I Think Therefore I Am... Awesome? Philosophy notes :)

Well here are my late philosophy lecture and seminar notes! During the 17^th century there was a huge divide between two key ways of thinking – these were British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism.

Empiricism = Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, however empiricism emphasizes the role of experience. For example John Locke is a huge figure when it comes to empiricism, along with David Hume and Francis Bacon.

Rationalism = In Epistemology rationalism is a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but in fact intellectual – therefore it has nothing to do with experience. For example, key rationalist thinkers are Socrates, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant.

Descartes: Came up with the Cogito which is his most famous syllogism – I think therefore I am, or in its Latin form “Cogito ergo sum”. He argues that if you are ever doubting yourself or doubting anything then you can always feel safe in the fact that since you are able to think, you must exist! This is his Cogito.

A Syllogism is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two or more others (the premises) of a certain form.

Descartes was a 17^th century thinker and a contemporary of Galileo and as expected he held very similar views to Galileo, for example he despised the system of university and so on.

“I had gained nothing from my attempts to become educated but increasing recognition of my ignorance”.

He lived a much fulfilled life – travelling and being involved in many wars and so on but he grew wary of this decided to search for “true knowledge”.

As he was a rationalist he always questioned the validity of things – he would never take anything at face value apart from when it comes to Geometry – he believes that geometry is a constant; there will always only be one certain truth to its aspects. For example it is an unchanging truth that a triangle has 3 sides, nothing can alter this fact.

This is his method of doubt – reject any knowledge where there are grounds for doubt – senses can deceive you and to emphasise this deception he talks of a “demon” that deceives you with things that are false.

The Ontological Argument: This is an a priori proof for the existence of God.

A priori ("from earlier") and a posteriori ("from the later") are used in epistemology to distinguish two types of knowledge or arguments

Descartes argues that God's existence can be deduced from his nature, very much like the nature of geometry; Descartes uses the deduction of the sizes of angles in a triangle as an example. Descartes suggests that the concept of God is of a perfect form. He proposes that existence is perfection: it would be better to exist than not to exist. Therefore, God’s existence is a necessary process for thought.

Spinoza: Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment he came to be considered as one of the great rationalists of the 17th-century philosophy. His famous work, albeit posthumous, Ethics was only really taken seriously after his death and was then published. In “Ethics” he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism; it has also allowed him to be widely known as Western philosophy's most important contributors.

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" to signify an idea that was vastly different from the traditional Christian idea of God. He claims that God lacks personality and consciousness – stating that god also has no intelligence, feeling or will. This indifferent God painted by Spinoza is indeed the antithesis to the paternalistic God who cared about all things.

He believed that good and evil related directly to pleasure and pain

All things done by humans and animals, according to Spinoza, are divine acts. However he also believes that humans are naturally allowed to exploit nature in an attempt to further human understanding.

Leibniz: Basically, this dude was such a massive mathematics whiz and a boss when it comes to philosophy – so it’s no surprise that Leibniz occupies a prominent place in the history when it comes to mathematics and philosophy.

He was amazing with inventions and working with calculators, most notably Pascal's calculator.

But what we really want to focus on is philosophy; Leibniz claims that this universe that we’re part of is the best possible one that God could have created. Leibniz, along with Descartes and Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century thinkers of rationalism

His writings pretty much covered all the main topics of mathematics, politics, law, ethics, theology, history and philosophy. Jeeze, dude did you want to let anyone else put some work in? Impressive stuff.

Leibniz's philosophical writings come down to two philosophical treatises, of which only the Theodicy of 1710 was published in his lifetime. Most of his other philosophical ideas were fairly fragmented, insofar as they came from journal entries and so on.

Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his Discourse on Metaphysics, which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld.

“Discourse” was not published until the 19th century. Leibniz made his public entree into European philosophy in 1695 with an article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances"

The Monads: When it comes to Metaphysics, Leibniz’s most dazzling contribution is his theory of “monads”.

Monads are to the metaphysical realm what atoms are to the physical realm. They are the ultimate aspects of the universe. The monads are known as "substantial forms of being”, from this Leibniz goes on to explain that they are also eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony.

