Thursday 12 May 2011

Preparation Lecture

So this week in the lecture we did a run through of 5 possible questions that mayyyyy or may not come up in the scary scary test next week. These are the notes I took in the hope that I can develop the ideal answer!

1. Outline the verification principle as part of the school of thought known as logical positivism, How might this principle be applied to the day-to-day work of a journalist?The verification Principle is based on the idea of truth claims, used frequently in philosophy as a way of categorising statements as to their validity. If they can be proven true or false then they can be used in a meaningful way, but if it cannot be verified either way than the claim or statement must be meaningless. This is an idea carried by the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers who agreed with the logical positivism set forth in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus, however the verification principle was popularised by Freddie Ayer. Philosophers who follow this school of thought will argue that the truth of any statement is in its method of verification; if a truth claim cannot be verified, then it is meaningless, this is mirrored by the Falsification Principle which Popper put forward, and together this formed a new way to analyse statements popular among the Anglo-Saxon traditions of philosophy. In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein said that “of that which we cannot speak we must remain silent”, reiterating that if a statement is non-verifiable then it is not a pathway to finding the truth and therefore is of no importance and we should not waste time thinking about it. Logical positivism of this kind was rejected by religious people and ontological thinkers, especially those from the Cartesian point of view who believe that there is objective truth regardless of the verifiability. This principle is important to the work of journalists because we must be able to verify everything that we print, and we must check all of our sources for reliability. If we cannot prove whether it is true or a lie, we should not be writing about it.

2. What is phenomology? Can there be such a thing as subjective reality, or subjective truth? What sort of standards ought a journalist apply?Phenomology is a branch of philosophy established in the 1920s that deals with subjective experience (a person’s personal reactions to something and why they react this way). The origin of Phenomena comes from Emmanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which says that all objects have a dual nature; when it is nuomenal, a thing in itself, it has a different form to when it is phenomenal, a creation of the mind. The idea is that an unperceived object will be in its perfect, or ‘ideal’ form, but when it is perceived and the mind acts on it, it will only be an approximation of its ‘ideal’ form. f This is the territory of ‘naïve realists’, such as Wittgenstein, who believe that the object is still there when it is not perceived. Similarly, the Empiricists such as Locke and Hume say that the object is still there, but is different from how it is perceived. These ideas have been confirmed by experimental science such as quantum mechanics, who found that the act of perceiving changes the physical nature of something that they were studying. Another key question that phenomology addresses is that of how does our perception of objects arise? The first person to tackle this question was Husserl who said that it is the intention behind perception that creates the image that you see; if you want to see something, you will. This has been demonstrated by optical illusions based on context such as the face in the cliff, and even in mythology which suggests that rock faces with unusual patterns of formation and vegetation are the product of a giant pushing the mountain (an example from the Philippines). Husserl said that we will the world into existence by intention, and that a picture of your self is a structure of your intentions and decisions. For example, when you walk into a room, you are creating that room by thinking that you are walking into it. Heidegger also backed this theory. In the 1940s and 50s, Existentialism was established as a moral code that deals with phenomenology. This looks at the intentions which we have that made the world and the consequences of these and our choices of what to believe. As Existentialist Albert Camus said, the future is unwritten, the past is beyond our control, so we only have the now which we can control and change. These schools of thought relate to Solipsism, supporters of which believe that the world is simply a projection of your own being and that the only existence you can be sure of is your own mind.

Phenomenology is important to Journalism in establishing the truth of a statement. It creates problems such as if truth can only be subjective then the reporting of public affairs cannot be objective. Therefore journalists must be careful to put forward a well-rounded view rather than just their own personal preference. However, there is a general cultural trend towards subjectivity and the private consciousness is very important in our culture, so as a journalist it is important to be aware that your readers will have their own viewpoint and you should not try to thrust your own view onto them.

3. Describe in broad terms J.M. Keynes’ ideas on monetary policy, with an indication of how the Keynesian Revolution came about. Does ‘Keynesianism’ inevitably lead to social regression, moral failure and serfdom, as Hayek asserts?In contrast to the first two questions, economics tries to approach the world in a non-phenomenological way, but rather many economists believe in naïve realism, that objects are as they appear to be. Adam Smith, a key influent in economics, was a naïve materialist and as such a ‘machine’ from the enlightenment way of thinking. The Keynesian Revolution started in the war but really took off in the 1950s and 60s. It came about because of the Great Depression, also known as the ‘hungry 30s’ when poverty, mass unemployment, malnutrition and political instability were rampant in the Western world where economies had been crushed by the strain of the second World War. Keynesian economics brought about a prosperous ‘great’ society. The basic idea was that the government would print lots of money so that things could still be bought and paid for throughout the war, however one down side of this strategy is that because of inflation, the money became worthless. Keynes, however, felt that this was a side-effect that was offset by the benefits of the system. He therefore accepted these problems in return for full employment. He created jobs which were not really needed, just so that people were employed, so that they could earn money and spend money and therefore the whole economy would benefit. This is known as the ‘multiplier’ effect and was only enabled because Keynes believed that the banks did not need to back all the money that they printed with gold reserves; he said go ahead and print more money, whether we have the gold in the banks or not. He argued that it was better to have useless jobs than unemployment. Hayek said that money is a transparent medium and has no effect on the world, which is the opposite view to Keynes.

Critiques of this approach include the inflation that it causes. Galbraith has also hammered the theory because it involves massive state intervention, as the whole process of creating jobs has to be regulated to ensure that it has the maximum effect on the economy. The intervention is so great that even the private sector gets a lot of its business from the public sector, which basically serves to keep the economy going. This therefore involves supply and demand regulation, going against Adam Smith’s theory of the ‘free hand in the market’. Also, to implement Keynesian economics, the government has to gather vast amounts of data, regulate wages and quantify everything. Therefore, in an ontological sense, it means nothing, but in a Keynesian sense everything; it is therefore often said to be completely meaningless (such as by Hayek). It has also been argued that it boils down to everyone working for the government, which equates to serfdom; a step back in history to a pre-capitalist world before the enlightenment. It has therefore also been associated with a loss of freedom, such as Arendt and Orwell discuss.
However, whether we disagree with this system or not, our world is now enmeshed in bureaucracy and Keynesianism, for example the labour party is based on Keynesian ideals, and the economy is based on this system of creating jobs for jobs sakes.

4. “Facts in logical space are the world” – Wittgenstein, Tractatus. Do you agree?This question is based on the first chapter of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Philosophicus which forms the premise for his picture theory of language, and the idea that language allows us to express the world and how we experience it. This question also needs to touch on Kant’s Phenomenology and the fact that naïve materialism and metaphysics are both rejected. Therefore, there are none of Plato’s ideal forms (that there is another universe made up of perfect forms, and everything that we see and experience is simply an approximation of these perfect forms), no nuomena and no concrete physical objects. Wittgenstein is therefore saying that the world is just facts within our minds that can be independently verified, for example by someone else agreeing that there is, in fact, a computer in front of me. This means that there is no such thing as private language as we need someone else to verify and so share language. Logic is therefore a precise way of describing the relation between one object and another, and truth is established in relation to the different parts of an argument. The world is therefore a network of propositions linked by logic.

5. Looking back at the HCJ course as a whole, choose one thinker we have discussed or one movement in thought that you believe to be particularly significant in terms of journalistic practice. Explain why.I will need some time to pinpoint what part of the course that I am going to base my answer for this one on, as there are so many possibilities that it is boggling my head right now!

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