Philosophical Ramblings

Warning: This blog post has been written entirely from my memory. It was a test of my philosophical knowledge, so I apologise in advance if there are some slip ups, but with the exam looming tomorrow, I hope it is accurate.

Existentialism

All that matters is that we exist. Existentialists believe that we are defined by the decisions that we make, and it is the next decision which is the most important. We have to choose, and it is our choices that define us.

Key Existential figures are HEIDEGGER, SARTRE, NEITZCHE.

KANT claims consciousness is not individual, we are are composite of those around us: 'you wouldn't be you if you were alone'. Kant states that we cannot stand outside of consciousness, because this would make us unconscious, and therefore we would be a mind without properties. Kant rejects DESCARTES cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am, as he believes that thinking is not a predicate of being, you have to exist in order to think, and therefore supports I think therefore I am. Consciousness is not a predicate of existence, and consciousness is not proof of existence anyway.

HUSSERL is the founder of phenomenology, he studied the immediate data of consciousness. He also opposed DESCARTES theory that we can not trust our sensory experiences because an evil demon may be deceiving you, so what your senses perceive as reality could be a dream. Husserl however, said it made no difference whether the ideas present the real world or an hallucination, because the intentions are the same.

HEIDEGGER proclaimed the end of the metaphysical age, it was believed to have been triggered off by Kant. Heidegger states that being is not an abstract idea. He also rejects DESCARTES theory of Cartesian dualism, that the world is made up of two things: mind and body (spirit and physicality). Heidegger says this is nonsense how can we interact with the world if we are stuck in our minds? In place of consciousness, Heidegger speaks of Dasien, and this is our being in the world. We are thrown into this world, and things are constantly moving like a roller-coaster ride. Our engagement in the world is our existence. Heidegger says you have to find your Dasien, and be defined by your interaction in the world, rather then your facticity. Our facticity is not you, this is everything that has happened in the past up until this point, that has been given to us. But, we have no choice over our facticity e.g where we were born, or who our parents are, but we do have the choice over what our engagement in the world is, and Dasein is not thinking its about caring in the moment, it is non reflective. The choice is crucial to existential outlook, as SARTRE states the only thing we cannot escape is the need to choose. A das man attitude is someone who will allow their past to define them, e.g "i've had a tough upbringing". Heidegger says in order to be free you have to be fully absorbed in the task at hand, and if you are fully engaged you lack boredom and you no longer exist. To exist is to be bored, and boredom is the problem of being. There are three aspects of time:
1. Attunement - associated with the past, and the feeling of guilt
2. Being there - associated with the present, caring about the task in hand
3. Directedness - associated with the future, and the feeling of fear and dread

SARTRE said existence preceeds essence. We create our own purpose. As Simone de beauvoire said 'one is not born a woman but becomes one' - we choose how we want to behave and portray ourselves. The key theme here is choice, Sartre says the only thing you cannot escape is the need to choose. We as humans are a collection of decisions, the idea of recreating oneself is frightening, but if we avoid this freedom then Sartre says we are living in bad faith. We are living an inauthentic lifestyle if we choose to avoid the choice.

Albert Camus' book The Outsider illustrates an existential outlook well, the main character Meursault show little consideration to those around him, even after his mother dies, e.g when he thinks about not smoking for his mothers sake, but lights up a cigarette regardless. Instead of taking advice from his lawyer that he should tell the jury he killed the arab because he was suffering with the loss of his mother, he thinks for himself, takes the responsibility and chooses not too make that false excuse just to be let off. This shows that he was living in good faith, and an authentic lifestyle, because he made the choice for himself.

SARTRE states that the world is made up of two types of things, definable and undefinable. Chairs are definable objects their properties will never change, whereas humans are undefinable because we are changeable. The next decision we make is the most important.  Humanity for Sartre can be summed up in three terms:
1. Abandonment - no authority to guide us, we are on our own
2. Anguish - we must take responsibility, as we are fundamentally free
3. Despair - the realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want.

NIETZSCHE also adopts an existential outlook. He states that God is dead this is the start of freedom and the end of certainty. He says there is no authority or guiding spirit to tell us what is good and what is bad, we have to use our own inner morals to make decisions on what we think is good and bad, and this is known as the transvaluation of values. For Nietzsche human nature is not universal, we are not all the same and we all have different points of view and different moralities.

Logic and Mathematics 

The definition of logic it it's simplest terms is that it sorts out good inferences from bad. 

The first founder of Logic is Aristotle, but I am going to focus on the 2nd founder of Logic which is Frege. Frege systemised logic and concluded that it was apriori and analytic. He focused on validity and invalidity - in order to overcome a false conclusion you had to change the grammatical notions of subject and predicate to new logical notions argument and function. The subject in a predicate calculus must be an individual, whereas the predicate can be the class of all men. 

If I use the example: Her Majesty the Queen is Elizabeth

This part is the FUNCTION - the fixed component
This part is the ARGUMENT - it can be changed in order to make a true statement false
e.g her Majesty the Queen is Christina

But certain functions could hold their truth whatever the argument may be, for example:

Socrates is Mortal 
Argument can be changed and it will still maintain it's truth: Christina is mortal.
Therefore, Frege had to find a new logical notion to express generality - for all.

(x)(x = mortal)

MILL was an empiricist, he believed that knowledge was derived from experience. He disagreed with Frege, and said that logic was a posteriori. He thought science and mathematics were derived from experience. 

Mill states that every number asserts a physical fact, one being singular, two a pair, 12 a dozen etc

Each number denotes a physical phenomena but connotes what makes it a physical property, e.g two denotes a pair, and connotes what makes it a pair; and this would be physically distinguishable to three. But Mill admits that it would be difficult for the mind to distinguish between 102 apples and 103. 

Natural numbers are words used to count things. There are three types of numbers:

1. Natural numbers

2. Institutions of perfect platonic and harmonic worlds

3. Logical objects derived purely by syntax 

Natural Numbers - these are number we don't have to count. If i was to walk into the kitchen and see three cups sitting on the side I would not have to physically count 1,2,3 my mind would be able to naturally know, and some people can see up to 7 objects without counting. Stone age tripes and apes appeared to be able to judge empirical pluralities, they would use pluraities which are numerous phrases instead of exact numbers e.g "one thing", "more than one thing", "lots of things".

Pythagoreanism - focuses on prime numbers, those that are indivisible. Pythagoreanism was founded by Pythagoras, who worshipped the triangle. The number three is a magical number, it is used in arts: three part drama, in music the triad, but it also has religious significance to Christians: The trinity, jesus rose on the third day, cross made with three fingers etc. For muslims, number 1 is the holy number, one god, one unity, Allah. But for the greeks, they feared the number one, and began counting with the number two, as they only regard plural numbers as natural numbers. 'One' and 'not one' are in a different logical category. 

The problem of nothing and zero remained unsolved for thousands of years until Frege came along. Zero was first introduced in India, the problem is that zero = nothing, but nothing = something. This is contra to Aristotle's Law, which was solved by Leibniz who claimed that objects could contain their own negation. Modern philosophers now regard zero as a natural number, logically derived from 1-1=0 To say that there is "nothing" is just a philosophy absurdity. 

Frege's axiom: all things that are equal are identical to themselves. 

All pairs are equal to other pairs

One cannot be associated with anything else

Zero is the null class, it's empty, things are not equal to themselves 

Therefore zero exists as a logical object.  

The New Industrial State

The New industrial state was written in 1967 by John Kenneth Galbraith. It explores the economics of production and the affect large companies could have over the state. GALBRAITH argues that the industrial system is controlled by a technostructure, which aims to maintain control over the companies. A technostructure is a group of technicians, which have considerable influence and control on its economy, these group of elites are decision makers, in an industrial system the decisive unit is a group not an individual.  

The biggest change to the economy is the advance in sophisticated technology. Planning is the core component in an industrial system, and advanced technology has led to increased bureaucratic planning. 