Unlike atoms, monads possess no material or character. Furthermore they can be seen as different insofar as they have complete mutual independence. Each monad follows a programmed "instructions" very individual to itself, so it always knows what to do at each moment

So there you have it, my notes all about Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz – I did want to mention watching the matrix and how amazing that was but I feel that this should suffice! What a film, quite possibly Keanu Reeves’ best acted film (apart from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure obviously). Anyway, I’ve gone on for long enough I think.

 Im Jack Webb from Winchester signing off, you stay classy, Hampshire x

Law Lecture 7 - Investigative Journalism

It occurs to me that I am constantly falling behind on the blogging standards! This is never a good thing, and when I think back to what I was doing when I should have been blogging I genuinely can’t remember what it was! Here is my solemn vow to keep on top of the blogging - I promise! So here I am now, classic Saturday filled with doing nothing, however this time I have pizza AND The Shining to accompany me; this blogging will be done in no time. Anyway, enough of that, let’s get started on the notes! Enjoy my “avid” readers.

Investigative Journalism basically means that it is “off the diary”. This term is used by journalists because they will always have a diary with potential stories in it, there has been no set agenda as it will be you setting your own agenda – sort of trying to guess what the people want to know as the story will be in the case of public interest. Apparently we have to be supremely awkward with our questions and really be argumentative when trying to get a story or information out of someone. This kind of journalism is usually dubbed “Gonzo Journalism”, for example people like Lois Theroux and Michael Moore.

Investigative Journalism = “What someone, somewhere doesn't want you to publish” Brian Thornton

When you’re involved in this field of journalism you have to, obviously, steer clear of malice! For example trying to publish something just to get revenge on someone or spite them – so basically don’t pursue a story when your active motive is personal revenge... that sounds simple enough!

When it comes to investigative journalism on the matter of serious public interest, a well known example would be that of Harry Evans; this man created an insight team to expose the drug companies that released a new drug for women because the women who used this drug had their children born with deformities. This definitely falls into the category of serious public interest.

We’ve been advised to watch the YouTube videos about “Who Bombed Birmingham” here’s the link, I’ve watched most of it and definitely recommend it!
Episode 1 - Watch me :)

Miscarriages of Justice: The classic cases of something being “off-agenda” are miscarriages of justice. This is when people have been framed and go to jail for a crime that they haven’t even committed – this leads us to think that what if the Legal System isn’t as fair and accurate as we think? People tend to go along with “if the legal system said that they are guilty, then they must be guilty” people don’t think twice about the possibility that the justice system is actually corrupt, this brings us back to our earlier lessons on law about the media being the watchdogs that keeps all institutions in check. So journalists are pretty much a team of superheroes... I knew I picked this course for a reason. Life win.

The Sun Article - Puns

Pun in The Sun

The Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation, furthermore the Sun was first published as a broadsheet in 1964 and this was before Rupert Murdoch took over. So now that we all know about the Sun, the aspect that I’ve chosen is going to be about the Sun’s frequent and somewhat endearing use of puns that we all slightly hate ourselves for laughing at and even loving.

Now typically people tend to look down on puns because they might be seen as cheap wit and often frowned upon, especially when it comes to its use in a newspaper. That being said, we have all now come to expect the Sun to use these puns for any occasion, such as just for fun or to simply embarrass. An example of them embarrassing people would be the headline “Moron Terror” in reference to the 27/1 attempted bombings in London, four people were found guilty of planning the attacks and the Sun primarily focused on the idiocy and incompetence of the operation. When it comes to things such as headlines, that we all know the sun are pretty much famous for, they really hit it off big with the headline during the Falklands War – “Gotcha.” This refers to the famous sinking of the Belgrano warship; it was celebrated on the front page of the Sun in a somewhat mocking manner.

