he couldn't rely on anything he has learned from custom or example as it is only relevant to the context it occurs in, the place and the time. 


Descartes believes there is no truth in the presumption that the material universe exists. It was from this point he set out to discover something that lied beyond all doubt. Descartes claimed to only be trying to reinstate his opinions and was not trying to reform or change society, however this seems a little unconvincing and may only have possibly been as attempt to avoid the wrath if the church. He began with the idea of the perfect being, he saw this a proof of God; he claimed if you have a plan for some extremely complicated machine in your head - it would either mean you were genius of someone had give you the plan. He believed his idea of the perfect being can't come from him but only from a being that is of higher power, he began to except his faculties because they were given to him by god who wasn't a deceiver.Whilst overhauling his ideas he simply went along with the most moderate ideas around at the time. 


Descartes' idealism lead the the idea of dualism; the belief that the body is one thing and the mind is another. According to Descartes, the pineal gland in the brain is where the body and mind interact.Finally he reach the conclusion was "I think, therefore I am". Russell claims "this was insanity, and from this extreme philosophy has been attempting ever since to escape the world of everyday common sense".




For me, I found Descartes the most interesting; I enjoyed his argument for the existence of God, it was compelling and in wanting to understand more I have begun to read a book...'Descartes: A very short Introduction by Tom Sorell'