Galbraith states that planning is economically motivated, but more so technologically motivated.

The state is in charge of maintaining aggregate demand at a high level to avoid unemployment. During the time of the great depression, the economy collapsed and unemployment was at it's highest. KEYNES had a solution to this, he is the great god of economics. During the time of the depression everyone was willing to work for less, as there was surplus in labour. Everyone needed a job, and no one could afford to buy the products. Demand was less and as a result businesses supplied less, meaning less workers were needed, either their wages had to be cut, or they would lose their job entirely. Keynes solution to this was to print more money, by injecting money into the economy, the government could give businesses subsides to employ more people or set up government schemes. Military Keynesian helped boost America's economic growth because billions was spent on defence each year, providing many jobs.

The 1950's was an era of American prosperity. However, Keynes' 'managed society' received many attacks, from the far left and far right, the likes of Heidegger, Sartre, and Fanon, who labelled American civilization as bureaucratic technological militaristic nihilism. Nihilist are people that don't believe in anything! Hayek also criticised Keynes as he thought he was corrupt and that we would all eventually be ruled by bureaucrats. WEBER states that there is a rise in bureaucracy, and by 'rise' he means ruled by officials. Heidegger states that society is doomed, because it is pointless, and we have no purpose. 

Totalitarianism 

Totalitarianism is all about control. Hannah Arendt stated that 20th century totalitarian regimes were completely different to anything that had come before. The main purpose of a totalitarian regime is to utterly destroy the individual, Plato's republic is an example of this, peoples individuality is totally stripped away, and every aspect of life is controlled. [Hitlers Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Russia and other examples]

The state is everything. As Mussolini said 'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state'. 

Arendt believed that imperialism was the cause of totalitarianism, because it contained similar traits which are explicit in the new regimes, e.g development of racism which grouped people and decided on their superiority based on their genes. 

Our individuality makes us difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement. There are two methods which can be used: Terror and Ideology.

Terror - This is not just about murdering vast numbers of people, it is about destroying their abilty to act against the state, and degrading them.

Ideology - This is about eliminating an individuals capacity of thought and experience. 

Ideology is a specialist knowledge, POPPER pointed out that it was used as a justification for rulers, to avoid responsibility. Instead of people thinking for themselves they are following.

An example of this is MILGRIMS shock experiment whereby there is a teacher and a learner, the learner is in fact an actor. There is an authority figure, telling the teacher to administer potentially fatal shocks to the learner when they get an answer wrong. Milgrim's findings showed that 2/3 of the people continued on when told by the authority to "continue" and "you must go on", showing that even normal Americans were capable of committing acts against their conscious, simply because they were following instructions by an authority man in a white coat. 

Arendt says that the first step Nazi's made on the road to the Final Solution was to deny Jews citizenship, by making them stateless, and denying them rights. These stateless people were perfect victims for a totalitarian regime. 

EICHMANN - 11th May 1960, Israeli secret service kidnapped Nazi figurative Adolf Eichmann. He was trialled in Jerusalem for the crimes he committed during the final solution. His main responsibility was the transportation of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps. His defence was that he was following orders from the law, and Arendt points out that he had lived his whole life according to a kantian definition of duty.  

She was shocked to hear him speak in endless cliches "proud to be a law abiding citizen". Eichmann was blindly following orders, but it was the ideology that blinded him. Arendt agreed that Eichmann should be put to death for the crime he committed, but disagreed with the reasoning. She believed his true crime was not thinking, and not choosing. She adopted an existential outlook and said that he had the choice to do what he did, and he ignored it and passed it on by following the officials. SARTRE would classify Eichmann as living in bad faith because he chose to ignore the choice, and became subject to slave morality by following rules and not making decisions for himself.

The Eichmann trial served three purposes:

1. To trial him for his crimes

2. To educate the world on the nature of the holocaust

3. To legitimise the Jewish state

The New Journalism 

A brief history in America - It all started with the Penny Papers, which were worth 1p, they were controlled and funded by political parties that wanted to put forward a point of view. In the mid 19th Century, The Associated Press became more objective, the news was not one sided, it was truthful and objective and this increased readership and make it more profitable. In the late 19th Century The Yellow Press evolved, and this was the new journalism without soul. Newspapers became sensationalised, they were extremely colourful like frozen TV, huge headlines, shocking pictures, exclusive stories which were commonly on sin sex and violence. 

Two journalists during this period were William Randolph Hearst from the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Both journalists resorted to sensationalised news, because there was a competition for readership. 

The yellow press was the start of the new journalism, events were recorded in a formulaic way: who, what, when, where, why? Journalists were mirroring the style of events and used real dialogue. This new approach allowed the real representation of events to bleed into the copy. 

America in the 1960s and 70s was a turbulent time. There was disastrous wars, serious military threats overseas, the hope of John F Kennedy was destroyed when he was assinated in 1963, wars in Vietnam, controversy of the draft, and Muhammad Ali refused to be conscripted. The main reasons for this turbulence were:

1. Demographics - there was a huge spike in the population, the baby boomers post WW2 were in their teens by the 60s, and they created a powerful youth culture. The young people were changing society, they became the voice of radical political change. 

2. Sexual Revolution - Sexual freedom, woman could take the pill. The use of contraception gave woman the choice, they didn't have to marry the first man they slept with, and they could have many sexual relationships if they chose to.

3. The student movement, brought about world wide protests for civil rights, black power, the use of LSD was big, it was seen as a way to escape heirachy and have 'real' experiences. The prohibitions of drugs brought about subcultures, such as hippies. 

4. Music was a core element, protests songs were drug fuelled. It was a full frontal attack at the norms.

Influence of existentialists - Heidegger authenticity, and Sartre's bad faith.

Two key themes are choice and freedom.

Fanon's path to freedom was the act of violence, and this violence was the extreme choice. 

Anti-establishment feeling, was the idea that there was a policeman inside our heads, that had to be destroyed.

New Journalism was about representing real people in the real world. Examples of this breed were journalists Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe. There was a shift in telling to seeing. Marshall McLuhan outlined hot and cold media. Hot media was explicit it was telling  whereas, cold media was ambiguous, interpretable and more so seeing. 

Tom Wolfe was heavily influenced by Emile Zola, who was a natural realist. Wolfe outlined that features should have a scene by scene construction, paying close attention to small details, right down to peoples mannerisms and gestures, to allow people to live the story not just tell it. Wolfe shows this in his article Radical Chic by telling us small details such as the food in the penthouse suite, creating a sense of atmosphere  Wolfe outlines that they should be a third person point of view, and most importantly that real dialogue is included. This is shown when there are elements such as "Mmmmmmmmmmmm" in radical chic highlighting the tasty delicacies. Also explicit in Hunter S Thompson's piece Kentucky Derby as scene by scene narrative takes us through the story from the airport to the derby, dialogue and graphic detail right down to his whiskey stained notebook brings alive the drunken fuelled weekend. 

The New Journalism

Brief History

Journalism evolved over the years, but it all had to begin somewhere, so lets start with the old journalism.  In America there were The Penny Papers, these could be brought for 1p they were controlled and funded by political parties putting forward a point of view. This was where is started, it was the first written material for the public.

In the Mid 19th century, objectivity becomes more of a factor because of the creation of wire services - The Associated Press. In order to make journalism profitable, it had to be objective and true, or it just simply wouldn't sell!

The late 19th Century brought about The Yellow Press, this was the first real change towards news journalism. It was the idea of making newspapers more sensationalised. By this I mean full of pictures, interesting shocking content, emotive headlines, big striking pictures and exclusive stories. Tabloid press is sensationalised, it is colourful and can be thought of as Frozen Television. The yellow Press was known as the new journalism without soul all the stories were about sin, sex and violence. William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of The New York World were two key journalists in this period. They hit a news war, when the need for readership became more competitive, the competition to get the best inside scoop of a story, the original quotes and present the real action drama.