A more recent case of a typical headline delivered by the sun would be the story of Freddie Starr, who has been in the TV show “I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of here!” was made to eat the toes of a Camel. Needless to say the Sun jumped on the chance to recreate a headline and emblazoned in bold on their front page “Freddie Starr Ate My Camel” along with this, they decided that it wasn’t enough to just have such a headline, they clearly had to throw in pun now and then, I mean why not? As Freddie ended up having to be taken to hospital they thought it fitting to state “it was toe much to handle”. The significance of this witty headline is that it is pretty much a rebirth of a very old headline from the Sun about Freddie Starr, the famous case of Freddie Starr allegedly eating a hamster; the Sun used this as their headline - “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”.

The Sun has constantly been using these huge and over the top headlines to draw people in, this is a reflection on their target audience - the working class male. They would assume that the working class male would be interested in showbiz news and so on making the headlines and use of puns really appeal to their readers.

Nathan Week!

Basically now that I’ve blogged about all the work I meant to do this is my excuse for not doing it the day I wrote the notes! My best friend Nathan, who studies Graphics design in Huddersfield, came to visit us here in Winchester for 5 days. These 5 days have been filled to the brim with Ronalds and so much drinking, I’m not sure if I'm entirely proud of myself...

So Nathan was getting here by Mega bus, he set off at 7:00am and he arrived at Winchester 1:10pm so that’s pretty much a six hour journey on the coach. Me and Henry (Hooves) were to meet him at St. Catherine’s Park and Ride (which is like a billion miles out of town and in the country) needless to say, I was right on Google maps and writing down some dynamite directions for us to get there. Naturally, we managed to set off late (not really surprising) and instantly thought we were lost out in the country. Despite this managed to find him and we eventually got back to the uni.

From this we went into town and this set the precedent of what happens now when we go into town - we will always go to the shops and buy cheap snacks and alcohol and then finish it off with a trip to McDonalds. I can honestly say that we had McDonalds 5 days straight, I’m not sure if this is something impressive but I feel just fine... *passes out*

After this we get ready to go out drinking, we managed to go out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday (well, drinking in the flat Thursday) and Friday which was the Harry Potter Flirt! This links in with what I was going to say next - Nathan doesn't like doing the theme that they tell you to do, im sure many of you at flirt saw a short blonde guy dressed as a Hobbit from Lord of the Rings - that was Nathan, im sure you'll have seen him despite how short he is.

But yeah, that’s pretty much my week this week, I successfully managed to juggle going out every night with being on time and alive for my lectures! Now thats something to be proud of really, needless to say I think it’s time to slow down on the going out - maybe just the two big nights a week or something or else I may actually run out of money! Haven't touched my overdraft yet - score!

Anyway people keep reading and so on, oh and most of all stay classy, Winchester x

Journalism Now and WINOL Review!

The Journalism now module is pretty much happening, well, now. We've had our first berating of not reading enough newspapers, enough to scare me into reading newspapers every second of the day, because well, reading newspapers = passing our course is the word on the street. Along with journalism now we had our very first "news clinic" which is pretty much our seminar groups being assigned a certain newspaper to read and then start to talk about what we've read in it while answering questions from our lecturers and so on.

Another thing from our journalism now lecture is that we have to review Winchester's online news feature "WINOL" this is Winchester News Online. So after watching through WINOL I have formed the following critique, sorry if im being harsh guys, but im pretty sure you won’t find it all bad! *looks awkwardly away* For the sake of simplicity I’ll just bullet point stuff out

• The intro is pretty cool, though sometime the music does interrupt but thats just down to the editing really
• The majority of the stories were very well reported I found, the one that I liked the most was about the laser machines being implemented into Southampton, insofar as the report was well spoken and well informed
• Some stories seemed a little unprepared, what with them having to look back and forth from camera to their notes - it kind of detracted from the story cause you would notice this quite easily
• I firmly believe that the sports section needs to be shorted, but this is because I have pretty much zero interest in sports and find it utterly dull, so really don’t listen to this point :)
• Some of the animations and transitions were very laggy, they just seemed a bit off
• Pretty much loved the animation in the whole WINOL Life thing, was a very nice touch
• Now, im sure it was just a small slip up but while the anchor was doing the all important sign-off, the music came in too early and interrupted it
• Sorry if im being too harsh, im being purposefully picky - you guys don’t want me to lie to you right? Didn’t think so, however, all in all it was done very well, there were definitely more good things than bad and it was an improvement from last week.

