Thursday 13 December 2012


Lecture notes on Freud

  • His work addresses a problem- the misery of the human condition. Our unhappiness because we are divided-alienated from ourselves. This is the same starting point that was taken by Marx.
  • The answer to why we are so unhappy comes down to psychoanalysis. He says its influence is staggering. 
  • Freudian slips are when you end up saying things that you are thinking about and mean but are not meant to come out. They are suppose to stay in your subconscious thoughts.
  • Freud was seen as a sexual renegade, he put sex at the centre of everything.
  • At the core of his ideas is a deep pessimism. He admitted he was very pessimistic. He said to think of his ideas like Rembrandt, a little light but a lot of darkness. 
  • He doesn't agree with Plato that the rational mind is in control. 
  • He made an attack on Marx when Marx thinks that history is teleological and that we will end up in a perfect communist state. Freud thinks this is too idealistic. He thinks that the main part to humans is aggression, more like how Hobbes and Machiavelli think. 
  • ID- this is from birth, its the animal part, a bundle of instincts aimed at gaining pleasure and avoiding pain.
  • The Ego or Self- is the reality part, the least powerful part of the personality. The voice of reason. It is turned towards reality.
  • Superego- Internalised rules of parents or society, it's the policeman in your head.
  • Society is full of suffering because it is full of pain. 1. our own decaying body. 2. Nature and the external world. 3. The everyday problems we have with other peoples Id. The solution is isolation, which can only be temporary. Or you could get drunk which is also temporary. Then lastly religion, you can turn to God. 
  • Freud says the the only thing that would give you real satisfaction would be to destroy the person that you hate the most. 
  • The religion is a superego that puts impossible demands on us, like 'love thy neighbour'. It wants us to achieve complete perfection in all of our goals, some that are almost impossible to hit and it makes us feel like a failure if we don't. 
  • Dreams are important to Freud because they show the Id. They are a reflection of what we really want to do. 
  • Freud was part of the Vienna circle in the late 19th century.  
  • Popper attacked Freud saying it was not falsifiable, you could not prove anything that Freud said.
  • Reich was saying get everything out, don't hold anything in like Freud suggested.

David Icke- The lizards and the jews

  • David Icke believes that there are elitists that sit around a table and rule the world. They are a group of bankers and media moguls. 
  • Icke was an ex football player, he retired at the age of 21 because of arthritis.
  • He became a sports presenter at that age for the BBC. 
  • He claimed he kept hearing voices and felt that there was constantly a presence around him. The voices told him that he was the son of god and that he would expose the truth about the world and he thought that he would be famous worldwide. He made these comments to the media for the first time on a Terry Wogan interview.
  • He claimed that people in power such as George Bush couldn't physically control us, so they had to get into our minds and mentally control us.
  • He believes that these elitists that run the world are blood drinking lizards.
  • The anti deformation league league were trying to take action against Icke, because they believed that when he was talking about lizards he actually meant Jews. But Icke that the ADL are part of the Illuminati and trying to shut him down.
  • He got turned down to talk on a radio station in Vancouver because they thought that the public find his views are too controversial. He also had book signings cancelled for the same reason.