Journalists are there to record the events in a formulaic way. As it has been implemented into us also, we have to use the news pyramid and the five W's: who, what, when, where, why? The New Journalism was an attempt to record events that mirrored the language and style of the events, and then let that real representation bleed into the copy.

Political and Cultural Scene 

In the 1960s and 70s in America, there was a great deal of political and social upheaval, there was foreign wars, and serious military threats overseas. The 1960's was a turbulent time, the great hope of John F Kennedy was destroyed when he was assinated in 1963. There were disastrous wars in Vietnam, and huge controversy of the draft. Muhammad Ali refused to be conscripted.

Reasons for turbulence in the 1960s:
Demographics: After World War II there was a baby boom, this spike in the population created a powerful youth culture. The baby boomers hit their teens in the 60s, they would march for civi rights, and be the voice of radical political change. It was the younger people that were changing society.

Sexual Revolution: It was legally accepted in American for woman to use the contraception pill in order to let woman take control of their reproductive system for the first time. This sexual freedom, allowed woman to have the choice, it meant people could have partners and not have children, or have casual sex with many people. This refers to an Existential view point, they believe we are defined by our decisions, and it is the next decision which is the most important. The freedom of choice is crucial, and Sartre believed ignoring the fact you must choose would be living in bad faith.

The Student Movement brought about world wide protests, for civil rights, black power and the use of LSD to access altered thinking of counterculture. LSD became big, it was seen as a way to escape controlling heirachy and have 'real' experiences. Prohibitions of drugs created subcultures, such as the hippies, communes and collectives, much of youth culture was 'other'.

Music was central for Sartre Jazz was authentic  the music of 1960s was a full frontal attack on the norms; it was drug fuelled, and fed the student movements. They were protest songs wit an aim to subvert and be political. - Gill Scott Heron: The Revolution will not be Televised. 

Influence of Existentialism

Key to existentialism is Heidegger's authenticity and Sartre's bad faith. The main ideas were Freedom and choice, for example Fanon's view of a path to freedom via violence. For Fanon the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice, choice that has real immediate impact. Anti-establishment feeling - the idea that a "There is a policeman inside your head
- he must be destroyed" began to seep into journalism and bleed into the copy.

New forms of Journalism began to emerge, Journalists began to focus on setting, plot, sounds, feelings, direct quotes and images, while ensuring that it was all true, and stuck to the facts. Examples of this new breed were journalists such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer.    

This alternative journalism was personal and expressed as a point of view. It was a shift in 'Telling' to 'seeing'. There was two types of media according to Marshall McLuhan: hot and cold media. Hot media                     is explicit it is telling you how it is, whereas cold media is more seeing, it's ambiguous and allows you to interpret it more.

Tom Wolfe was an explicit journalist, that was influenced by Emelie Zola. Zola was a master of natural realism, painting the scene vividly. Features dramatically shifted, they were real and included dialogue. The authentic way was to portray the real world and real people, paying extreme close attention to detail. Features should represent the way people speak, including a scene by scene construction, with a third person point of view. They should include realistic dialogue about how they behave paying attention to fine detail such as their everyday habits. This will allow them to express what they are truly like, and allow for the public to interpret it for themselves.

Totalitarianism

The key question here is: Can good people do evil things?

Totalitarian Regimes e.g Plato's Republic have control over every aspect of life, people's individuality is totally stripped away. Against these ideas are: contract theory, idea that the powers of the state should be limited (even by Hobbes), and liberalism, personal freedom protected by the state: "A life of liberty, in the pursuit of happiness and property".

Hannah Arendt argued that 20th century totalitarian regimes were different to anything that had come before, the main purpose of the regime is to utterly destroy the individual.

Mussolini - "Fascism is for liberty".
The doctrine of Fascism: The state is everything. "outside the state there can be neither individuals or groups. Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Hannah Arendt thought that imperialism that had come before made totalitarian happen, it contained many traits which the new regimes could use. For example one trait is racism, within the racist movement you are superior based on your genes, not on anything you have done.

Our individuality makes us difficult to control, and gather up into a collective movement.  There are two methods to destroy this individuality: Terror and Ideology 

The purpose of terror is not to just murder vast numbers of people but also to destroy their individuality and ability to act against the state. Ideology eliminates the need and capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves. Orwell: war is peace; freedom is slavery; poverty is plenty. Ideology is also a type of specialist knowledge, as popper pointed out it is often used as a justification for the authority of rulers, and to avoid responsibility.

Ideology frees you from common sense and reality, you don't think you follow. When you are cut away from common sense anything can become possible. The norms are imposed on you from the state which sets limits to what is possible.

Hannah Arendt states that the first move Nazi's made on the road to the 'Final solution' was to deny Jews citizenship by making them stateless and removing their rights. These stateless people were perfect victims for a totalitarian regime. She highlights that the state is fragile, how quickly groups and whole people can fall through the cracks even in the heart of Europe. To be a civilized human we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures. We need these to give us access to common sense and a shared reality.

Control Language
Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes to attempt to control minds, by manipulating language. Thought takes place in purely linguistic terms; to control language is to control thought. This therefore meant that mind control may be possible through manipulation of language.

Personal Responsibility in a dictatorship - Would I collaborate? 
On 11th May 1960 Israeli Secret Service kidnapped Nazi figurative Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. He stood trial in Jerusalem for crimes he had committed during the "final solution". Eichmann's main responsibly during the Holocaust was to organise the transportation of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps.

The Eichmann trail served three purposes:
1. Trial him for his crimes
2. Educate the world about the nature of the holocaust
3. Legitimise the Jewish state

For Arendt it was a shock to Eichmann, he spoke in endless cliches: proud of being a "law abiding citizen". She concluded that it was not necessary to possess great wickedness to commit great crimes. Arendt agreed with the judgement that he should be put to death, but disagreed with the reasoning, she believed Eichmann's crime was not thinking. He didn't make his own choices and choice is crucial an existentialists point of view. Eichmann did not choose, he simply followed the state. Eichmann followed Kant's categorical imperative, he invoked duty in an effort to explain his version of Kantianism.

As Satre states, the only thing you cannot escape is choice. What had become banal was the failure to think, Aredt is saying that we must look to our personal judgement and think in order to know how to act rather then follow the law. Sometimes disobedience is exactly our responsibly, and this is what Eichmann failed to realise.

The New Industrial State

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the The New Industrial State in 1967, it explored the economics of production and the effect large corporations could have over the state. Galbraith argues the the 'industrial system' is controlled by a technostructure rather than shareholders, he claims that the techno structure does not act to maximise profit but principally to maintain the organisation and ensure its further expansion. By 'industrial system' he means the companies that control two thirds of their output. The key aim of technostructure is to maintain its control over the company, the preference of financing via retained profit rather thank borrowing from banks. 

The New Industrial State asserts that within the industrial sector of modern capitalist societies, the traditional mechanism of supply and demand is succeeded by the planning of large corporations, using things like advertising and vertical integration. The companies of the industrial system facilitate a system of informal price-fixing and price stability to ensure long-term planning is feasible. 

The industrial state has near control of its capital supply, significant control of its labour supply and considerable influence within the state. 

The problems of The New Industrial State are as follows:

1. Inflation

2. Increased role of the state

3. Destruction of profitability

4. Keynesian Military 

Change and the Industrial System
The biggest change to the economy system is the advances in sophisticated technology. The state is perceived to be responsible for maintaining aggregate demand within the economy at a high level in order to minimise unemployment. Before World War Two there was a serious recession.

Industrial systems consists of 500-600 corporations in sectors such as communication, production and distribution. By 'industrial system' Galbraith means companies which control two thirds of their output.

Technology leads to planning, and planning is the central component of the Industrial system. Long term planning is necessary in order for production to exist. There is a clear association between planning and size, without large corporations there would be no technological advanced products.