Good job guys and keep up the good work, I only hope that when we start WINOL we do nearly as good! With that, bye and stuff x

Philosophy Lecture - The Clockwork Universe

Key Terms / Ideas: Astronomy - This is the study of the heavens, so don't confuse this with zodiacs and that whole business. Celestial Heavens - This is the idea that anything above the moon is perpetual; it will always be permanent. Aristotelian and Scholastics - people who are heavily influenced by Aristotle. Which can be summed up as Aristotle + Bible = two main books and sources of knowledge. Sub-Lunar - The idea that nothing is constant, this is the world below the moon and so on, eventually concluding that God is constant and that the world below the celestial heavens is 'cursed'.

Aristotelians all tried to find a model of the earth that fits with the ideas of Aristotle: Ptolemy came up with the idea that the Earth is in fact the centre of the universe; He argued that the Moon, Sun, Planets and Stars all revolve and will never change.

Francis Bacon: Bacon states that things such as university never changed - it was merely a system of training clergy men and so on. Bacon was in such an institute and despised this - he violently turned on the Scholastics and Aristotelian approach and called their ideas barren and circular.

Bacon also claimed that the mixing of religion and science was a recipe for disaster because people are constantly trying to change the world - he wanted to break away from these somewhat outdated beliefs and other knowledge from the past that he deemed useless.

Francis Bacon and the New Organon: The Organon was the collective name of all of Aristotle's work. This 'New Organon' had 4 key themes. 
1) Knowledge is the source of human power, so we must harness and navigate through all knowledge. 
2) There must be a clear separation of science and religion, as mixing if caused too many problems in the past.
3) The idea "new knowledge" must be thought up from scratch - these ideas or general theories must be then tested to see if they can prove them, or more accurately in later years "falsify" them. 
4) Science is dynamic - you must always admit to failure when you encounter it as opposed to the archaic way of never admitting defeat or failure, this is the way that you learn.

The Scientific Method: This is the idea that you must always start a new theory from scratch - you must protect yourself from ideas from the past that might influence your ideas - it has to be original basically.

Locke and Human Understanding: Locke believes that natural understanding comes from experience, as we know he also rejected the idea of innate knowledge. He believes that we are all born blank slates, we need experience to help us discover who we are, and furthermore, he believes that God has given us reason so that we can then understand what we are seeing.

The Heliocentric Model, Copernicus and Galileo: The Sun = Centre of the Universe. A 16th century polish man called Copernicus wanted to make a calendar.This idea of his was suppressed and offered to the world as a model of how you can calculate it, this is however not a true picture of reality.

Kepler heavily influenced Galileo and they managed to prefect the Dutch invention - the telescope. For the first time ever this allowed people to actually observe the heavens, this sort of this was un-dreamed of by previous generations - it was a true revelation. The telescope brought with it the power of observation and when you link this with mathematical proof gives you the idea of precedent over presumptive authority. For example, the scholastic system says that the moon is completely smooth, but with the telescope we now know that there in fact creators and mounds upon the moon’s surface and that Jupiter also had its own moons. Galileo attacked Aristotle and his ideas, mostly his distinction between primary and secondary qualities:

Primary = real and quantitative (things like shape, mass, measurable things and so on)

Secondary = placed on all Aristotelian qualities, we're not real in the object it all depends on perception

Isaac Newton: Newton published the book "Principia" in 1687 and it was a mathematical demonstration of what came beforehand (people such as Keplar and Copernicus). Newton convinced people that the world was ordered and knowable - this is when he first mentioned "The Clockwork Universe" 

After Newton, Aristotle’s physics is discredited and the whole of his system of thought were undermined, all thanks to the ideas put forward by Newton and the people after him. This is arguably the advent of the Enlightenment - which is the dominance of science until it is destroyed by Einstein in the 20th Century.

Phew! What a hell of a long blog post, anyway that’s my "summary" of the philosophy lecture on the clockwork universe. 

