Theme 2: Ctritical media studies POST

I’ve learnt how Horkheimer, Adorno and Benjamin thinks technology, enlightenment and technological development, can deceive people. How it can change the way we perceive things such as culture for example. How people can become passive and unable to think by it. How culture affects people’s ideologies. How it can make people think myth is enlightenment, and not what it really is.

The two texts for this weeks theme ”Critical media studies” was very related to each other. I’ll try to make a short summary & reflection on each of them as well as the connection to demonstrate some of what I’ve learnt after the lecture and the seminar. Dialectic of Enlightenment describes how standardization of culture, related to capitalism, has allowed for a kind of mass culture or rather the culture industry. The culture industry is used to describe its wide scope; it affects all who depend on capitalism. The culture industry also makes people dependent on capitalism. The products of the culture industry is created with the purpose of satisfying as many needs as possible, in order make as much profit as possible and affects as many people as possible. They mean it’s kind of a loop of always wanting more and satisfaction of created need, not real happiness. What follows from this is that the culture produced is similar and based on the same things, even if it seems different.  The commodification of culture results in the gravitation towards capitalism.  According to the text, this is when people stop thinking and submit to the culture. This is when enlightenment becomes myth in that people see the success presented to them through culture as their own success. ”There is no gap between what exists and the possible”. Here is the relation to nominalism, unable to identify this gap. Their answer to identifying this gap is conceptual thinking, new ways of seeing the world, don’t see things as they seem/are (nominalism) but criticize, explore and search.

The other text describes reproduction and standardization of art and culture as well. Benjamin also thinks that the things related to the production of culture decide the culture that forms and affects our ideology. He describes historical technological inventions lead to mass distribution of culture, arts loss of authenticity (aura), changes in perception that leads to art/culture which have the same affect given above. That is, leaving the audience passive and seeing the art/film as reality.

It feels like Horkheimer and Adorno see people becoming unable to think and submitting to the culture industry and therefor thinks there’s no revolutionary potential of the people, the gravity to capitalism is to strong. In contrast however, Benjamin noticed the critical view of the audience to film, and predicts that they will act as judges while viewing, which means more critics towards culture and therefor a more revolutionary potential, both culturally and the things culture affects.

Other than that the Lecture was very interesting and informative, with lots of examples, and recommendations on how to see things regarding the theme. During the seminar we discussed the seminar questions in addition to some others given by Håkan. I felt a bit lost and tired, but some fell into place after the seminar. After the seminar I read some more as well as went through my notes from the lecture in order to get some other pieces into place.

Theme 3: Research and Theory Pre

Journal: Computers & Education

“The Editors welcome any papers on cognition, educational or training systems development using techniques from and applications in any technical knowledge domain”, the journal contains of 80 volumes so far. The aim with the Journal is to contain a summary of the highest level of general development within its context and review articles.

Paper: Min Gyu Kim and Joohan Kim (2010), Cross-validation of reliability, convergent and discriminant validity for the problematic online game use scale, in Computers in Human Behavior

The purpose in this study is to develop a measure problematic online game use scale, identify types of problematic online game use (POGU), and asses the validity of the problematic online game use scale. The study is dependent on two hypothesis based on previous studies/litterature, 1.  “There are several types of POGU” 2. “POGU is a multidimensional construct” hypothesis are motivated. This is exploratory research which seeks to explore more knowledge about problematic online game use, this also makes it a basic research. The absolute main-concepts are online games which is defined as interactive online or MMORPG, then there is Problematic online game use which can be defined (not real definition) as playing online games to the extent that it creates psychological, school, and work difficulties in a person’s life. The concepts are right for the studies purpose and the relation between the concepts are outlined in that: Pogu has it's base in the concept of online games, literature and reasoning as evidence. Evidence that POGU is an own kind of addiction is given. Other key concepts are: Virtual Relationship, Failure of Self Control, Conflict, Health Problem and Euphoria all 5 defined, motivated and well put in context in the text. 

I think the research design is both exploratory and confirmatory in that it both explores a potential PUGO scale and that it validate and check the reliability.  The full-information maximum-likelihood is used because the quantitative data from the participants (information about these stated) contained missing values, it was also motivated why he preferred this method over others. With the help of items (questions/statements kind of) from scales and questionnaires regarding game and internet addiction in previous studies, certain criteria’s, principles, pilot studies “principal axis factoring”, items were selected and excluded to be in the PUGO models. PAF method resulted in five factors for the model which he called, Euphoria, Health Problem, Conflict, Failure of Self-Control and Preference for Virtual Relationship (each item relates to one of these 5 factors). Initial data lead to 3 models which was valuated with “x^2-anlysis”, “Tucker-Lewis index” (NNFI) and “The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation” this lead to one model. Cross-validations of reliability to see if generalization of the model was possible each method motivated. Then checked ”Convergent validity so that the POGU scale was correlated with measures of individual differences”. Discriminant validity to see if POGU scale ‘‘yields measurements that are statistically distinguishable”. All data and models were presented in nice tables and figures. The POGU scale passed all “tests” and there for the conclusion that the “study represents an initial step toward developing, and testing a new scale to measure problematic online game use”, hence his hypothesis has been proven correct which is discussed. 

