Theme 3 Post 2

Theory is not raw data. To borrow a bit from Kant: “perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty.”. Without applying any reasoning or any concepts to the data, it won’t be very useful. Theory is about analysis of data. It’s about linking previous knowledge and research together with newly found data to analyse. Theory is what makes the data relevant. Theory also serves as a cornerstone for us to understand things in life.

I thought it was quite interesting that papers are sometimes rejected on the basis of too little theory. This really shows which significance the theory actually has. The results aren’t in themselves very interesting but it’s when we start to analyse it and try to understand the reasons of why the results came out as they did that it starts to become interesting.

One thing that I’ve thought about is whether theory is qualitative or not. Surely it is, but is it only the qualitative part of for example a research paper? If it was then theory would be subject of the writer’s interpretations, which it is to some degree. Theory is dependent on already established knowledge and it will have observations or data to support it. These observations and data should be captured as objectively as possible. The amount of data backing up a theory is then what determines a large part of the strength of the theory. Combining data from different places to form an argument is also important for the strength of the theory. It’s similar to how cross referencing in journalism will increase the credibility of a news report.

What I think is important to point out is that theory is a layered construct. Theory is built with the help of earlier theories. The wheel isn’t reinvented for every research article for example. What kind of implications might this have then? A naive belief would be that since theories in part comes from earlier theories this will lead to an always expanding theory (if we use the term to encompass all existing theories). This would be wonderful but theories might actually be wrong. Maybe an observation wasn’t actually what you thought it was or a data set was tampered with. You would still be able to theorize on this and might actually come up with a reasonable explanation. Someone could then build his/her research on this and it could potentially start a chain of flawed theory. Obviusly the sooner you discover the flaws in a theory, the easier it will be to retract it and it will face less resistance than for a well established theory. One example would be the theory of evolution which still to this day faces criticism from creationists (though much less than before), even though it has a lot of evidence to back it up.

It’s interesting to see what a big role the natural sciences have come to play in the forming of theories. The scientific community is actually serving as a gatekeeper and it’s deciding what papers and with that theories, that get published. This should result in that only strong enough theory is published.

The notion of theory is not black and white. At first I didn’t really see the point of dividing theory into different types. After discussing this topic more I do think that this classification can be quite useful. Mainly to see that all research doesn’t have the same purpose. Some can focus on only explaining while other research also takes on the task of prediction. It emphasizes that there’s some flexibility in the word theory.

Theme 4 Post 1

Paper: The impact of media multitasking on learning. Lee et al. Published in Learning Media and Technology, March 2012 (at the time with an impact factor of 1.03 and today 1.62).

The article’s purpose was to investigate how multitasking affects our cognition and comprehension. Earlier studies had focused more generally on how the brain works so the angle for this continued research was on learning. Previous studies had concluded that there is a limit for how much information we can process simultaneously. Different activities have different amount of cognitional load. Habits for example are much less demanding than learning  a completely new task. So there’s a common belief that the brain is able to create schemas for facilitating processing of a known type of information. Building upon this the researchers constructed an experiment around reading comprehension. A sample of 130 people were chosen to participate in a test. The test was made up of three parts. The first one allowed the test subject to read chosen literature and prepare to answer questions about it. The second one was almost the same but this time a video would be screened in the background, however the subject was informed that the video could be ignored and not be part of the questions. The third part was the same as number two except that the subject was now told that the video would be a part of the following questions. Statistically they couldn’t find any difference in comprehension between the first two groups but the third group was statistically determined to be different from the rest. The test subjects didn’t perform as well and this would then indicate that the cognitional load was higher for the last scenario.

This experiment together with some applied statistical theory were the quantitative methods used in this article. This might be a sidetrack but for me the ending of the article was a bit anticlimactic. I think that it might be a result of the research which is presented in media channels. That research always seems quite sensational (sometimes it’s justifiable but many times not). However, in this case the results were in line with the build up and the expectations and that’s actually quite valuable too, even though it’s maybe not as interesting.