Advanced technology and specialisation leads to increased bureaucratic planning. Galbraith argues in his book that planning is economically motivated, but is even more technologically motivated. He outlines three factors involved in the strategy of planning to ensure profit:

1. Integration

2. Production

3. Distribution 

Technostructure 
Within the industrial system the decisive unit of decision making is the group not an individual. The replacement of the free market with a planned solution puts action and decision making beyond the reach of an individual. It is no longer realistic for a superior to overrule a group decision. Technostructure is the collective term for all those involved in group decision-making and the organisation they form.

The goals of a technostructure are as follows:

1. Survival - this relies on a secure minimum of earnings, if they are not met there are two threats:

(a) interference from stockholders

(b) in absence of insufficient retained profits the need to appeal to outside sources of investment. 

2. Growth - measured in sales volumes

3. Technical virtuosity 

4. Increased rate of dividends 

The basic need for technostructure is to prevent its revenue source from falling beneath a lower threshold, this require the control of prices. In order to protect the firm from heavy losses large and long term investments, prices, demand and revenue must be guaranteed. 

The purpose of demand management is to ensure that a sufficient quantity of product is bought at a controlled price.

Capital and PowerEconomic goods are made by basic categories of inputs: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Power was shifting from land to capital as capital became the hardest to replace.
Unemployment is the result when insufficient savings are invested and aggregate demand dips below production. The advances of Automation now means that workers are being replaced by machines, and labour and capital suffer as a result. Power rests with the decision makers.

Employment and Unemployment

There is a clear distinction between education and skill, skilled and unskilled blue collar works are becoming redundant. Whereas the technostructure has highly educated individuals; the importance of education is on the rise.

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My notes this week are all a little discombobulated, I've randomly pieced together some pointers from the lecture:

Weber - Bureaucracy - This is the main source of legal power, for example the lawyers make the rules we have to follow.

When capitalism ended there was mass unemployment and the economy collapsed, but this was solved by Keynesianism The 1950's was the era of American Prosperity, the USA adopted Keynesian. Keynes is the great god. He discovered that Marx was wrong because you can add value through marketing, Marx did no predict bureaucracy would take over capitalism.

The critics of 'managed' society 
Far left/far right - American civilization is" bureaucratic technological militaristic nihilism" It includes Heidegger, Sartre, Maoism, Franz Fanon.

Left - Maoism - third world-ism  ecology, feminism, transvaluation  anti globalisation as anti-capitalism, green movement.

Right - Racial disintegration, cultural decadence, economic parasitism, loss of national identity, globalisation as disintegrated, relative and absolute economic decline of the west.

Nihilist's do not believe in anything.
Heidegger believes society is a death machine, and that it is doomed! There is no point or purspose.
A bureaucratic power structure - democracy as a sifting "meritocracy", ruled by a technocratic elite of economic planners, scientists, generals, security experts and propagandists. 

Hayek predicted that Keynesianism was corrupt.
Nietzsche - You're a slave if you're not prepared to die, it is either slavery or death.

Existentialism

Existentialism is about who we are, and our existence in the world. Every decision you make is who you are, and it's our next decision which is the most important. Existentialists believe we are nothing but a collection of decisions, and it is our decisions which define us. The key figures in the development of the Existentialism principles were Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's most notable idea is that "God is dead", and this marks the start of freedom and the end of certainty. The idea that we are our own God, we have no authority telling us what is right and what is wrong, allowing us to have the freedom to find value for ourselves. As a child, you seek certainty, you want guidance and security, the assurance that someone is there to hold your hand, but as an adult we become confused, and discover that there is no absolute or certainty in the world. Because there is no value, we can choose what's good and bad and make our own decisions; this is known as the transvaluation of values.

For Nietzsche human nature is not universal. He believes that we are not all the same, we all have different points of view and different moralities. Everyone has their own internal morality, we don't have a God, there is no one to give us guidelines, we make our decisions based on our own inner morals. Different people find and follow different conceptions of excellence.

The Ubermensch overcomes what has so far defined us as a human and these are the choices we make based on our individual internal values. The superman or the overman ignores this and find his place in the world according to his own will. - The will to power.

Heidegger

Heidegger's most famous book 'Being and Time' is a book about existence. Heidegger's interest lies in what it means to exist, and the problems of human life. He states that we must question the nature of the being before we can investigate it: What is it that exists? What is it like to be human? This is the creature he calls Dasien, which is in each and everyone of us. 

Heidegger attacks Descarte's theory of Cartesian dualism, the idea that the world is made up of two things: mind and body, essentially spirit and physicality. Heidegger thinks this is a complete disaster! He questions: How do we control our body if mind is one thing and body is another? If we are stuck in our minds then how can we interact with the world? David Hume just says you can't, the future is unknowable, and Berkeley says: "all that we see is a dream".

In place of consciousness and subjectivity Heidegger talks about Dasein, this means 'being in the world', it denotes an engagement with the world. For instance as a journalist you may say "I'm in Journalism" denoting that you are involved within the journalism industry, our existence is our interaction with the world, and our engagement with the world relates to the choices that we make. I chose to study journalism, therefore that is a large part of my engagement in the world. If the world was not there then there would be no existence, Heidegger disagrees with mind and body, there is no Dasein without the world. 

The decisions we make, define us. If we were to enter a scanner all our decisions that we have made up until this point would show up, and it is these choices which we have the power to choose. In contrast, Slave morality is following rules, it is an inauthentic life, a life where we are worrying about other people and not making our own decisions; known as the Das man self. It is the social self not one owns self. The decisions you make are because you are conscious of what others may think e.g "I cannot be seen wearing this" it is not you making the decisions, you are a das man because you are worried about what others may think, and you want to fit in. If we want to become an ubermensch we must ignore slave morality and overcome it. 

Facticity is the parts of one self which are simply given to us, everything that has happened up until this point in life is our facticity. A das man attitude believes you are defined by your past, "I had a tough up-bringing" - this is you being defined by your past, your facticity. But "We are thrown into the world", we cannot base our lives on our facticity because we don't have a choice of where we are born or who are our parents are for example. We are born with a blank slate, tabula rasa, there is no purpose or reasoning to why we are thrown into the world, it is simply moral luck. Your facticity is not you, it is purely blind luck. To live an authentic life you have to over come it, and be defined by your engagement in the world. 

Sartre 

"Existence proceeds essence" - We create our own purpose. 

Simone de Beauvoir - "One is not born a woman, but becomes one", the way in which you act and present yourself is your own choice. 

The argument with existentialism is that the world becomes absurd, there is not guiding spirit and no teleological driving force. Things happen that are good and bad without reason and so life is in some ways ridiculous. Heidegger's existentialism was right wing (Nazi) whereas Sartre's was left wing. 

Sartre says the life of a person is not determined in advance by God or moral laws. He says that the only thing you cannot escape is the need to choose, you have to make your own choices, without guidance. The possibility of re-creating oneself is frightening, at any available opportunity people will try to avoid this freedom. This is 'bad faith'. 

We have no obligations in life, just because we are in a certain role, e.g a student, this does not mean you have to attend lectures or take exams, you always have the choice. People objectify themselves in a moment of choice. Take the scenario of a man and a woman, if a man tries to flirt with a woman, and puts his hand on her hand, if she keeps her hand their it suggests she likes him, but if she moves it away it suggests she is not interested. But, if the woman is not interested but keeps her hand there, she has chosen to ignore his advances, and therefore has objectified her hand. This is known as bad faith because she has chosen to avoid the choice.  

The universe is made up of things that are defined and things that are not defined. For example, a chair is a being in itself, it is an object that is defined. However, humans cannot be defined, we are changeable, whereas a chair will only ever be a chair. Human beings are undefined we can change ourselves from one day to the next, simply by the next decision we make, and this is the process of re-creating oneself. Another example is a homosexual man, he shouldn't define himself as a gay man as this can change, simply on the next decision he makes, he may fall in love with a woman. The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by our choices. 

