1. Outline the verification principle as part of the school of thought known as logical positivism, how might this be applied to journalism.
· The verification principle basically means that if something cannot be verified than it is neither true nor false but just nonsensical. For example a certain moral or ethical belief cannot be proved though means of collecting data or science so its nonsensical
· Ludwig Wittgenstein says that there is no point in talking about things that you can’t prove as it makes no sense.
· Solipsism- people should only talk about things that exist in their world. Some people believe that our minds make up the world so we should only talk about what out actual mind can see rather than things like heaven and hell which can’t be proved.
· In relation to journalism, by following these ideas it means that people will believe only what they see. If someone tells a journalist a story they need to be 100% sure that it is true and before they see it in the world they perceive then they is no point publishing or broadcasting it. Furthermore it must be able to be proved to be true or it is pointless talking about it according to logical positivism. So only when a fact enters your world and you see it can it be considered real, which would avoid any false information being released.
2. What is phenomenology can there be a subjective reality or subjective truth, what standards ought a journalist apply.
· Kant believes that things exist only when we perceive them and that they are only there when we look at them.
· Kant would say that there is a thing in itself ( Noumena) such as a table but it only really exists once we use our senses and perceive it (phenomena)
· Other thinkers such as Locke and Hume think that objects in the world are always there regardless of whether we perceive them. (empirical thinkers)
· Phenomenology is creating things with your mind, the idea that we will the world to exist by thinking of it.
· In existentialism, the intentions that we have make the world, and solipsism is the idea that we can change what we see with our thinking.
· In relation to journalism, a journalist should apply the idea that truth and reality are not always the same. There are things in the world that are true but we must experience them for ourselves to know if they are real or not. Kant thinks that you can have a priori knowledge about some things in the world, which I think is true, but we must experience the noumenal world to understand it.
3. Describe JM Keynes ideas on monetary policy with an indication of how the Keynesian ‘revolution’ came about. Does this lead to social regression, moral failure and serfdom as Hayek asserts.
· Economists try to see world from non phenomenological way
· The depression of the 30’s brought it about (Keynesian revolution)
· In the war the government printed worthless money for total employment.
· The multiplier; people get a pointless job, spend their wages in a shop the person who works in the shop can buy things now etc. Etc. Money makes the world turn.
· Keynes wanted to boost aggregate demand, and thought government should increase spending rather than saving to boost recovery.
· Keynes thinks government spending to keep people employed will keep the flow of cash going round which is key.
· Keynes thinks that even if a country has no gold they should print money and keep people employed.
· Thought the government should intervene to avoid severe unemployment.
· Since the recession of 2008 started, the government has seen a return to a more Keynesian like policy.
· Says that peoples spending will catch up with the new money supply. The key is that people spend and buy what the economy in producing without jobs this isn’t possible.
· Keynes wanted to control the market whereas Hayek wanted them to be free.
· Hayek thinks that saving is the right thing to do and Keynes ideas lead to radical movements in society ‘serfdom’
4. ‘Facts in logical space are the world.’ Tractatus Do you agree?
· It rejects Metaphysics
· Says that there is no ideal form, no noumena, the world is just made of facts that are in our mind
· Facts make the world, I agree as facts are the truth and represent everything in the world.
· Without facts the world could not exsist. FACT.
· Without facts we cannot verify things as we have nothing to compare it to so otherwise everyone is chatting nonsense.
· The world consists of facts which is the basis for logical thinking.
· People have different opinions of the world but the facts are there and cannot be changed.
5. Choose a movement or thinker we have discussed who has affected journalism.
Wittgenstein’s ideas on logical positivism sticks in my mind and not just because it was the most recent thing we studied. He says in the Tractatus that; ‘there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will actually be realized.’ He uses an example of the sun rising saying that just because it rose doesn’t mean it will again the next day. I have my own example of crossing a road; you look left and right and right again seeing that the road is clear. However this doesn’t mean a drugged up nutcase on a bank robbery get away job can’t come down the wrong side of the road and hit you from the left! The point is you can never assume anything even if it really is the simplest occurrence that happens every day, facts must be checked as they make up the world. You cannot talk about things you don’t actually know and can yourself verify. One of, if not, the biggest mistakes a journalist can make is to get their facts wrong. This is why we must always believe only what we see and can prove, also this school of thought has allowed me to rely on myself and trust myself more in life as well as journalism as I can prove myself what is true and not rely on a next man gassing it.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Thursday, 5 May 2011
QPR FA hearing
Like many Queens Park Rangers fans I have been sweating at the thought of QPR losing out on automatic promotion as champions.
The question that seems to be being asked all over the internet is; is it fair?
Is it fair to dock a team points, strip them of the title they have won on the pitch beating teams 11 v 11 for 90 minutes? As a fan I am naturally bias and say no, of course the squad have done nothing wrong and have nothing to do with transfer deals. The squad that won enough points to mathmaticlly secure promotion deserve their title as champions.