An obvious limitation with their method is that the number of participants isn’t higher. Also, which they pointed out was that the big majority were female. Diverse demographics are important especially if you want to be able to generalize a result and make it applicable to a large part of the population (obviously this would be a massive undertaking). Another limitation is the questions which were asked after reading. Depending on your background you might find some things more interesting and you learn that meanwhile someone else with a different background focuses on other things. With a limitied questionnaire this could favor one of them. Questionnaires aren’t bad they’re practical but not very flexible. Perhaps they could have had a more open (a benefit of qualitative methods) test as long as it was quantifiable (e.g. naming as many keywords in the text as possible).

By using quantitative methods you expect that the results are going to be more objective. Mathematics is considered to be the purest form of logic and numbers are supposed to speak the truth. Of course this is only the premise, it still depends on how you construct your experiments. Fortunately there are a lot of well established frameworks for doing quantitative research. It’s still possible to manipulate statistics to your advantage if you care more about getting published than doing good research but quantitative research is less dependent on the researchers interpretations. This is not to say that there’s no interpretative part to quantitative methods. One example is how one would link a complex behaviour to a set of variables. This can be a challenging task, which was also mentioned in the paper on VR drumming. PCA could be a useful tool to try to distill the most important components.

The article on VR drumming was investigating the perceived ownership of virtual objects. And also if the look and shape of the object had any effect on the immersion which was found out to be the case. It’s quite amazing how one can change one’s behaviour based on an avatars appearance. It’s also interesting that it doesn’t have to resemble your own appearance for you to perceive ownership over it. If VR could allow you to interact more naturally with machines or elevate your performance, it could have huge implications on work and entertainment.

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies #2

1. What is "Enlightenment"?

Before, I thought of enlightenment mainly as an era of skepticism towards, what at that time was perceived as knowledge. Things that couldn’t be explained by science started being questioned. The church and religion as a whole were obviously targets of this critique. The enlightenment might have started like this but it wasn’t limited to just a finite period of time. Enlightenment is rather a movement which is ongoing but maybe not as clearly as before. Today science has almost achieved a status compared to what the church used to possess. One big exception is that science is actually open to criticism. That is actually nurturing for science and it heightens its level of credibility.

2. What is "Dialectic"?

The definition of Dialectic goes something like: two or more parties exchange arguments with the ultimate purpose of finding objective truth. This is obviously not the same as having a debate, where the purpose would be to just have the best arguments not necessarily more truthful. You rarely see a political debate with compromises. Rhetorical skills are the ultimate weapons. Dialectic should be the premise on which law and politics should be based.

3. What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

I’ve gained more insight into what Nominalism is. The main take away for me was that we’re all particulars, there’s no universal grouping saying that we’re Swedish or something else. In ways this can be quite a healthy position to take, looking at how governments have alluded to people’s feelings of patriotism in the past. I would at the same time say that it’s quite boring to reject abstract objects and universals because it can remove the feeling of belonging. The church, by the “creation of abstract objects” was able to establish rules and norms because people felt they had purpose. Sure, they’ve used other methods to but that’s really my point. Nominalism can be both positive and negative, a lot depending on the context.

4. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

One often thinks of myth as being in contrast to science. That science shines light on the unknown.  What I found interesting is that science can possibly turn into something like myth. If science only repeats what nature is already telling us, is it that different from what earlier non-scientific theories tried to do? There’s maybe no straightforward answer to this but a key difference I would argue for is science’s usefulness.

1. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

The substructure shapes the superstructure but it’s really a circular relationship. The superstructure has a lot of power to maintain the substructure. With this in mind and thinking about the superstructure, people who could control or shape the superstructure would be extremely powerful. A large group of people that together might have the power to shape it would then pose a large threat to people in power.

2. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

We talked about how the mass production and proliferation of art stripped the Bourgeoisie of its power. This goes to show how important information is. When information is harder to control and you have multiple sources, people can cross compare and they may end up with a more objective view. This is also the role which journalists are supposed to play in our society.

3. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

In some sense historical perception is more subjective than naturally determined perception. It’s produced using historical facts but those would also be subject to interpretation, more so than with naturally determined perception.

4. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

Aura is powerful. It can convey time and place and that’s actually quite a lot, because that in turn starts thought processes inside peoples’ minds. As we discussed, fascism politicized aesthetics. Using old art in a new setting can let people make connections that aren’t explicitly but implicitly stated by the aura.