Things I reflected on: The discussion was mostly a summary, little information about the data gathering given.

1. That there is different kinds of and views on theory but they aim to either describe/analyze, explain, predict, instruct how to design/act or a combination of them. They can tell you what is, why, how, when, how to, where, what will be, how to do something. They explain the logic between cause and event in an abstract way. It has some degree of generality and probably boundries.

Theory is not things, data, diagrams, references, hypothesis (predictions), empirical patterns or facts.

2. I’d say that the major theory is that 20 different items in the form of statements, explained in appendix 1 in the paper, and their relation to the 5 factors, mentioned above, can measure problematic online game use. The representation of the theory would take the form of a scale. I’d say that this theory 2. Explanation because of the 20 statements and their relations to the five factors and the POGU scale to some extent explains why or which kind of POGU, they are not random but the cause is identified.

3. It can’t predict or tell how to do something. Generalization of the theory to a wide extent, if results of future studies agrees, is possible, justification and caution needed. It can explain what why and identify the cause of the phenomenon. This kind of theory, at least in the text, provides with new interesting insights which gives the opportunity to bring knowledge about POGU. 

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science Reflection

I read the texts belonging to theme 1, both texts were written a long time ago  which made it a bit difficult to understand since the style differ from present English, but also since I didn’t have any understanding of many of the concepts and words presented in the text. Therefore I had to take notes and make a lot of research just to understand since they weren't explained in the texts themselves.

With the things I grasped from reading the texts I went to the lecture where a lot of the things got explained. Johan Eriksson explained and talked about the view where knowledge corresponds to the facts of reality, where people left the teleological worldview for an objective mechanical worldview, where things such as force, pressure evolved to explain nature without noise from human experiences. As a second topic during the lecture Johan discussed how it’s possible to know anything about the world without looking into it, or having synthetic knowledge apriori? Kant’s answer to this question, Kant’s Copernican revolution, was also presented. Then as a third topic he lectured about the critique of knowledge is perception in Plato’s text and also how Plato anticipated Kant. During the lecture I took notes and tried to add the different concepts that were presented together. During the seminars first hour a lot of the time went to Johan explaining the concerned topics, but also freely asked questions were noted and later on discussed during the second hour.

I’ve learnt about Kant’s new way of thinking, where an object conforms to our faculty or 12 categories of understanding in time and space. Then that people structure and organize information according to this and this then gives meaning to the world that is structured, perception is blind without conception. I’ve learnt about Plato’s work and how he anticipated Kant when he criticized “knowledge is perception” by his making of Theory of forms/ideas, which possibly is the foundation to the idealism. I’ve learnt a lot of new philosophical concepts/terms and I also think it has been good to read a lot, especially in English.

Theme 2: Crititcal media studies Pre

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. Enlightenment was supposed to save humans from fear and give them power over nature. Fear of the unknown, for example mythology, should vanish by the means of reason, knowledge and rationality. It should eradicate myths and “overthrow fantasy with knowledge”. People started to believe in a systematic research of nature, the goal was to “disenchant nature” with knowledge and the means mentioned above. “What does not conform to the standard of calculability and utility must be viewed with suspicion”. This new way of seeing, enlightening, the world would give humans power over both humans themselves and nature but also reject fear of the unknown.  One difference between enlightenment and a myth could be that enlightenment often include repetitions of events which myths do not.

b. Methods with the purpose of discovering the truth. It contains of an investigation with the means of a thesis and an antithesis/anthiseses. The process through reasoning with these two concepts will result in a synthesis between the thesis and the contradiction/contradictions. As I understand it, the contradictions in the text are “that the myth already is enlightenment” or that “enlightenment reverts to myths”, the reason for this criticism being that the search for domination is a base in enlightenment?

c. Nominalism has multiple meanings, one is that there exists no universals. A second meaning is that it doesn’t exists any abstract objects, which is objects that do not exist in space and time. Depending of which meaning it is of different importance to the text. The first meaning of nominalism could be of importance for the text because people have the power to think for themselves and for example decide not to listen to irrational myths given by rulers. The second meaning could be of importance because it directly separate myths and what is not from nature, which makes the disenchanting of nature easier and more reliable.

d. The purpose of myth, I think, is to criticize enlightenment. This is done by using their parables: enlightenment like myth seeks to explain what is unknown in order to remove fear, dominate, and achieve power. But also criticize by looking at their differences like repetition, rationality, and coherency. In a dialectic fashion.