Seminar Paper


In Kant’s ‘Groundwork he proclaimed that duty, not happiness was the supreme ethical motive. Bentham’s idea on happiness was slightly different to Kant’s. He identifies happiness with pleasure; he thinks that it is pleasure that is the action behind happiness. He also believed that there is a close link between pain and pleasure. In his book titled ‘The introduction to the principles of morals and legislation’ he says ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.’ ‘It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do’. ‘On the other hand, the standard of right and wrong on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne’. ‘They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think’. My understanding of this is that he believes that pleasure and pain is a natural sensation that we can’t help but feel. It’s a sensation that determines all actions whether that be good or bad. It’s like if you do something that you know is bad or that you know you will suffer serious repercussions for if you do it, if you think that you will feel a great deal of pleasure doing it, you will do it. Therefore for Bentham, to maximize happiness is the same thing as to maximise pleasure.
Unlike Bentham, Aristotle made a distinction between pleasure and happiness.  Bentham not only believed that pleasure was a sensation caused by eating, drinking and sex but also by a multitude of other things such as the acquisition of wealth, kindness to animals or believing in a supreme being. Aristotle believed that pleasure could be identified by the activity that was being enjoyed; whereas Bentham believed that all pleasure was the same no matter how it was caused, but from my understanding he believed that there were different measurements of pleasure depending on how long it last for, how intense it was or if one was more immediate than the other. He thought the same about pain, as he said what went for pleasure, the same went for pain. If I’m correctly understanding what Bentham is saying then I believe that he is contradicting himself because if he saying that all pleasures are the same no matter how they are caused, then surely if there are different measurement for them, that would make the pleasure different. Especially when you are talking about how intense something is. For example if I was to punch a wall very lightly then if I was to punch it again as hard as I could, would that mean that according to Bentham the pain would be the same? Because I don’t think it would. What do you guys think?
In the next part of the chapter we proceed to read about the slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Kenny goes on to say that this quote is riddled with ambiguity. The problem with it is defining what the ‘greatest number’ is. Is it the greatest number of ‘Voters’ or ‘females’ or even human beings? It is thought that most people think that the greatest number means ‘human beings’ but it is still a quote that could be flawed because it doesn’t state ‘human beings’ in the quote. Also this quote/slogan is thought to define or sum up utilitarianism to its simplest form. To my understanding Bentham did not include women in his greatest happiness principle because to do so would have provoked outrage to consider women to be as happy as a man without them actually being male. 
In recent years utilitarian’s have extended the happiness principle beyond human beings to other sentient beings, believing animals have equal claims with human beings. Although with Bentham being a great lover of animals he himself would have rejected the ideas that animals have rights as he did not believe in natural rights of any kind.
Kenny then talks about the principle of utility, he asks the question, should individuals or politicians following the greatest happiness principle attempt to control the number of candidates for happiness reasons? I personally would say know because when taking more than one other person into account, happiness doesn’t always come first. I believe sometimes you have to sacrifice your happiness and some other for the greater good. What are your views?
When talking about hedonism there are two types. The first being psychological hedonism, meaning pleasure determines all our actions, the second being ethical hedonism, meaning pleasure is the standard of right and wrong. You could argue that when using the happiness principle, if you do something that is just going to give you pleasure that would be psychological hedonism, but if you were to do something like I mentioned earlier (something that is bad that will give you pleasure that could be considered to be ethical hedonism. Bentham commended utilitarianism by contrasting it with other ethical systems. He did this in his book titled ‘Of principles adverse to that of utility’. The first principle was that of asceticism, the second was the principle of sympathy and antipathy. The principle of asceticism is similar to that of the principle of utility. It means approving actions to the extent that they tend to diminish the quantity of happiness. The principle of sympathy and antipathy judges actions as good or bad to the extent that they accord or not with his own feelings.
John Stuart Mill states that while utilitarianism offers universal happiness as the ultimate moral standard, it does not need to be the aim of every action. The difficulty that Mill takes most seriously is the allegation that utilitarianism is a recipe for preferring expedience to justice. For Mill, it was important for him to make the connection between justice and moral rights. He makes it clear that he thinks there can be legal rights that are unjust, and just claims that conflict with the law.
Now moving onto the ethics of Schopenhauer, he makes a distinction between several kinds of character. There is what he calls the intelligible character, which is the underlying reality, outside time, that determines our response to the situations presented to us in the world. There is also the empirical character; that is to say, what we and others learn, through the course of experience, of the nature of our own intelligible character. These are persons of character in the best sense: people who recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, and tailor their projects and ambitions accordingly. Schopenhauer believes that all bad persons are egoists; he believes that they assert their own will to live whilst from their presence they deny the same to others, in some cases damaging or destroying the lives of others along their way.
Kierkegaard argues that the aesthetic person is deluded in when thinking his existence as one is of freedom, when in fact, he believes it is extremely limited. Kierkegaard then quotes ‘most men pawn themselves to the world ‘. ‘They use their talents, accumulate money, carry on the worldly affairs, calculate shrewdly etc., etc, are perhaps mentioned in history, but themselves they are not; spiritually understood they have no self, no self for whose sake they could venture everything’. Later Kierkegaard talks about the universal man, he says that only when the individual himself is the universal, only then can the ethical be realised. He says ‘ The person who regards life ethically sees the universal, and the person who lives ethically expresses his life in the universal; for then he would be nothing at all, but by clothing himself in it and permeating it with the universal’. The man that Kierkegaard often uses as an example to be the ethical is Socrates. Also Kierkegaard never had a job or got married as those where two marks of the way to live an ethical life.
Moving onto Nietzsche, he believed that Christianity is rooted in weakness, fear and malice, whilst it puts itself forward as a religion of love. He says Christianity dominant motive is what he calls resentment, which is the desire of the weak to take revenge against the strong, which disguises itself as a wish to punish the sinner. I personally don’t agree with Nietzsche on this, throughout this chapter all of his views seem to be very sinister to me. Nietzsche then goes on to talk about his ‘Superhuman’ he says ‘humanity is merely a stage on the way to Superhuman, who is what gives meaning to the world’. ‘Humanity is something that must be surpassed; man is a bridge and not a goal’. ‘Superhuman however, will not come into existence through the forces of evolution, but only through the exercise of will’. ‘Let your will say superhuman is to be the meaning of the earth’.
Aesthetics
The person who is generally considered to be the founder of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline is Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. He believed that the point of beauty was to give pleasure and arouse desire. Edmund burke included into aesthetics that of sublimity.  He said to feel something as sublime is to feel astonishment without fear. On aesthetics Kant makes a distinction between what two kinds of satisfaction. He thinks, as humans we can make a distinction between what is good in itself and what is good only as a means. But we can’t distinguish what is beautiful as a means and what is beautiful as an end.  We then go on to read about Kant in regards to judgements of taste. His ideas are, Judgements of value are related to their purpose. For example if I want to know if the knife I have is a good knife, then first I need to establish what knifes are for, that is how I know what makes a good knife or electrician or plumber. He says that judgements of perfections are similar: I cannot know what makes a perfect x without knowing what is the function of an x. Kant believes that there are two types of beauty, free natural beauty and derivative beauty. Free natural beauty does not pre suppose what the object out to be but derivative beauty does. Kant usually uses a flower as a form to demonstrate free natural beauty. There are what Kant calls formative arts, namely paintings and the plastic arts of sculptures and architecture. He says that there is a third type of art that creates a play on our sensations, this is mainly music and poetry.
No philosopher has given aesthetics a more important role I his total system then Schopenhauer. He says that when we look at a work of art, a nude sculpture, it arouses our sexual desires. If so we are still in a state of will and not of contemplation. It is only when we view something for its beauty without any thought of our personal desirers and needs are we then treating and admiring  it as a work of art and enjoying the aesthetics experience. Schopenhauer had held out art as the most accessible escape from the tyranny of life.
Briefly on Nietzsche, he thought there were two kinds of escape from reality, which were dreaming and intoxication. He also thought that Socrates was the antithesis of all that made Greece great. He thought Socrates instincts were entirely negative and critical, rather than positive and creative. Unlike many others, Nietzsche thought that we should satisfy our deepest desires as it would give us greater pleasure.