Theme 3 Post #1

Selected Research Journal:

New Media & Society is a highly ranked journal with focus on research of theory and practice in Media, Culture and communication. It was first published in 1999 and it’s latest impact factor was 3.110.

Selected Research Article:

Recommended for you: The Netflix Prize and the production of algorithmic culture

B. Hallinan, T Striphas

Published in New Media & Society on June 23rd 2014

The article seeks out to analyse the effects of algorithms on our culture. Algorithms increasingly shape our culture in different ways. An example would be through recommender systems which provides a user with suggestions on items the user might like, be it music, movies or other things. In the article they analyse the Netflix Prize and try to draw conclusions on the effects of this algorithmic development on culture. The Netflix Prize was an open competition proposed by Netflix to improve their recommendation system. The first team to improve their movie recommendations by 10% would receive 1.000.000$ in price money. In the article they examine this competition on an abstract level and look on what effect algorithms have on culture.

Firstly they try to define what culture means. They admit that culture it’s hard to find a clear explanation of what culture is. They use their own as well as external sources to try show what culture could encompass. They further argue that there’s been a recent change in our society with the advent of new information technology. Today, engineers find themselves in a sweet spot of being able to almost define what culture is and in which direction to change it. Algorithms are forces which could come to shape our culture. What’s interesting about this competition is that not only is the focus on the algorithms but the competitors are also forced to understand the human culture and why people behave the way they do. For recommender systems it’s important to understand the underlying meaning of previous user ratings, in order to suggest items of interest in the future. Another important thing is that algorithms or other tools might reveal something about our culture. In the winning contribution they use a mathematical tool called Singular Value Decomposition. This has resulted in good performance but the interpretation of why it does so is in some ways a mystery. Algorithms are part of our culture as well as potential shapers of it, be it through recommendations or other applications.

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.

First of all, I think there’s no simple explanation of what theory is. It’s a word for which it’s hard to find consensus between people about the meaning of it. Even though it’s an abstract object, people do probably have opinons about its meaning. Before reading the texts I would have tried to explain that theory is a way of describing how something in the world works. I would also say that theory can exist on different levels. There could be a theory for an entire field of research and also for a subtopic in that field. Theory has multiple forms and it differs from field to field. I also subscribe to the notion of theory presented in the texts. which is about answering questions of the type why and also to make predictions about what things might lead to. It’s also important to mention which they do in the paper, that theory is not data or empirical results, but analytical thought of why the data turned out they way they did or thoughts about what this might result in. Theory is about humans trying to understand the world from a human perspective, how we interpret it.

2. Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

The article is a qualitative analysis of the impact of algortihms on culture. The major theory used is an explanatory one. The authors do make some minor predictive attempts but quite limited and I would argue that they’re not enough to classify it as a predictive theory. I would say that this should be, by the taxonomy established by Gregor, classified under the second category Explanation. It’s a too detailed explaination for it to be classified under the Analysis category, and the predictions lacks in precision for it to be categorized under the EP category. Furthermore, the predictions are not really testable which is a criteria for the EP category.

3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

Benefits are that the reader will get a chance to make predictions about the future. The authors just provide the backdrop on which the predictions can be based. This could as well be a limitation if it’s hard to draw any conclusions or generalize. What is then the purpose of the explanation if you can’t use it?

Another limitation with this theory is that explanations aren’t necessarily objective. Even if the explanations are based on recorded data the interpretations could be skewed or wrong (is the theory strong enough?).

Theme 1 Post #2

Today we live in a naturalist society. This is demonstrated by the faith (pun intended) we put into science to be the basis for our knowledge. Anything which is quantifiable and able to be reduced to numbers or otherwise explained by nature is pretty much considered as fact. Nature is explained through scientific methods and logic rather than through concepts which are reasoned or made up for the pure reason of providing an explanation to metaphysical questions. We’ve gone from a teleological world view, a view where there’s purpose, towards a view goverened by the laws of nature. Things are bound by cause and effect-relationships, there’s no purpose.

In an empiricist view of the world, all our knowledge is believed to come from experience. It’s how the world is perceived by our senses, we don’t have any knowledge a priori. What Kant proposed is that instead of our cognition conforming to objects - which would be the empiricist view - the objects are actually conforming to our cognition. What he meant is that instead of the world shaping our knowledge or how we perceive it, we actually do have some innate knowledge of how objects are to be perceived. This pre-existing knowledge is what Kant refers to as faculties of knowledge and forms of intuition. Basically anything that exists in space-time can be perceived with these forms of intuition. This would by extension mean that theoretically it should be possible to gain more knowledge about the world but that we are limited by our forms of intuition.