IF and that is a big IF, the board or individual staff are found of any intentional wrong doing then they should be punished. It doesn't seem fair to strip the players, and fans to some extent, of what they have rightfully won. Lets put it this way if a big multi-million pound company were found to be in breach of some trading rules, would the staff be fined? Would the employee of the month get thier plaque taken off the wall because of some fidling of the finances rom the boys upstairs? Of course they Wouldn't the people who did wrong would be punished. And IF the qpr board are found to be in breach of the Leauges rules is it fair to demean all the hard work of the football players? These are the questions the FA may be thinking about now as I type.
The other issue surrounding the alleged charges is the somewhat rediculous timing of the FA to have the inquest. The player in question was signed ion 2009, yet the final descion on the clubs fate has been brought against the club ONE day before the end of the footballing season. The FA seem to have been alerted about the problem a good few months ago and yet the case happens in the last week! If qpr were to be deducted points earlier in the season they at least would of known what was needed for promotion. Because of this reason the FA may have to think carefully about what punishment they give out as in the eyes of the public they may have seen to have been very incompitant. Also the desicion could open an entirely new can of worms; throwing the play offs in to a complicated mess.
To your everyday sports fan, the charges brought against the club are very difficult to understand unless you have some sort of legal background. However if QPR have been in breach of the rules, this fan hopes that a heafty fine will be sufficient to punish any wrong doing.
The question that seems to be being asked all over the internet is; is it fair?
Is it fair to dock a team points, strip them of the title they have won on the pitch beating teams 11 v 11 for 90 minutes? As a fan I am naturally bias and say no, of course the squad have done nothing wrong and have nothing to do with transfer deals. The squad that won enough points to mathmaticlly secure promotion deserve their title as champions.
IF and that is a big IF, the board or individual staff are found of any intentional wrong doing then they should be punished. It doesn't seem fair to strip the players, and fans to some extent, of what they have rightfully won. Lets put it this way if a big multi-million pound company were found to be in breach of some trading rules, would the staff be fined? Would the employee of the month get thier plaque taken off the wall because of some fidling of the finances rom the boys upstairs? Of course they Wouldn't the people who did wrong would be punished. And IF the qpr board are found to be in breach of the Leauges rules is it fair to demean all the hard work of the football players? These are the questions the FA may be thinking about now as I type.
The other issue surrounding the alleged charges is the somewhat rediculous timing of the FA to have the inquest. The player in question was signed ion 2009, yet the final descion on the clubs fate has been brought against the club ONE day before the end of the footballing season. The FA seem to have been alerted about the problem a good few months ago and yet the case happens in the last week! If qpr were to be deducted points earlier in the season they at least would of known what was needed for promotion. Because of this reason the FA may have to think carefully about what punishment they give out as in the eyes of the public they may have seen to have been very incompitant. Also the desicion could open an entirely new can of worms; throwing the play offs in to a complicated mess.
To your everyday sports fan, the charges brought against the club are very difficult to understand unless you have some sort of legal background. However if QPR have been in breach of the rules, this fan hopes that a heafty fine will be sufficient to punish any wrong doing.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Tractatus
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in to a wealthy Austrian family, and he served in the Austrian Army in the First World War. He started Work on the Tractatus towards the end of the First World War. He studied engineering at Manchester which led to an interest in maths and philosophy. Ludwig was a student of Russell Bertrand, and learnt a lot from him; however a lot of his ideas laid out in the Tactatus seem to differ from that of his teacher, even pointing out faults in his logic. The book talks about logical positivism, and the connection between language and thought. He talks about the way in which the world works through language.
Ludwig’s theory is based on the way in which language is used in the world, and says that language is everything and everything is language. He says that without language the world cannot exist, and that logic is the structure of reality. Ludwig says that things can be true or false but also nonsensical, which is something that can’t be proved to be true or false therefore it simply makes no sense. Wittgenstein says that things can only be said that are true about the factual world, anything else is nonsensical such as a certain moral or ethical belief as it cannot pass the verification principle. He goes on to say in the book that the problem with a lot of philosophers theories is their inability to understand language, which means by his theory, makes some of the theories that they put forward nonsensical. He says the world consists of, and is determined by facts. This is the basis for logical thinking; he says there are objects in the world that which make the world exist. He says that without language objects cannot be verified. Space time and colour are forms of objects.
Ludwig often talks about a proposition which is the way to communicate something through spoken or written word; it is made out of specific names in a particular logical form. A proposition is a logical picture of reality, an example of this would be saying ‘this house is red’. There are types of propositions such as tautologies which are true and contradictions which are false. He says; ‘a proposition is neither probable nor improbable, either an event occurs or it does not; there is no middle way.’ This could relate to everyday life as people often chat a load of nonsense, and Ludwig says that there are only two ways to decipher a statement it either happens or doesn’t. Ludwig also talks about states of affairs, States of affairs is the combination of objects or things. He says that the structures of a fact consist of the states of affairs. To try and simplify, a factual statement consists of a combination of objects that fit in to each other like a chain to make sense, however a state of affairs can only exist if the proposition itself is true and not false. He says that; ‘language disguises thought’, he says that a human can speak without actually knowing how the sound of speech is made. He makes the comparison of clothes covering a body saying that you can’t tell what exactly the body looks like as the clothes cover the true form of the body. This could mean that some people often talk about things that they really know nothing about, either through straight lying or just pretending they are knowledgeable on the subject and they use language to disguise what they are actually thinking.