Humanity for Sartre is:

Abandonment - There is no one to guide us on how we act: God is dead, God does not guide our actions, there is no divine set of rule to follow, we are on our own. 

Anguish - Humans are fundamentally free, but the responsibility of freedom is enormous, we have no excuse we are responsible for everything we are, we cannot choose our past but we can choose how we feel and act to every situation. 

Despair - the realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we choose how we react to the set back. 

"You are free therefore choose."

Logic and Mathematics - Seminar Paper

Logic

Frege becamethe second founder of Logic, after Aristotle. He investigated and systemised logic which led him to conclude that logic was a priori and analytic. The definition of logic in its simplest form is that it sorts out good inferences from bad. For Frege the most important part of logic was validity and invalidity of a particular form of inference, shown through syllogism. For example, a valid inference would be:

All cats have fur

Some Cats are black

Some cats have black fur

Whereas an invalid inference would be:

All cats have fur

Some cats are black

All cats have black fur

Frege devised a system to overcome the difficulty of invalid inference that lead to false conclusions, in his book Begriffsschrift he explained that in order to overcome a false conclusion you had to replace the grammatical notions of subject and predicate with new logical notions which he referred to as argument and function. For example take the statement:

“Her Majesty The Queen is Elizabeth”

The function in this statement is “Her Majesty The Queen” and the argument is “Elizabeth” as this part can be altered thus turning a true statement into a false one. For instance if I changed the argument to Sandra then the statement would read “Her Majesty the Queen is Sandra” and therefore that would be wrong. In the phrase “Socrates is mortal” the function would be “is mortal” and the argument would be “Socrates”as no matter what name was put in replace of the argument the function would maintain its truth. (x)(x = mortal) The subject in the predicate calculus is always an individual entity, never a group or class. An individual man can be treated as a subject but the class of all men must be treated as a predicate. E.g if M = predicate for “to be a man” and a = the individual “Socrates” then Ma denotes that “Socrates is a man”. a = the argument, and M can be applied to any individual.

Russell and Whitehead carried Frege’s work forward, in the work ‘The Saga Principia Mathematicia”, which contains a systematisation of logic. In brief, both propositions ‘p’ and ‘q’ must be true in order for ‘p + q’ to be true. Frege, Russell and Whitehead, all hoped that they had established that arithmetic was a branch of logic.

Epistemology

Mill’s System of Logic outlined the doctrine that knowledge is derived from experience. In contrast to Frege, Mill believed that logic propositions were a posteriori, affirming his support towards empiricism.Mill claimed that science and mathematics were derived from experience. To focus in on mathematics, Mill claimed that each number involved an assertion of a physical fact: one being singular, two being a pair, twelve being a dozen etc, the numbers two, three, four etc all denote physical phenomena, and connote a physical property. For example, two denotes all pairs of things and this connotes physical pairs of things, e.g two apples, which is different to three apples. However, Mill admits that senses find it difficult to distinguish between 102 apples and 103 apples. Mill’s thesis was that arithmetic is an empirical science.

John Henry Newman was part of the same empiricist tradition as Mill, he believed that the only direct acquaintance we have with things outside of ourselves is through our senses. Reason is the faculty of the mind that we have to use in order to discover knowledge of things external to us, such as facts and events that are beyond the range of senses. Newman states that when we reason we have to use two different functions: inference(from premises) and assent (to a conclusion) and they are very different.  Assent may be given without adequate evidence or argument which can often lead to error.

The difference between knowledge and certitude is that if you know ‘p’ then ‘p’ is true. If I am certain of something, then I believe in its truth, even if my mind should let the belief drop. But what looks like certitude can always turn out to be a mistake. Take for example the criminal justice system, if a jury finds a defendant guilty, then you believe that it is true, however there are known cases in the world where this has been a mistake, a miscarriage of justice. Therefore how can you hold certainty when in the past you may have thought you were certain about an untruth?

Frege on Logic, Psychology and Epistemology

When Frege was writing his logicist works from Begriffsschrit, he was not interested in epistemology;he was more concerned with setting out the relationship between epistemology and other related disciplines. He was more anxious to show the difference in nature and role between logic and psychology; adapting Kant’s distinction between a prior and a posteriori knowledge. Knowledge is belief that is both true and justified.

If the proposition is a mathematical one the justification must be mathematical. Mathematicians have sensations and mental images that play a part in the thoughts of someone calculating, but this is not what arithmetic is about. For instance at school, when you had to mental arithmetic in class, most likely everyone had a different method and mental picture to help them process an answer; different mathematicians have different images of the same number e.g 100 or C. Psychology is interested in the cause of our thinking, whereas mathematics is interested in the proof of our thoughts.

If humans have evolved then there is no doubt that consciousness has evolved. If mathematics is a matter of sensation and ideas then we should warn astronomers away from drawing conclusions from events in the distant past.  Frege brings out the absurdity of evolution by using the example of 2 X 2 = 4. How do we know that this proposition already existed in a distant past as 2 X 2 = 5.  

Frege claimed that there was two separate worlds, an interior private world, and an exterior public world. Although mental images are private, thoughts are the common property to us all. Perceptible things of the physical world are accessible to us all, for example we can all see the same houses, but the inner world of senses, impressions, images, feelings desires and wishes are what we may call ideas. Frege accepts the Cartesian distinction between matter (the world of things) and mind (the world of ideas), and similarly to Descartes accepts that there needs to be an answer to idealist scepticism: the thesis that nothing exists except ideas.

Frege concludes that either our ideas which are the object of our awareness is false or all knowledge and perception is restricted to the range of our ideas. For example if we live in a materialistic world where we want a fast car, then our perception will be bound by this idea, whereas someone who may be a a nature lover may not pay attention to the fast car as it is not an idea of relevance to them, and therefore would notice the willow tree. Picture a filter, if we held up a colour filter in front of our eyes, our self consciousness would only filter the ideas that we are interested in and therefore bound our knowledge to these ideas.

If there is no owner of ideas, then there are no ideas, there cannot be an experience without someone to experience it. For instance if my hand touches a hot pan, then that pain and burn is felt, what is felt therefore must have someone feeling it; and this is an object of my thought, something that is not yet my idea.

Whereas Descartes’s ego was a non-ideal subject of thinking, Frege’s ego is a non-ideal object of thought.Its existence disproves the thesis that only what is part of the content of my consciousness can be the object of my thought. If there is no such thing as science, then Frege maintained that a third realm must be recognised; in addition to the world of things and the world of ideas.  This third realm is the realm of objective thought, it is the ego as the owner of ideas which is an important part of this realm.

Frege states that we are not owners of our thoughts, like we are owners of our ideas. We do not have thoughts, thoughts are what we grasp, and what we grasp is already there, we simply just take possession of it. Both Descartes and Frege accept a division between a public world of physical things and a private world of human consciousness, they appeal to the third world in away that rejoins what was separated.

Mathematics and Numbers

Mathematics is the science of quantity. There are two branches of mathematics: arithmetic and geometry. Until the lecture last week, I had never given numbers much thought, so it was interesting to look deeper into  arithmetic.There are natural numbers, these are where we use words to count things, there are three approaches towards them. 

1. They are natural

2. They are intuitions of a harmonic perfect platonic world

3. They are abstract logical objects constructed purely from syntax 

Syntax is a set of rules that modify the meaning of symbols, words and numbers. 

Numerical naturalism

Numbers that are natural are those that we do not have to count. For instance when you walk into a room, there may be three people sat down at a table, we don't have to  physically count one two three, as our mind can picture it, and some people can picture up to seven objects without needing to count. These small number words exist as a concept. Even apes and stone age tribes appear to be able to judge empirical plurality, simple number systems,such as “one thing” and “more than one thing” and “many things” are the only numbers they need. If you put a bunch of bananas in front of an ape they would classify it as lot of bananas, but if you put nothing in front of them they would know that there was an absence of bananas. Plurality is not exact numbers they are numerous phrases such as "few" or"many" or "more than one".

