Theme 1

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].