Thursday 18 October 2012

Notes On Logical Positivism & Popper

  • Wittgenstein was against metaphysics because he saw it as an outdated system that needed to give way to a scientific world view.
  • His most famous was called Tractatus.
  • Wittgenstein believed that knowledge of the world could only be gained through experience. He believed that proposition only had meaning if it could be verified or falsified by experience. 
  • The verification principle was used as a weapon against metaphysics. If  two metaphysicians were having a argument about the absolute, they could be silenced by the question ' what possible experience could settle this issue?'
  • In this chapter, they talk about 'protocol statements' and from what I understand this means you can have a word that can define a 'experience' thus making the experience a truth because everyone can understand the word. This idea came up with a massive obstacle because the experiences we have via 'protocols' appear to be private to the individual. Therefore if meaning depends on verification and each individual person carries out verification by a process that no one else can access, how is it possible that anyone can understand anyone elses meaning ? Schlick  tried to answer this using form and content. But I'm going to use my own example for what Schlick said. If  I see a purple piece of paper and a yellow piece of paper this private and incommunicable. But the form or structure of experience may be common to many. When I see a ball, someone else may see something different when they see it, but as long as we decide to call it a ball, it will always be a ball when we communicate that word between each other.I believe that this is true to a certain extend, reason being this is how we have developed language and an understanding amongst our society. But I think that it would not be accurate to say that every culture or country across the world have the same meanings or name for things that translate the same as we do, for all our words. For example, a ball may have the same meaning as a pillow or may be called a pillow in another country once translated. To put it simple, I don't think words translate into the same word worldwide.
  • Wittgenstein believed that Philosophy doesn't discover any new truths and philosophical problems are not solved by the acquisition of any new information, but by the rearrangement of what we already know. Wittgenstein once said that the function of philosophy is to untie the knots in our thinking.
  • Wittgenstein left the copyright of his literary  to his three former students: Georg Henrick von wright, Elizebeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees. 
  • Quine believed that there were logically true statements, these were statement that would remain true under any interpretation of their non-logical terms. example, 'no unmarried men are married'. He believed that we could not move from a logically true statement to the allegedly analytic statement 'no bachelor is married' because that depends on taking 'unmarried man' and bachelor as synonymous.
  • More to come.........