Pythagoreanism 

Pythagoras was the founder of the religious movementphythagoreanism.

Prime numbers are indivisible numbers such as 3 and 5, they are only divisible by 1 and itself. All the other numbers are known as composite numbers, and these are rational numbers that represent geometrical ratio's. 

Pythagoras worshipped the religion of triangles. Three is known as the magic number, think of all the examples we use in everyday like: rule of thirds, three chord triad, three part drama. 

Christians are obsessive over the number three, a few examples include: The Trinity - The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, Jesus rose on the third day and the sign of the cross is made with three fingers.However, Muslims worship the number one, as they believe in unity, one god, one substance: Allah. Contrasting this, the Greeks feared the number one, they disregarded it and referred to the number two as the first number. 

The problem of nothing and Zero

The concept of zero came from India, zero is nothing but nothing is something, which is contra to Aristotle's law of contradiction; this was the belief that something could not be itself and another thing at the same time. The problem of this law was solved by Leibnitzs monad's, who stated that an object can contain it owns negation. 

Modern philosophers consider zero as a natural number, logically derived as 1-1 = 0 "Nothing" is a philosophy absurdity, and the qualitative gap between nothing which is 0, and something which is 1 is is big as the universe. 

What does 1 really mean?

If you add 1 + 1 it doubles in size, but if you have 102 apples and add one which is the example used earlier then it' s an infinitely small increment. You cannot find the noumena of numbers, they can not be "things in themselves".

The problem of zero remained unsolved for thousands of years, until Gottlob Frege. He wrote many influential books such as 'The foundations of Arithmetic' where he links logic and arithmetic.

Frege's Method

Frege's axiom is that all things which are identical are equal to themselves. He followed that all things that are pairs are identical to all other pairs, regardless of the what they pairs were of. 

The class of all pairs can be given a nominal symbol - (2) whereas (1) is the class of all things that are not associated with other things. The class of (0) is the category that is empty known as The Null this is the class where all possible objects are not equal to themselves. Relating back to the axiom there are no such objects, by definition. 

Existentialism - Being and Nothingness

"Existence precede's essence" - Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Existentialist's believe that you are here in the moment and all that matters is that we know we exist.
They reject Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think therefore I am", instead they support "I am therefore I think" reducing it down to "I think", which essentially is "there are thoughts". They reject also the narrative "I", as they do not regard people as self contained; rather that we are a composite of other people around us. You wouldn't be you if you were just on your own.  Consciousness is not individual, there is no "I", the transcendent Cartesian ego cannot be found anywhere.

The journey begins with Kant, he outlines in his famous work 'The Critique of Pure Reason' that
existence is not a predicate (purpose/result) of consciousness or being. Kant believed that existence is a pre-condition of consciousness, and that consciousness is not a proof of existence anyway, consciousness "just is", it's not the result of anything, or the cause of a particular thing.

How could there not be consciousness? The opposite of consciousness is unconscious, which is a mind without properties, therefore we cannot stand outside of consciousness. Just how the opposite of nothing is not something, similarly to how dog is not the opposite of cat, nor is it a not-cat.

Husserl wrote a famous book titled "Psychology from an empirical standpoint" which became the foundation of modern phenomenology*. The essence of his phenomenology is the study of immediate data of consciousness. For Husserl it makes no difference whether the ideas I have represent the real world, or whether they are hallucinations. For example, there is a table in front of me, whether this phenomena is real or an hallucination is irrelevant, to Husserl it did not matter.
*phenomenology is the study of the structure of experience and consciousness.

Heidegger proclaimed the end of the metaphysical age from Plato to Husserl, the change began in the 1790s with Kant who they believed triggered the destroying of metaphysics. The Logical positivists in Vienna and Cambridge were saying the same thing at the time. In the metaphysical age, objects exist independently of mind, they 'subsist', and the role of the mind is to kind of mirror the structure of reality.

The 'mission' of philosophy was to establish the 'reality' of the existence of the ego as an object within an external world and to describe the nature of this reality. (Science)

The primary idea in the metaphysical age is to make thoughts corresponding with underlying or hidden substrata of independently subsisting reality, such as Descartes' 'God' or Schopenhauer's 'Will'.
Thoughts that correspond with reality are truth statements.
"The truth is out there" - Truth is agreement of knowledge with objects. Objects are eternal and prior to mind (Aristotle) or can be mind dependent (Kant) but either way according to the metaphysicians they exist.

After Heidegger there is no absolute truth there are only subjective "weak truths" or "practical truths" or "convenient truths" and these are the reliable truths which are necessary to being and being is always concrete and specific: "always being in the world" or "being there" (Dasein)

Dasein is in your mood or emotion.
Heidegger believes that your mood is you and emotion is authentic being.

Truth is no longer a matter of matching thought to reality, but of making reality which is seen as true post-hoc. (Latin for "after this") There is no idea of a 'correct truth' in which one culture has access to, there are many truths which are specific to the desires and moods of an individual.

Heidegger's Project was to clear away all philosophical terminology and throw away the concepts and systems since Socrates, he literally burned them, in order to liberate himself from objectification and metaphysics.  Heidegger was a Nazi, who believed to live an "authentic life" would be to live a simple life in the forest. The 'good life' consisted of real ale, organic foods, fertile women and physical strength. This was his dasein.

Like Nietzsche, Heidegger believes Socrates corrupted Western Civilization. Heidegger invents an original set of terms in order to speculate about the exterior world.

Existence and Time

Dasein means "being there". 
Like Husserl, Heidegger is not interested in consciousness.

Being is not an abstract idea, we are always thrown in to things, thrown in to the world, thrown in to doing jobs, and we are always in the middle of some sort of task, like a roller-coaster ride; everything is always moving. Freedom and authenticity for Heidegger is complete absorption in a task-
when you are fully engaged in a task, you no longer exist.

Existence = Boredom 
Boredom is the "problem of being", thus Heidegger would advise you find your Dasein as the opposite of boredom is Dasein, the lack of boredom is non existence (engagement in Dasein).

Existence requires time
Without time there would be no boredom, but with infinite time there would be infinite boredom. 
The perception of "lack of time" creates a sense of urgency, it force's you to just do it. Dasein is non reflective and unthinking, you are in the moment. Dasein is not thinking.

There are three aspects of time
(1) Attunement - expressed as mood, this is the reflection on the past associated with guilt
(2) Being for itself, or being there - this is caring about the task in hand, the present mode
(3) Directedness - this is a reflection on the future which is associated with the mood of dread, fear of the future.

Past = Guilt
Present =Boredom (dasein)
Future = Fear

The core of existentialism is that existence is everything, people don't have essences. We don't have to act in certain way just because we are students - life is there to be made, and it will be made for you if you don't make it for yourself.

Existential saints are people who are madly committed to something, but to do something in a moderate way to please others or fit in is an existential sin. The only way to free yourself is to have an overriding desire, and passion. Existential hell is doing something because you have to.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud’s theory like all other philosophers began with a problem, and the problem is that the human condition is miserable. We are all unhappy inside because we live in a world of suffering and pain. We are divided within ourselves because we don’t even know what we want. We live an alienated life of anguish, and then we die; how is this the reality of life Freud thought?

Freud wanted to explain everything. He had a solution to this problem, and this was psychoanalysis. Freud claimed to discover the unconscious mind, the part of our brain, which controls us. Although we may think we are in control of our actions, Freud said that we don’t even know that we are being controlled, and that the decisions and rational reasons we make are down to sexual desire.

Medical professionals would laugh at Freud, they consider him an embarrassment because there is no scientific evidence to support his theories; however, it is very important to the media. Sex is seen as the centre of motivation, it is the dominant force in the media, and this sort of scandalous sex content features in magazines and newspapers all the time.