Knowledge does in a way presuppose knowledge. According to Kant we have our forms of intuition. One thing that is closely linked to knowledge is conception. With knowledge we form new conceptions. For example let’s take the concept of a group. A group is not something that exists in nature, it’s rather a construct or concept made by man. With these concepts we are able to understand nature. One could perhaps think of this as having a lot of filters at different layers of abstraction. New concepts will be learned and placed at the best suited level in the abstraction hierarchy.

Concepts are important for us to understand the world, and by paraphrasing Kant: “perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty”. With the first part he means that our senses don’t have any conception by themselves i.e that is our eyes are not processing the information, they merely sense it and pass it through to the brain which store our bank of concepts. The second part could be a bit problematic, of course we need perception as a tool to learn new concepts, but it can also be interpreted as it not being possible to synthesize new knowledge through reasoning (more like an empiricist view). Socrates argument that we “...don’t see and hear with the eyes and the ears, but through them…” is also aligned with the first part of Kant’s argument. Knowledge is not perception, but more like processed perception.

Knowledge according to Kant can be known both a priori and a posteriori. This a priori knowledge obviously contradicts empiricism. Kant makes a distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. Analytic judgements can be known a priori because the predicate concepts are contained within the subject concepts e.g. “all triangles have three sides”. For synthetic judgements the predicate and subject concepts are only related e.g. “all husbands are happy”.

What has been witnessed a lot during the years are people trying to make up synthetic judgements a priori. This sort of judgements have the potential to be misleading.

Theme 2: Critical media studies #1

The enlightenment period came as a response to a world in which life was romanticized and man was considered a special creature, god’s image on earth. At this time the church was strong and one of the reasons for this was that it possessed knowledge. Knowledge and answers to metaphysical questions. However these answers weren’t based on scientific research as we know it today, but rather through stories told by people a long time ago. Since these explanations didn’t have much scientific basis they could also be named legends or myths. The church was part (or leader) of a system which did control the culture and decide on what kind of art was to be produced. As mentioned by Adorno, but in a slightly different context during the nazi regime, if you don’t conform to the system you will fall behind and eventually fall out. The same thing could be said about the system of the church before the enlightenment era. It was therefore in the best interest for people to follow the church’s rules (at least in the short time). The church could also be considered a major influence on the superstructure as well as or maybe even more a maintainer of the substructure in a Marxist view on society. The substructure refers to the production and the people who are producing goods and the superstructure more abstract concepts like culture, art, norms, ideologies etc. So what the enlightenment actually was, was a period of debunking myths or basically anything which couldn’t be explained by science and mathematics. By doing this it also removed many obstacles and paved the way for a lot of scientific advances and breakthroughs. Power and knowledge was considered synonymous, and Adorno says that “enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as a dictator to human beings, he knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.”. Enlightenment is totalitarian in that it strives to regulate all things. There’s also a concern which both texts are bringing up, and that is the worry of the enlightenment being a tool for deception of the masses.

With the enlightment came a new idea of what should be considered knowledge. For a long time art had become mixed up with true knowledge i.e. things that can be broken down to numbers. Arts and myths weren’t banned but tolerated as long as they were used for entertainment or pleasure. Before both arts, myths served as a way to grasp and control nature, it also provided meaning which people were looking for.

Going back to mass deception and the super/sub-structures. The point is that the masses of the substructure is moving faster than the superstructure is changing. This means that there should be a great possibility for revolution. But as is mentioned in the texts, the masses are trapped within a system which they are constantly nurturing and strengthening. Revolution requires organization. Depending on the society this will be easier or harder. The system has ways of maintaining order of the masses. By for example policing or in a facist state, by threats. What Adorno mentions is that “as long as art was expensive, it kept the citizen within some bound.”  Which means that the art that was accessible for the citizen was limited by the culture industry. However that did change, and it became cheaper to access and produce art. The freeing of the art is important for democracy and it’s also powerful ammunition for revolution.

