The
International Journal of Communication is an
online, multi-media, academic interdisciplinary journal with the focus on
communication.
I
chose the research paper by Manuel Castells “Network Theory| A Network
Theory of Power” (http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1136).
The main hypothesis of the paper is that power is constructed around multidimensional
networks programmed in each domain of human activity. Castells proposes centrality
of communication networks to implement the power-making process of any network.
The purpose of the paper is explanatory, the research is applied. The main
concepts of the paper are network, network society, networking power, network power,
networked power, network-making power. All the data are valid and reliable
representations of the empirical reality. Castells separates 5 different types
of power - networking power, network power, networked power, network-making power
and counter-power. He also proposes that all the power networks do a crucial process of power setting in the network society is the process of switching power [1]. That is the ability to make connections between two or more different networks. In my opinion this research is very
significant for communication and media theory because Castells explains what is going on in contemporary society - we are watching the changing paradigm of power - from hierarchical system we are shifting to network-power system where the power is not constructed around one person. The power is concentrated around the network itself.
Bertrand Russell:
1)
In
The Problems of Philosophy (1912) Bertrand Russell make difference between two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of things
and knowledge of truths. Knowledge of things, in its turn, also is divided into
2 types: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Russell
emphasizes that it’s easier to know the truth by acquaintance. What we see on the contrary, knowledge of
things by description always implement the source and basis of
certain knowledge of the truth. There is the only direct acquaintance that does
not need any kind of logical conclusion
- sense data. Sense data are
just mental images that we receive from already some given object in our physical world [1].
Of course sense-data can provide different information every time (f.e.
different view of the table), but Russell thinks that we should at least
believe in the existence of a single, particular, real table.
2)
Russell
accepts a peculiar species of facts corresponding to propositions such as ‘John
believes that the world is flat’ [1]. In the analysis of the propositions
containing the verb belief or wish or will Russell wants to say that the facts
that occur in such propositions differ from atomic facts containing single
verb. A far as I understand Russell names the statement that it occur is actually a
statement of a fact. Belief is true if it sends us to some fact, and false
if there is not any referring facts. Hence, if our belief is true, it just
means that we know the facts.
3)
Objects
that we know by definite description (as Russell names them - the so-and-so) alway have a certain
property and what is more important for their description is that we don't have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance.
Common words, even proper
names, are usually represent objects that are known by definite descriptions [2].
4)
Despite
Russell agrees with Kant in many issues,
he still claims that Kant was wrong - we can't be definitely sure that we are going to be constant in this world. So if a
priori knowledge is not erratic, we can say that this knowledge is not only the knowledge of the structure of our minds, but it is also appropriate to everything in this world - mental and non-mental [2]. The fact seems to be that all our
a priori knowledge is concerned with entities which do not, properly speaking,
exist, either in the mental or in the physical world. He claimed that many
philosophers, following Kant, supported that kind of relations (his example ‘I am
in my room’) are only the process of working mind and have no relations in themselves. But what Russell is saying is that actually the mind pulls them together in one act of thought and
hence it makes up the relations which it judges them to have.
References:
[1]
Manuel Castells “Network Theory| A Network
Theory of Power” Available: [http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1136] .
[2] Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Available: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5827].