When our real thoughts come out even though we don’t want them too we call it a Freudian slip, this is when people say things that don’t mean to say but it’s in fact what they are actually thinking. We access the dominant part of our mind through our dreams. Our dreams are an illustration of the real problem, whereas our rational mind cannot access this part of the brain, because it doesn't believe it exists. If you don’t face the underlying problems you will become neurotic.

Freud was an extremely pessimistic person, especially about humans; his theories were channelled by a dark vision of humanity. He suffered from cancer of the jaw, thus was in constant pain and fearful for humanity. He damaged the idea that we are noble creatures “man is the measure of all things” and said we when we think of his ideas we should think of the artist Rembrandt – a little light but a lot of darkness.

Freud attacked Plato and Marx’s theory of the tripartite self.

Attack on Plato -

Plato’s idea of the tripartite self is Reason, Spirit, and Desire. This is the ‘Allegory of the Chariot’ – there are two horses, the first is Spirit which represents bravery, and the second is Desire which represents the need for satisfaction. These horses are guided and controlled by the rider, which is Reason. However Freud didn’t believe that it is the rational mind that is in control, instead he believed we were driven by our desires. We are ruled by our desires without us being aware of it, and it is in fact the rational mind which is the weakest.

Attack on Marx –

Marx said that we alienate ourselves from what we really want, and that the tripartite self is Natural, Alienated and Species Self. He believed that in a communist society the needs of the species self would be most dominant. He had a teleological perspective, that we needed history to go somewhere in order to progress to a happier society whereby humanity can access the true expression. Marx believed human nature had the ability to develop and evolve. However, Freud rejected this as he believed it was too idealistic. Freud believed our deepest needs are fuelled by aggression, with the wilful desire to hurt others. He thinks that in a communist society we would still be ourselves, and we cannot escape this. We are out to hurt people. This relates back to Hobbes - “war of all against all” and “life is nasty, brutish and short”. Freud agrees with Hobbes’ outlook on human nature, and believes that inside our brains is a Hobbesians realm dominated by aggression, whereby we are at constant battle.

The Freudian Personality

The condition of human nature is full of pain and suffering, we cannot seek peace because we are at endless war with ourselves. Freud explains the reality of this is triggered through internal division, and the agonising interaction with other people. This division within ourselves is divided in to three parts, all of which conflict one another.

1. Id – This is the part of the brain which is the most dominating. We develop the Id from birth; it is a bundle of instincts aimed at gaining pleasure and avoiding pain. It is the reservoir of the unconscious; sex and aggression are merging in the Id dominating the personality. The demand for fulfilment and expression bubbles away in the “cauldron of seething excitations” but we are unaware of the power and inner spoiled brat.
2. Ego – This is the part of the brain which is the reality, the voice of reason and commonsense. It is the least powerful part of the personality that makes rational decisions based on what we think is the best option. Although we may think we are making the right decisions the ego is not in control.
3. Superego - This is the part of the brain that is irrational; it is the judge and the punisher of your decisions. We do not have the superego when we are born; it comes from our parents who impose ideas of perfection on us. It is the policeman in our head that punishes us with guilt. The morality principle often uses religion which imposes controlling morals upon us.

Society is full of suffering; Freud outlines three reasons for why we are full of pain:

1. Decaying body – we live life with aches and pains, and as each day passes we are getting older and our cells start to die, this is part of human nature.
2. The external world – this is what happens on the outside and around us.
3. Other people – this is the greatest pain of all, everyday interaction with others is full of pain because people are out to hurt us, but we are all irrational beings who are inclined to hurt others.

Freud thinks the answer to this all is Psychoanalysis which strengthens the ego, but this is not open to everyone and it is very expensive. He offers some ways to deal with these urges, a coping mechanism to distract you from reality of life:

1. Intoxication – get drunk but this is only a temporary solution, we cannot remain drunk forever.
2. Isolation – stay away from others, but this is also temporary and only appeals for a few people
3. Religion – type of sublimation* it is a mass delusion and distraction away from the desires of the id.

*Sublimation – socially acceptable release for our aggression, e.g. sport or work, which diverts our energy away from aggression. However, these only give mild satisfaction, the only way to give oneself real satisfaction is to destroy the enemy.

Civilisation is a collective superego, which imposes moral limits on the id – “love your enemy” – however, men are not gentle creatures, they are aggressive forces “man is a wolf to man”. Religion is a super ego which imposes impossible demands on us. 

Psychoanalysis

The key to psychoanalysis is to hide something from yourself. Freud claimed he had found a way to deal directly with the id and this was the royal road to the unconscious – hypnosis, free association and dreams. When we are asleep, the ego is like a “sentry asleep at its post”, our dreams are fantasies, a repressed wish, when we dream the id can let loose and show its true self. If we are creative we are releasing our inner aggression, if we are not creative we may have a block and not feel ourselves.

The free association exercise is where patients speak about what comes to mind, Freud's believed this revealed the underlying pattern of the unconscious mind, and infantile sexuality is key to this pattern. Freud believed Psychological traumas dates back to infancy, there are 5 psycho-sexual development stages:
Oral Stage - birth < 1 pleasure is focused on the mouth - Weaning (mothers breast milk)
Anal Stage - ages 1-3 pleasure is focused on the anus - Toilet training
Phallic Stage - ages 3-6 child focuses on genitalia. This is a crucial stage in the emotional development of every boy who concentrates upon their desire to sexually possess their mother and kill their father. But, there is fear that the father will castrate him. Girls ave penis envy because without a penis she cannot possess her mother, this is called the Electra Complex.
Latent Stage- age 6 - puberty
Genital Stage - puberty - death - Sexual interest matures in this stage

The Freudian unconscious was manifested in three different ways, though trivial everyday mistakes, reports of dreams and neurotic symptoms.

Attacks on Freud

Falsifiability – Karl Popper – There is no scientific proof that it psychoanalysis works, even so scientific predictions could be proven wrong. He was not the discoverer of the unconscious, as he claimed. It was discussed in academic circles in the 19^th Century before Freud came about.

Schopenhauer – He also spoke of the unconscious mind, and the struggle to control sexual urges. He believed man was irrational, guided by internal forces, of which we are unaware of. The universal will is “the secret antagonist of the intellect”.

Reich – believed in the complete opposite, he thought unconscious forces inside the mind were good, and that the underlying energy was sexuality. If this is released then human beings would flourish. Reich believed sexual pleasure is the ultimate measure of human happiness. He thought sexuality and politics were intimately connected – sexual repression is a weapon of political domination. Unlike Freud who taught patients to keep it in and control their feelings, Reich encouraged people to be open and just scream this is Reichian Therapy. He also influenced the hippy movement “free love, free sex”. 

Ethics and Aesthetics

Ethics is defined as morality, what is right and what is wrong? Aesthetics is the appreciation of beauty and taste. The purpose of art is to produce beauty, and it is this beauty which arouses desire and pleasure.  The finest beauty is found in nature. Nature is beautiful and sublime, it looks like art, whereas art is only beautiful because it is artificial and not natural. There is an idea that if you are looking at beauty then you are not thinking about pain. Kant says there is two types of beauty: free beauty and derivative beauty; artificial beauty is not a beautiful thing. Kant argues that real beauty doesn't have a purpose, it is just beautiful because it is. Plato's idea of the perfect forms comes in to his aesthetics, the principle that there is a perfect form of beauty and art. Plato regards art as copies and ideas of material things.