When talking about pictures we get a clear idea about his views on fact and logic. He says that a picture is fact; a picture represents what it portrays in pictorial form only. A picture represents a possible situation in logical space. To know whether a picture itself is true or false we must ourselves compare it with our reality. This means that we can use our own mind and experiences to find out whether something is true or false. A picture only shows something that is fact but the truth of it we can only discover personally.
One of his key ideas was solipsism; he says that you cannot talk about anything other than what exists in your world. He goes on to say that; ‘there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will actually be realized.’ Wittgenstein thinks that there is no way of knowing if anything will happen just before it has happened before, or something else has happened. He seems to think that the world is only what you can see before you and that you can’t know anything else other than what you have experienced personally and therefore you cannot make assumptions about anything else in life. He says that people may have different impressions of the world; however the facts and objects in the world remain the same. One person can view the world as fun and exciting where as other may see it as corrupt and harsh; however the facts of the world from the ground we walk on to the air we breathe are still exactly the same.
Ultimately he is saying that we must use language to try and explore facts as people can lie or not know what they are talking about. Understanding language and logic, we can ourselves find the truth without having to rely on what people are saying we can determine it for ourselves. The book shows what exactly a factual statement must consist of such as propositions, tautology etc. Without these principles what someone is saying cannot be true, or will be nonsensical which isn’t necessarily false but just doesn’t make sense. The world cannot be verified without the use of language, every proposition that is true makes the world and we need language to verify and confirm what is true.
Ludwig’s theory is based on the way in which language is used in the world, and says that language is everything and everything is language. He says that without language the world cannot exist, and that logic is the structure of reality. Ludwig says that things can be true or false but also nonsensical, which is something that can’t be proved to be true or false therefore it simply makes no sense. Wittgenstein says that things can only be said that are true about the factual world, anything else is nonsensical such as a certain moral or ethical belief as it cannot pass the verification principle. He goes on to say in the book that the problem with a lot of philosophers theories is their inability to understand language, which means by his theory, makes some of the theories that they put forward nonsensical. He says the world consists of, and is determined by facts. This is the basis for logical thinking; he says there are objects in the world that which make the world exist. He says that without language objects cannot be verified. Space time and colour are forms of objects.
Ludwig often talks about a proposition which is the way to communicate something through spoken or written word; it is made out of specific names in a particular logical form. A proposition is a logical picture of reality, an example of this would be saying ‘this house is red’. There are types of propositions such as tautologies which are true and contradictions which are false. He says; ‘a proposition is neither probable nor improbable, either an event occurs or it does not; there is no middle way.’ This could relate to everyday life as people often chat a load of nonsense, and Ludwig says that there are only two ways to decipher a statement it either happens or doesn’t. Ludwig also talks about states of affairs, States of affairs is the combination of objects or things. He says that the structures of a fact consist of the states of affairs. To try and simplify, a factual statement consists of a combination of objects that fit in to each other like a chain to make sense, however a state of affairs can only exist if the proposition itself is true and not false. He says that; ‘language disguises thought’, he says that a human can speak without actually knowing how the sound of speech is made. He makes the comparison of clothes covering a body saying that you can’t tell what exactly the body looks like as the clothes cover the true form of the body. This could mean that some people often talk about things that they really know nothing about, either through straight lying or just pretending they are knowledgeable on the subject and they use language to disguise what they are actually thinking.
When talking about pictures we get a clear idea about his views on fact and logic. He says that a picture is fact; a picture represents what it portrays in pictorial form only. A picture represents a possible situation in logical space. To know whether a picture itself is true or false we must ourselves compare it with our reality. This means that we can use our own mind and experiences to find out whether something is true or false. A picture only shows something that is fact but the truth of it we can only discover personally.
One of his key ideas was solipsism; he says that you cannot talk about anything other than what exists in your world. He goes on to say that; ‘there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will actually be realized.’ Wittgenstein thinks that there is no way of knowing if anything will happen just before it has happened before, or something else has happened. He seems to think that the world is only what you can see before you and that you can’t know anything else other than what you have experienced personally and therefore you cannot make assumptions about anything else in life. He says that people may have different impressions of the world; however the facts and objects in the world remain the same. One person can view the world as fun and exciting where as other may see it as corrupt and harsh; however the facts of the world from the ground we walk on to the air we breathe are still exactly the same.
Ultimately he is saying that we must use language to try and explore facts as people can lie or not know what they are talking about. Understanding language and logic, we can ourselves find the truth without having to rely on what people are saying we can determine it for ourselves. The book shows what exactly a factual statement must consist of such as propositions, tautology etc. Without these principles what someone is saying cannot be true, or will be nonsensical which isn’t necessarily false but just doesn’t make sense. The world cannot be verified without the use of language, every proposition that is true makes the world and we need language to verify and confirm what is true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)