HCJ4: Existenialism

“The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. This irrepressible violence is man recreating himself”

No point to life, no god, no order. Life is pointless. Morrisey. Nilhism (Camus)

Existenialism goes further than Nilhism. No one to tell me what to do to, need guidance. Existenialists say there is no guidance/meaning. Can create whole universe yourself, CHOICE (The Stranger). Brave choice to do something that is pointless. Violence is the ultimate choice (Meursault kills Arab).

Existentialism is an agent for political change - Brian. Franz Fanon and Niezsche are key figures in Existenialism - would want us to overthrow power and ‘do something’.

 

Nietzsche

God is dead. No specific god, but it means there is no higher authority/super structure. We are beyond good and evil.

Transvaluation of all values. We have the choice to do whatever we like, no one to tell us what to do.

Human nature is not universal - our natures are different and it therefore follows that different people can find and follow different conceptions of excellence, different moralities. It creates space for ‘Fanon’s violence’.

Ubermensch - over man/super man. Will to power, the ubermensch will define himself and overcome.

Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view. Only thing in a godless universe is choice. Make choices on own internal morality.

Heidegger

Being and Time - highly influential (Satre’s Being and Nothingness).

The book is about existence. Heidegger was interested in what is means to exist/to be ‘us’.

We must question the nature of the being which causes the question to be asked. That is a creature he calls Dasein.

Descartes’ Cartesian Dualism: mind and body make up the world. If you believe in this, there is no way for philosophy to work as we would never know anything. How can mind and body be different things if my mind controls my body? Why can’t I move a chair with my mind?

Instead of Cartesian Doubt, Heidegger comes up with Dasein. He is looking for the essential structure of Dasein - being in the world.

Being in the world - not as a spatial relationship, but is our interaction with the world. It denotes a certain type of engagement e.g. I’m in Journalism. Doesn’t mean that I’m in a box called Journalism, but in the Journalism industry.

If the world wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be any existence.

Empiricism - physical being

Idealism - ‘soul’

Existentialism - every decision made by a person, but the next decision can’t be seen and this is most important one for Existentialists.

Das man self - inauthentic life because is it simply a social self. Not the one’s own self - Meursault.

Facticity - the events that have brought you to where you are e.g. born, one parent, school, uni etc…

Heidegger said that if you are defined by what has gone before, you are a ‘das man’. ‘Thrown into the world’, blind luck where you were born or the family you were born into. Nationality is following your facticity e.g. proud to be British. Not your choice.

Transcendence - my reaction to my facticity. I am defined by my choices - I re-create myself and not defined by past.  Examples in history: MLK and Suffragette movement.

 

Satre

We create own our purpose. Simone de Beauvoir: “One is not born a woman, but becomes one”. A female is not born with womanly traits, but the way she acts is her choice.

No teleological driving force, stuff happens. Good and bad without reason and so life is in some ways ridiculous and absurd.

Heidegger right wing and Satre left wing. Existentialism is very broad. 

The life of a person is not determined in advance, by God or moral laws said Satre. The only thing we can’t escape is the need to choose. Every decision you make can help to re-create yourself, but people will try to avoid this freedom, aka ‘bad faith’. Satre divided world into being in itself and being for itself. Being in itself is when an object is defined as itself e.g. a table can’t turn into a ball. Being for itself

The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by your choices ‘all the barriers are gone’.

Humanity for Satre is: Abandonment - God is dead (Neitzsche), God does not guide our actions, there is no divine set of rules to follow and we are alone and there is nothing to guide us on how to act.

Anguish - Humans are fundamentally free, “condemned to be free”, the responsibility of being free is enormous and we have no excuses and we are responsible for everything we are.

Despair - The realisation of that whatever we do, it could turn out badly.

Example: Satre’s pupil. Choice between looking after his mother to maintain her safety and joining the Free French (the Resistance) in WW2. Abandonment, Anguish and Despair. The choice? “You are free, therefore choose”.

Bad Faith: Most people think that being a soldier, police officer or student confers certain expectations on you e.g students should go to all lectures. Bad faith is not making a decision e.g. woman in café who doesn’t choose between having sex and pulling her hand away. She just leaves it there as an object than has no choice. She has bad faith even if she marries him, she lets herself be defined by the man. She dodged one choice so she might dodge others.