There are three types of art:
1. Arts of Speech - poetry
2. Formative Arts - painting, sculpture, architecture
3. Play of sensations - music

Bentham

Happiness is one of the greatest concepts in the system of morality, moral philosophers regard happiness as the supreme good, apart from Kant, who considered duty as the ethical motive. Bentham regards pleasure as the supreme good which he associates with happiness; the greatest happiness for the greatest number, gives the greatest pleasure. However, Kenny's book 'Philosophy in the modern world' outlines the ambiguity of this statement, to be begin with: The greatest number of what?, Should individuals attempt to control the number of candidates for happiness? Does the extension of happiness to a great number mean that we should try to bring more people into existence? and when we are measuring the happiness of a population, do we consider only total happiness, or should we consider average happiness too? In my opinion, it is important to note, that different people have their own forms of pleasure: for instance, boxers get pleasure out of fighting but to someone else, this pleasure would be pain. So how could we grade pleasure? This needs to be modified for utility. Bentham regarded pleasure as a sensation, not only caused by eating, drinking and sex, whereas, Aristotle disagreed and refused to link happiness with the pleasures of the senses. Bentham believes that the quality of pleasure does not matter, and that all pleasure is equal. Bentham lists two principles, first the principle of asceticism, which is the mirror image of utility and second the principle of sympathy and antipathy which judges actions as good or bad, in other sense it is common sense and moral understanding. He divides moral philosophers into two categorises absolutists who believe that an action is wrong and that is should never be done, and consequentialists who believe that the morality of actions should be judged on the consequences. Before Bentham most philosophers were absolutists who believed in natural rights, however he rejects the notional of natural law and natural rights.

Schopenhauer 

The ethical teaching of Schopenhauer is linked to metaphysics, he believes the world of experience is just an illusion and that the true reality, and thing-in-itself is the universal will. We are all creatures of will, and our will can never change. The root of all willing is need and pain, every time we want something it causes us pain, and we suffer until our needs are satisfied, but once we are satisfied, then the will lacks objects of desire and thus life becomes a burden of boredom. Schopenhauer teaches that the only way to cure this, is to overcome your desires; the way to do so is through intoxication. Although sex, drugs and alcohol achieve ecstasy, it is only temperamental, we cannot be drunk and high for eternity. Unlike, the form of arts such as paintings and literature, which can inspire someone. Moreover, Schopenhauer believes to overcome desire we must drive ourselves into a trance through music, even though there will come a time when the music will stop. Kierkegaard regards music as the most abstract of the arts, like language is the vehicle of spirit, music is the vehicle of sensuality.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's most famous work is 'The birth of tragedy' in the spirit of music. He bases his aesthetic theory on Schopenhauer's pessimistic view of life, similarly they both see art as the easiest escape from the tyranny of life. Nietzsche believes there are two ways to escape reality: intoxication and dreaming. He presents these forms in two gods: Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo being the God of light, dreams and beauty and Dionysus being the god of intoxication and ecstasy; the duality of these two gods is the development and progress of Art., creating a Greek Tragedy.

In contrast to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche believes desire is good, and that we should build upon these strong passions, after all it is these desires which bring us happiness.

Some quotes to leave you on:
"It is better to be a human dissatisfied, then a pig satisfied" 
"Death is just a sleep in which individuality is forgotten"
"Walking is only constantly prevented falling, the life of our body is only ever postponed death, the life of out mind is constantly deferred boredom"

Economics

Adam Smith

Economics claims to a be a science, the way in which we look at things is subjective rather than objective. Adam Smith was the first economist, he wrote the first influential economic book 'The wealth of Nations' which answered why one country was wealthier then another. Smith thinks that wealthy countries are categorised by free people and free trade. Before hand, he wrote a book on moral philosophy similar to Kant with the view that people are only out for number one. He describes us as 'calculating' machines that are constantly totalling up what will provide us with the maximum pleasure; relating back to Bentham's Utilitarianism  view which was to maximise happiness in the absence of pain. Smith said that if we try to help others in life then this is damaging  and it only gives us more pain, we should allow people to be free and the hidden hand of the market will sort it out.

* Utilitarian outlook would be to achieve the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. For example, a train of 100 passengers is approaching full speed, an innocent man is working on the tracks, you are faced with two options, pull a leaver and the train obscures off the tracks injury 100 people, or continue on and save 100 people but you've killed the innocent man. The utilitarian person would save the 100 people and kill the innocent man because it has achieved the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.

David Ricardo 

David Ricardo was an economist who put forward a theory of Value. He believes the value of an object depends on the labour it requires to obtain it. The length of time the labour lasts equates to the value of the commodity. He thinks that there is a spirit of value in things and that the world of contingent objects has no value until human labour is implied. For example, A tree in a forest has no value until a man has come along and chopped it down to use the wood to make matchsticks, the labour required to do this action has given it value. However, a diamond would have greater value because the labour required in mining and the machinery needed to do so takes up more time and labour, in comparison to using an axe to chop down a tree. The more labour intense, the more value.

Thomas Mathus 

Thomas Malthus believed that humans would always starve to death, he stated that the natural condition of men is to be on the brink of starvation and continue the battling struggle to survive. He outlined this in his famous work 'An essay on the principle of population'. If the food system broke down then humans would starve to death within days, which will lead to extinction. Malthus had a theory whereby marriage was the only way to ensure we didn't starve, and specifically that we wouldn't have sex before marriage. A man should not marry unless he had a farm and therefore could support his family. (the farmers wants a wife)  Malthus believed that marriage was linked to economic growth because the passion between the sexes meant that early marriage with no contraception would lead to an extreme rise in population and he claimed that this rise would lead us to face war, famine and other kinds of diseases. 

Karl Marx 

Karl Marx is a political philosopher, who we have touched upon before. click here for my seminar paper on Marxism in case you missed it previously. Marx believed that the capitalist society in which he lived in reached a state of crisis, the opposing class struggles between the bourgeoisies and the proletariats would become stronger and lead to a revolutionary change. First of all socialism, whereby all property would be passed to the state and secondly communism whereby the state would wither away. He based these conclusions on the analysis of the nature of economic value. The value of a commodity is the rate at which it can be exchanged for other commodities, plus the the labour it has required. Marx's view was a combination of Ricardo's Value theory and Malthus' Iron Law of Wages. 

The Iron Law of Wages is the theory that real wages depend on the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of a worker. For example a widget costs £10 to manufacture, the worker gets £5 wages and the owner gets £5 profit. When the worker goes to the shop to purchase a widget that is priced at £10 they cannot afford it because they only have £5. The shop owner then lowers the prices of widgets meaning that the workers wages must be lowered to maintain a profit. When the value of a widget is lowered to £5 the workers wages will be lowered to £2.50 to maintain a profit for the owner. The value of a product will depend upon the productivity prevailing at the time. This demonstrates the iron law of wages. However, the problem with the iron law of wages is that you have to find more people who are willing to work for less money.

Dates

• In 1844, The Bank of England began to print money, before this time there was no centralised currency. 
• The year of 1848 was the year of the French Revolution, all the factory works were made redundant.
• In 1849 gold was discovered in California, this was known as the Gold Rush.  it allowed expansion in the economy for example investments and borrowing off banks. Depending on how much gold a country had was how rich it was. 

John Maynard Keynes

The great depression in the 1930's was solved by World War II which brought about employment; men went into the army and woman worked in factories. Keynes solved Marx' problem of wages simply by printing money. Keynes believed that the government had to be ready to invest, and borrow more in order to kick-start growth. 

Keynes focused on the question, how can we create more employment? If we devalue the currency and print more money then unemployed resources can come back in to play, and companies and consumers will have more money in their pockets. As a result people can be employed. However, Keynes did not think of the problems of inflation.

Keynes most famous work The General Theory outlined the central argument that the level of employment was determined by the spending of money. His work concluded 4 points:
1. Economies suffer from overall lack of demand, leading to involuntary unemployment.
2. The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand operates slowly and painfully.
3. Government polices to increase demand can reduce unemployment quickly.
4. Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, therefore government spending must step into the breach.

The classic theory of employment is that people get paid for what they make, and people only work if their salary is worth it. It was assumed that unemployment was caused either by people not knowing where to find a job or if people demanded more money. The only solution would be to find people who were willing to work for less.