Notes On Our 2nd lecture

  • Karl Popper (1902-1994) was born in Austria and part of the Vienna circle.
  • His key book- logic of scientific discovery, was an attack on empiricism.
  • The Vienna circle members Schlick, Neurath et all were against romanticism and metaphysics. They thought philosophy was in a bad state, they used science to clean up philosophy.
  • Locke- we come into the world with a blank slate, no innate ideas. This is empiricism.
  • Hume- no matter how much data we have we can never predict whats going to happen in the future.
  • Popper realised that everything had the potential to be falsifiable. 
  • Popper said that science has never really worked by induction anyway.
  • Popper thinks that what we think is knowlegde, isn't actually knowledge.
  • Copyright started back in 1640.
  • To get something of yours copyrighted, you need to get it published first.
  • At night when the Eifel tower is lit up it is copyrighted because the company that owns the lighting for the tower had their lighting design copywrighted.
  • The performance rights society made google pay for the right for music to be played on youtube. Youtube is not free.

Thursday 27 September 2012

Notes From Our 1st Lecture Back

  • 'The Truth' we thought we new the truth about Hillsborough but it turned out we didn't. The Hilsborough disaster is one example to show that you never know the real truth about something even if you think you do. You only have an honest opinion.
  • A Priori is a truth that can be justified. A posteriori is something that can't be justified.
  • A priori truth- all bachelors are not married. We know that this is a fact without having to do any research because if your a bachelor then we know your unmarried because if you were then you wouldn't be a bachelor. This may sound completely irrelevant but in my media studies lecture we were talking about post structuralism and to a post structuralist saying 'all bachelors are not married' could actually be false. Reason being, as far as I understand post structuralist believe that one word could have so many different meanings depending on how one was to interpret the word. So depending on who you are you could get a different meaning out of the word 'bachelor'. But then again I could be totally wrong here.....
  • A priori truth- 'all bicycles have two wheels', or 'all triangles have three sides'.
  • A posteriori- 'all bachelors are untidy', isn't always true.
  • We see space and time because we wear space and time goggles ( Bertrand Russell ).
  • Solipsists believe that only you are sure to exist and that everyone else isn't.
  • Theoretical physics- A sheep in the distance is smaller than when it is next to you. But really its not its just further away. 
  • Berkley- Things only exist when you see them, if you can't see it, it doesn't exist. He basically thought that things flashed in and out of existence.
  • The Arabs were very dogmatic about Aristotle, he was like a god to them.
  • The Arabs were very advanced because they were the only ones that could make dome shaped buildings.
  • A prioiri- All men are mortal. But if you are alive there is no real proof that you are mortal because there is a small possibility that you may not die.
  • In Newtonian science, nothing can't be solved due to causation.
  • The idea that Jerusalem is in the centre of the earth and that the earth is in the centre of the universe, was proven wrong by Newton and also by the invention of the telescope when it was invented in the 15th century.
  • Newton was regarded as fact by many for around 200 years.
  • Astronauts are younger than they should be because they are travelling through space and time quicker than they would have if they were still on earth.
  • The verification principle- The truth about anything isn't true unless you can verify it. None verifiable principles are neither true nor false.
  • Karl Propper believes that verifiable truths can't be verified, just like the existence of god.