Gay man: A man who has had gay relationships in the past. Does this define who he is? If he has a heterosexual relationship in the future is he still defined by his previous gay relationship?

Eastleigh vs Chelmsford City highlights 16/2/13

My fourth package for WINOL as a sports reporter.

For more Hampshire sport go to www.youtube.com/user/WINOLSPORTS

HCJ4 - Seminar 2

JS Mill

Mill describes his 'system of logic' as a textbook of the doctrine that derives all knowledge from experience. All number denote a physical phenomena e.g. 2 denotes all pairs and 4 denotes all fours. This gives 2 apples a physical difference between 3 apples. No one can deny that 2 is different to 3!

Another of Mill's principles was 'the sums of equals are equals' - this is an inductive truth (a generalisation based on individual experiences e.g. If a person has only ever seen black cars, then all cars are black. Assertions of this type are always hypothetical and tentative.)

Mill also looked onto ethics, his 'utalitarianism' combind Hedonism (the pursuit of one's own is the aim of all action). It was a mix of act-utalitarianism and rule utalitarianism. An example of both is stealing. If someone has to steal a loaf of bread to feed his/her family, rule utalitarians would say that it is unethical to steal in all scenarios. An act utalitarian could justify stealing the bread if the consequences of that specific act were good, despite it usually having bad consequences overall.


Pierce

In his articles for 'Popular Science Monthly' he wrote that an inquiry starts and ends in doubt - "it is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy our desires". "The sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinions". To settle our opinions, we must use 4 methods:

1: Tenacity. This is when we take a statement an repeat it over and over again, pushing away everything that might not confirm it. People also tend to read newspapers that confirm their political views e.g. Daily Telegraph read by Tory supporters and Dail Mirror read by Labour supporters. Problems may arise when your beliefs conflict with another tenacious believer's views.

2: Authority. This method can rectify some of the problems with tenacity. "Let an institution be created that shall...keep correct objects before...the people...to teach them to the young. Also to have power of prevention of other doctrines (contrary to the ones taught in the institution) being taught". One problem with this method is that it is accompanied by cruelty and and no institution can regulate every subject. It can regulate the teaching of subjects in the institution, but not the actual subject.

3: A priori meditation. This is respected among philosophers despite it not producing a fixed belief system. The pendulum has swung between idealism (the theory that the ultimate nature of reality is based on the mind. It also manifests itself as scepticism about the possibility of knowing anything outside of your own mind).

4: Science. It concerns the existence of a reality independent of our minds. "By taking advantage of the laws of perception, we ascertain by reasoning how things really are if he (any man) has sufficient experience...will be led to the one true conclusion". Pierce rejects Descartes' principle that true philsophy must begin from methodical scepticism. According to Pierce, Cartesian doubt was nothing more than s futile pretence and the endeavour to regain certainty by meditation is even more harmful.


Frege

In his work there is explicit discrimination between logic and psychology. Frege believed that epistemology had been given a fundamental role in philosophy that should be designed to logic.

He adopted Kant's distinction between a priori (deduction) and a posteriori (experience). It is possible to discover the context of a proposition before we hit on the proof of it. If we are to talk of knowledge there must be a justification as all knowledge is a belief that has been justified and is true. It is not possible to talk of a priori mistakes because no one can only know what is true.

Frege used a distinction between sense of an expression and the reference of an expression. The reference is the object to which the expression refers e.g. Venus is the reference of the expression 'morning star. The sense is what we get when we understand the word. The sense is common understanding.

In practice: The morning star is a body illuminated by the sun. The evening star is a body illuminated by the sun. Not everyone knows that the morning star and evening star are names for venus, so does that mean that one statement is true and one is false? The thought is not the reference, it is actually the sense. Bascially, the planet Venus is the referent, 'morning star' is sense and 'evening star' is sense. It could have other senses.