The Aura is in art what purveys the time and place of an artwork. Auras do also exist in nature and is defined by a distance to and the perception of a natural object. It’s possible to perceive historical events through the art pieces’ auras.

Nominalism is a philosophical view which says that there exists no abstract objects or universals. Universals are characteristics which objects can share e.g. yellowness. By rejecting the existance of these, it’s also in extension rejecting the existance of a deity. There’s no way of proving that these universals and abstract objects do exist so it would be tempting to say that they don’t exist. But at the same time it’s not easy to prove that they don’t exist either which means that one can’t really reject their existance without resorting to mythology (at least by enlightenment standards).

A method for trying to find the truth through discourse is called Dialectic and it’s basically a method of reasoning. An example of dialectic thinking would be “each thing is what it is only by becoming what it is not”.

Theme #1 Pre

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who was active during the period of enlightenment.

Before him there had been two different camps of epistemology. One camp, the empiricists were arguing that all of our knowledge is to be learned by experience through sensing and perceiving. For example, how is a blind man supposed to have know any concept of color without experiencing it? Most people would probably assume that this is indeed the case, that the man won’t be able to have knowledge of this, and it therefore makes sense that knowledge is learned through experience. But is all knowledge really learned from experience? This is where the other camp of philosophers comes in, also known as rationalists. They argued that knowledge is also learned without experiencing objects but through logic instead. Mathematics is an example of what they would argue is learned through logical reasoning and inference instead of experience. “ 2 + 2 = 4 “ is an example of a knowledge obtained this way.

What Kant proposed was in a way a middle ground between the two. According to him we have some a priori knowledge of concepts which we then use for determining what certain things are. These are our innate a priori knowledge. But we also learn through experience and change our concepts from that. With the quote from the preface Kant is contemplating alternatives to the empiricist epistemology. “The cognition must conform to objects” means that our knowledge needs to have a basis in nature, something which is experienced, even abstract things can be experienced. As mentioned this is the empiricist view. In philosophy it’s not uncommon to assume that some things are true in order to investigate a train of thought or just flip things around in order to see if there’s a plausible explanation to be found. This is what Kant is doing when he says “assume that objects must conform to our cognition”. Basically let us assume that we have some innate knowledge about things, some a priori knowledge which the objects are then subsequently known by.This innate knowledge could differ between people and thus serve as an explanation to why people might experience things differently.

Socrates is arguing that we do perceive things through our senses such as the eyes and the ears, rather than by the eyes and the ears. What he means is that it would be weird if we had all our different senses disconnected from each other. One could instead think that these are connected by something like a soul that is responsible for processing the inputs from these different senses. As we know today these sensory organs are connected to different parts of the brain, such as the visual cortex which is responsible for processing the input from our eyes and produce images. So Socrates wasn’t necessarily wrong with that statement.

As touched upon earlier empiricists believe that all knowledge comes from experience. Certainly Socrates’ argument is strengthening this theory but does it at the same time really refute other theories? An experience is perceived by the senses and knowledge is therefore acquired.That doesn’t necessarily mean that some concepts aren’t already programmed into our brains upon inception which Kant meant was the case. There’s still a lot of mystery left on how the brain works. But I do strongly believe that with all it’s complexity should be able to learn from reasoning. I would hold mathematics and other sorts of logic as examples here. They do show that it’s possible to acquire new knowledge without experiencing it but rather through reasoning.

Actually I do think that the empiricist theory on epistemology isn’t easy to dismiss as being the only source of knowledge. When you think about it experience plays a big role for knowledge. As I’m writing this I can’t think of a single knowledge that I can’t ascribe to experience. Even mathematics could probably be argued as being experienced. First in a very simple way when starting to count, 1 person + another person are two people. From this the concept of counting is born and it’s easy to extend this knowledge. But as rationalists mean, if you know the concept from the previous example you don’t have to actually experience 5 people + 5 people in reality to understand that it should be 10 people. This is reasoned by use of the concept which was acquired at an earlier stage. However, knowing that 5 + 5 equals 10 should maybe be considered a new knowledge. A knowledge that actually wasn’t experienced.

When discussing this topic it would be handy to have a good definition of what knowledge is, which means that we would have to return to the question which philosophers have tried to answer for ages. What is knowledge?