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a. Substructure: The base which reflects the superstructures form. It contains “forces of production” (means of labor, examples from the texts context: photography, film, lithography, radio, printers), and it is also contains “relations of production” (Social relationship that are a necessity to survive or for man’s life).

Superstructure: Includes the society’s ideology, culture, institutions etc. Within the texts context: Primarily art and ideology.

The superstructure is more resistant to change than the substructure. The two concepts are the reason for the change in art.

The Marxist perspective has the point to avoid other concepts like, creativity, genius, eternal value and mystery. Prevents a perspective in a fascist sense. The perspective points out that the ones dominating the substructure are the ones who stears the society’s ideology or the culture of art in this context. Since the substructure determines the superstructure with some exceptions. I think Marxism aims straight at the core of the ones ruling over technological reproductivity. 

b. Yes he saw revolutionary potential, especially in film. The reasons were that the actor didn’t perform directly to an audience but to a camera. The camera wasn’t static and the audience could therefore take the role as a judge within the film, which was not possible in previous means in art. The second reason for revolutionary potential was its “mass nature”. That is, it could reach a lot of people. I think that their perspectives don’t differ in that the standardization and reproduction of “culture” makes art lose its “aura” and keeps people imprisoned.

c. People are born with sense perception which are natural and inherent, we have our own “unique” feelings. Events in history can also form perceptions in other words history affects how our sense perceive things. Technological inventions is one example of the many factors that could determine sense perception. He speaks about how reproduction has changed the view on quantity and quality, uniqueness and spatially close. An historical invention which did change our way of living and perceive things are the film for example.

d. Aura is what the reproduction withers. It can therefore be described as something unique with an authenticity. Other things that I think is included regarding an art objects aura is value of the cultural heritage, history, changes in ownership. A natural objects aura is not vulnerable like the art objects aura according to Benjamin. 

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

Question 1: In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

Kant speaks about finding ”the secure path of science” and gives two sciences as an examples which both have found this path, mathematics and nature science. He explains that the reason why they’ve found this path is because they at some point changed and revolutionized their way of thinking within the science. They forced the questions they had in each of the sciences to be answered.  Kant means that within metaphysics who have not found the secure path of science you might need to change the way of thinking in order to find the secure path of science, like in mathematics and nature science. Because using the old ways of thinking got metaphysics stuck at the beginning of the path you might say, so yet again in other words it was not on the secure path of science, as in the question initially stated: “have come to nothing”.

“Assuming that all our cognition must conform to objects” was the old and unsuccessful way of thinking, where it has been impossible to find out something about the objects a priori. Because within metaphysics we don’t have any experience or knowledge directly related to these objects that would make us able to find anything. In other words our cognition or our mind have boundaries which prevents us from find or establish anything about these objects a priori. Instead Kant wants to try a new way of thinking by “Assuming that objects must conform to our cognition”.  Which would force us to get answers in the form of possible experiences. So instead we should start at the point of view of ourselves and proceed within the boundaries of our cognitions capability. He means that we can use our experiences unrelated to the objects within metaphysics to establish what is possible with the help of our cognition, then if the object we established is true or not in reality, is another question but the possibility of such an object should be exist according to our cognition. At some point in the text he states “That we can cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves put into them”,   this leads us only to an appearance of the object, but as long as this appearance/representation/intuition of the object conforms to our cognition, it is a possibility despite that no perceiving through our senses in relation directly to the object has helped us create this possibility.  And this new way of thinking could help establish and be a principle that leads metaphysics to the secure way of science.

Question 2: At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

Socrates argues that we use our organs or instruments of perceiving, for example eyes and ears, to gain information about an object. We do not hear with the ears as we can compare two objects perceived from two different organs like eyes and ears. For example we can compare a color to a sound, and he argues that this comparison can’t take place in one of the organs used to perceive them but rather that this comparison happens in the mind. So he means that we perceive characteristics/qualities about an object, through our ears for example, and then handle the information gained with our mind. Each mind handle the information differently and associates differently that is if we do not have and used evidence of past experiences in hand, empiricism. The evidence, gained from for example observations, interviews, or any other empirical method, are descriptions of perceived information, hence experiences. If the descriptions of these experiences and evidence are at hand we have knowledge of that specific object. As these experiences has been perceived, in one way or another, you could say, in an empirical perspective, that perception is knowledge and therefor that Socrates argues for empiricism.