Later in his life, Frege became interested in 'colour'. These are the aspects of language that he hadn't covered in his method of logic.If everybody spoke in a way that Frege saw as 'logical' then our sentences would be tedious and have no emotional interest. Frege saw binary as the perfect language as there is 'no colour', just 1 or 0, yes or no, black or white.

Computers work on binary, so analytical logic is what we have to thank for computer code. Phrases like 'there was no one on the road' would confuse a computer. Similar to 0 = nothing, but nothing is something, so 0 = something?

WINOL critical relections week 1-4

These notes will be the basis for my Critical Reflection.

Week 1

My new role on WINOL is sports reporter and I chose to cover Eastleigh FC. Just like all the other sports reporters, if the club wasn’t scheduled to play, I would have to make a package on a sports news story or make a sports feature package. I started off the week knowing that Eastleigh were playing at home on the Tuesday. Due to the weather, the game was in doubt the weekend before, but I used the bad weather to my advantage. I planned to make a package on how the snow had affected local sport. I filmed a PTC at Winchester City’s ground as well as shots that I could use in the package. I also filmed at Eastleigh’s stadium the next day whilst volunteers we clearing the pitch of snow.

There was an announcement early on the Tuesday afternoon that the game would be going ahead. The sports editor then decided that I should make a short package from the footage I had collected which would introduce the highlights of the game. We wrote the script for Sportweek as if the game had gone ahead as well as recording links for Sportsweek. About two hours after we did this, Eastleigh announced that the game had been called off, this meant I had to re-edit the package into an OOV as well as writing the words that the presenter would say over the top of the footage. This put back the news and production teams because Sportsweek had to re-recorded, but in the end everything turned out well though.

Week 2

Before the week began, I knew I would have a package for the week as Eastleigh were scheduled to play on the Saturday. I filmed the game and got an interview with the assistant manager. There were a couple of things that I think I could have done better though. Firstly, I didn’t get in close enough to the players when they were on the ball. Secondly, the interview with Eastleigh’s assistant manager wasn’t as good as it could have been. I framed him well but I could have chosen a better location for him to stand. He was standing in front of a brick wall with a sign on it and even though it looked good when I was filming it, after watching it back, it didn’t look that good. Next time I interview a manager or an assistant manager, I will make sure he stands pitch side.

Week 3

This week, Eastleigh didn’t have a home match so I had to think of an idea for a package. I decided to get an interview with Eastleigh’s manager. For one reason or another, I was unable to get the interview. This worked out quite well for the sports editor though as it meant he had someone to present Sportsweek and the sport on the news bulletin. I didn't have that many takes as I knew the script very well, but I should have been more expressive with my face because at some times it looked like I was just staring at the camera without any movement to my face. I also presented Sportsweek radio on Tuesday. I only had one problem during the show and that was a technical issue and was easily fixed.

Week 4

I presented Sportsweek radio on Tuesday for the second week running and I enjoyed doing it, I would like to do it more over the course of the semester to build my experience on live radio.

I then filmed Eastleigh’s game on Tuesday night, this went well but missed a sending off. The score was 1-0 so the sending off would have given my package a bit of ‘colour’. I got around the problem by showing the player being shown his first yellow card and then mentioned that he was shown a second yellow later on in the match. This is something I will not do again. I got a short interview with Eastleigh's manager and it was framed and lit well. I put this into both packages.

The editing of the package was quite simple as I filmed the game in a certain way that made it easier for me to select which clips I wanted to put into the two packages. I made sure that I stopped recording every time there was a goal, a shot or another incident. I had to re edit the package that went on Sportsweek as the sports editor said that the clips I had edited were too short, so I extended the lengths of all the clips and this improved the overall quality of the package.

I made sure that I was more assertive on my voiceover than on previous football highlights packages that I have produced. I thought that the packages I produced this week were much better because of my improved voiceover.

Eastleigh vs Salisbury highlights 12/2/13

Highlights of Eastleigh's game against Salisbury City from 12 February 2013.

My third package for WINOL as a sports reporter

www.winol.co.uk

HCJ4: Numbers and Frege

Natural numbers and used to count things. To count things is to create an abstract category. On average, natural numbers go up to 7. This can be shown if you stand in a room with 7 other people in it, you know there are 7 people almost without thinking. If you put a few more in, then you would have to count the amount of people in the room. A number such as 34251 is impossible to recognise or visualise as it is abstract/mysterious.