Bye and stuff, thanks for stopping by, stay classy x

Law Lecture - Copyright

Copyright was first introduced after the birth of the printing press. This is pretty much a simple aspect of law, insofar as at its basic level it means that if you wrote it, then it’s yours; for example an article. The same applies to any pictures you take, poems you write, drawings you do and so on! Copyright is a property protection law that keeps in check how your own work or images are used by others. It protects a number of things; books, images, film and TV broadcasts and so on, anything that you've done yourself is rightfully and lawfully yours, so if someone is trying to pass off their work as your own then boom you can pounce if you can provide and show that you are the original creator of it.

However, you are allowed to 'license' your pictures, articles on to people who ask you to use them, commonly this happens with pictures - people will usually email the owner of a picture to ask if that they are allowed to use them, for example, in their blogs and this is absolutely fine so long as you stick to their terms - for example crediting the owner and source of the photograph.

The confirmation gained through the email is effectively solid, written consent from the owner that you're allowed to use their picture - you must make sure that they give the confirmation in the form of an email, or at least something substantial that will hold up in court if they decide to sue you for breaching copyright law. Basically, don’t steal other people's work, all right, because that’s plagiarism.
The length of copyright does depend on the material. For example musical works are under the copyright of the artist, so long as that artist lives. The copyright then lasts seventy years

Fair Dealing: Fair dealing is a beautiful thing - it allows you to use copyrighted material for free! This can also be referred to as 'lifting'. This means that factual stories in the news can be used, insofar as 'lifting' a quote or a story from another newspaper is allowed - so long as you credit the person who originally took the picture, wrote the quote and so on, because otherwise it seems like you're trying to pass off the quote as if you're the one who collected it. This is all upheld in the Copyright Act of 1976.

Fair dealing can have a defence in news, insofar as lets say a famous actor or musician dies - you would be writing an obituary or be doing a tribute - you can say that since it is relevant to tell the story you need to use footage from the past or from their most recent film and that covers you just fine; because it is warranted, however you must still remember to always credit the owner, otherwise it's like you're saying you filmed it yourself and that it's your footage. It's important to note that when using footage, you're only allowed to use around 6 seconds or so of it, something that is not deemed excessive because otherwise its like rubbing it in.

Second defence for fair dealing; if you're doing a film review then you're welcome to use any footage from whatever it is you are reviewing, this is because it's being used to illustrate and show off the film; as always credit the source and make sure its not a huge amount, like you won't be able to use 3 minutes of it.

Keep it secret... Keep it safe: Confidentiality

Whoa, so I totally forgot about this and thought I’d already blogged about it! Jeeze, im really falling behind on this business - note to self, be better at filing.

Confidentiality: When it comes to confidentiality there are three areas of concern, these are:

1) State Secrets - this is classed as any military secrets, such as the armed forces and their documents. This is upheld by the "Official Secrets Act" and this means that, among other things, you're not allowed by law to reveal the location of troops, for example.

2) Commercial Secrets - This is to do with the confidentiality of workers within a business, known more commonly as business to business dealings. this is the expectation that what a person says will be treated as private and confidential, for example if a boss tells you that they (the business) are commencing a price rise, it’s pretty obvious that you're not supposed to tell rival shops.

3) Privacy - This might be seen as the new libel, insofar as privacy has become very important after the publication of the Human Rights Act which brought with it section 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This means that there is a clear divide between the public and private spheres of life. The Private sphere is protected by law and people aren’t allowed to pry on it because this infringes on their right to privacy - a major nuisance for the paparazzi and journalists in general.

Common Law Secrets: Secrets are allowed, so long as they are not against the public interest. Lawyers are a prime example along with doctors - they have confidentiality and cannot by law pass on any information that is discussed in confidence to any third party member without legitimate consent. The above point also applied to the Catholic confession system. 

There is my quick summary of the law lecture, Confidentiality is pretty much common sense really, bear in mind you shouldn’t just go and tell all your secrets to some random guy on the street or you know, people you just don't trust in general; you see? Common sense people!

Anyway, back to my mass amounts of blogging, bye and stuff x