There are 3 fundamental attitudes to languages:

1 - numbers are natural and can be empirically observed.
2- intuitions of harmonic perfect platonic other world e.g. Descartes and geometry.
3- they are abstract logical objects, constructed purely from syntax (Frege).

Plurality is when there is more than one of something. An example of plurals of plurals is 3x3 = 9

A large number e.g. 2316 is a predicate symbol of more basic symbols according to syntax. Chomsky said that language must be innate - wired in brain.

Words/phrases have been used to count things e.g. 'one thing', 'more than one thing' and 'many things'. All that is needed is those 3 phrases. This can be related to a monkey and bananas, if there is one banana in front of a monkey, it knows there is just one banana, but the monkey doesn't want just one. If there are 2 bananas, the monkey is satisfied because there is more than one. If there are no bananas in front of the monkey, there is an absence of 'a thing'.


The problem with zero/nothing

Zero = nothing = something. This contradicts Aristotle's law of contradiction, which is the foundation of all logic. Bertrand Russell said that nothing is impossible.

0 is not nothing e.g. there can't be 'no one on the road'. 0 is a natural number, 1+0=0 (nothing).

1+0 = 1 (everything) this is a huge leap forward.

1+1 = 2, doubles in size e.g. if a baby is alive for one hour and then the next hour, his/her life has doubled in size.

N-+1 is an infinitely small increment.


Pythagoreanism/Platonism attitude to numbers

Numbers are the communication of an 'alien' world. Prime numbers are evidence for God's existence? All other numbers are rational combinations of prime numbers.

Orphic religion (Nietzsche's Apollonian religion - BoT). The prime number 3 has special religious significance (Holy Trinity and Jesus rising on the 3rd day). Not just limited to religion - rule of thirds in photography and 3 movements in symphonies.

Other primes have significance - 1 in Islam but hated by Greeks.

Pythagoras regarded only plurals as natural numbers sot hey began counting with two.


Numbers as logical objects

Frege solved the problem of zero 1000 years after the problem was first 'discovered'. His book 'The Foundation of Arithmetic' linked logic and arithmetic in an overall system of philosophy of language. It was adapted by Bertrand Russell and Whitehead, they called it 'Principia Mathmatica'. They attempted to demonstrate the logical basis for numbers, arithmetic and maths. It rejected JS Mill's numerological empiricism.....


Frege's method

'All things which are identical are equal to themselves'. This is regardless of what the things actually are e.g. a pillow and a book. Larger numbers can be built up as logical constructs

Zero as a class of all possible objects which are not equal to themselves, zero is now a logical object - zero or not zero. A 'nul' is unexplainable to a computer as it is not an empirical thing. Even a 0 in binary is something, it is just part of a code.

HCJ4 - Seminar 1

Freud

Psychoanalysis replaced hypnosis. Freud thought that if a patient talked about his/her problems, it would make them think about the things that they had previously suppressed. Freud encouraged patients to freak out - scream out a problem. Oasis song 'Go Let It Out' - any connection?

Freud said that humans are always unhappy due to being divided (alienated - Marx?). He claimed that we are not actually in control of what we are doing, but that we are being controlled. For example, I am not writing this blog post of my own accord, I am actually being controlled and that is what is making me do it. We don't make our own decisions and the worst part is that we have no idea that we are being controlled.

Freud extended this to everyday decisions. If we choose to wear a certain colour t shirt, we are actually doing it for a certain reason, maybe we wear yellow to look happy or black to give the impression that we are sad or even depressed.

Freud's psychoanalysis therapy worked on the premise that everyone has deep lying thoughts and feelings, the methods of therapy that Freud advocated would make those feelings come out, A patient would 'freak out'. Oasis song 'Go Let It Out' - any connection?


Husserl

Husserl was similar to Freud in that he devoted his life to a single project that would be the first scientific study of the human mind.

He focused on mathematics and his habitation theory was on the concept of numbers. His first book 'Philosophy of Arithemetic' sought to explain our numerical concepts by identifying the mental acts that are our psychological origins e.g. plurality was supposed to derive from a process of 'collective combination' which groups many items together.

Husserl was heavily criticised, but maintained a distinction between logic and psychology. He saw that philosophy could be linked to psychology and not logic. This is the opposite to how Frege saw things, he took the side of logic.

Husserl's phenomenology aimed to study the immediate data of consciousness, without reference to the extra mental world. For example, the intentionality of an experience is the same whether it is in a dream or not. If I see a unicorn in a dream, the intentionality of my thought is the same, regardless of the fact that unicorns don't exist.


Heidegger

He said that the first task of phenomenology was to study the concept of being. Heidegger came up with a new vocab for philosophy and one of those words was 'Dasein' which means 'being there'. Dasein is relative to the perceiver and his/her Dasein is personal to the individual e.g. doing DIY might be someones Dasein, but a total bore to another person, who's Dasein might be playing video games.

A Dasein is an activity that the person who is doing it is so wrapped up in the activity that it becomes the only thing in the entire world that matters to them, they can 'zone out' of everything and  focus on their Dasein. Being in your Dasein doesn't make existential pain go away, but it fades away slowly e.g. the person doing DIY will be so focused on the task he/she is doing that existence seems to have disappeared. If there was infinite time, there would be infinite boredom because according to Heidegger, time is boredom. If you are not absorbed in a task, you will become utterly bored.


Satre

Satre's pre war essays are detailed studies in the philosophy of mind in the phenomenological mould. Satre criticised Husserl in that he hadn't taken the phenomenological reduction far enough. Satre disagreed with Husserl's accepting that Cartesian ego (aware of its own thoughts and capable of disembodied existence) as a datum of consciousness. Satre said that when we are absorbed in what we are doing, we have not thought of ourselves and we only make the self an object when reflecting on the situation. The self lies outside of consciousness and therefore belongs to the transcendent world (a world of the superior. It goes beyond normal limits).

Satre showed that the perception that in imagination we are surveying the contents of an interior mental world is false. Satre said that we are imagining extra-mental objects, not internal images. An example is if we imagine a real person but who is absent, We are creating an object in the world when what we imagine doesn't exist.

According to Satre, emotions are misconcieved if we think of them as passive internal feelings. If we hate someone, we actually percieve them as hateful. Satre also used depression to explain a 'magical transformation' of the situations we are in. He said that depression 'casts a spell' on the world to make every effort to cope seem pointless.

Being, for Satre, is what precedes and underlies all the different kinds of things we encounter in consciousness. We sort things into classes depending on our interests and as instruments for our purposes. If we strip away all the distinctions, we're left with pure being. Being in itself - l'en soi. This is 'without reason, without cause, without necessity'.

Satre expanded a theme of Heidegger's. English philosophers laughed at 'nothing' noths' but Satre expanded on it to give it some significance. When consciousness articulates the world, it does so y means of negation. Satre uses the example of the concept of red. He divides the world into red and non-red. An example given in PMW is of chairs and tables, we must divide chairs into two groups - chairs and not-tables and therefore tables and not-chairs. Satre says that 'the being by which nothingness comes into the world must be its own nothingness'.

Another of Satre's ideas comes from Heidegger. For most objects essence precedes existence but Satre said in his book 'Exitenialism and Humanism', "there is at least one being whose existence comes before his essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man". Human freedom precedes the essence of man. Humans don't need to follow a set life path. Satre says that human freedom creates a fissure in the world of objects. The life of an individual is not determined in advance, neither by a creator nor by necessitating causes nor by absolute moral laws. We can't escape the necessity to choose though. Satre also talked about 'bad faith', this is when we are aware of our freedom but strive to reduce ourselves to mere objects.

The alternative attitude is to accept our freedom and accept responsibility for our actions. Satre says that there are psychical limits, but we will adapt our desires depending on the situations that we find ourselves in.

Satre introduced the idea of 'being-for-others-, this is the way in which we are presented to others and are observed by them; We become nothing more than an object for them - maybe of envy or contempt.