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User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 12/Power

This is the sandbox page for the issue: Power.

Power in Medical Research- Leadership
Medical research ensures that society can have the best, most up to date healthcare. Although, the majority of leadership positions are taken by men, even in departments of women's health, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and their power has an indirect and systematic influence on how Medical Research is conducted.

How its Leadership Influences Medical Research
In the field of research, in order to climb up the rankings and get work promoted and peer-reviewed, scientists would aim to get their articles published in journals and have authorship to them. Although this is at core gender-neutral, however, these articles are more likely to be published if they are written by men, who usually also have authorship to the paper .This is further emphasised by the fact that women are also less requested to write papers. This results in men dominated fields of study as the more peer-reviewed a paper, the more credibility and power the researcher receives.

Preference is even embedded in how research is conducted. For example, coronary artery disease is more prevalent in older women. Despite this, funding for research to be done on more men as test subjects is higher than it is for females to get tested. Hence, this could prevent accurate evidence and treatment being researched. Something which seems as small and early as funding may be the factor which limits human health and prevention of coronary artery diseases within the population. It may also give us one reason behind the gender pay gap especially as female-specific research doesn't seem to be as supported, implying bias. In a way, money can be thought as a way to influence power and power can impact truth (and vice versa). The more funding one gets, the more in-depth experiments a researcher can do and the more likely the research paper will get published and recognised by the public and become the accepted "truth". This all links back to leadership. People in authority are giving out funding and the majority are men who may unconsciously prefer one study to another which may not be representative of the population. Furthermore, this even applies to non-human test subjects. More male animals are being tested and evidence from male testing is assumed that the same applies to females. The truth then is only being based on one gender.

Conclusion
The medical research industry has an indirect and institutionalised coercion on genders and the people in leadership have the power to influence decision making who may have an unconscious bias towards one gender. Medical research has come a long way over the recent decades but more acceptance towards female studies and leadership can lead to more efficient advancements of human health, which is ultimately the goal.

Introduction to social media
Social media is a form of communication through apps and websites by sharing pictures, news, and much more information. In today’s world, social media is an amazing asset to stay in touch with people from around the world and to meet new people with the ease of communication. Moreover, staying up to date on news became much mire easier thanks to this innovation. Yet, social media holds a much bigger power than this superficial asset. The next few paragraphs will tackle a few different disciplines: marketing and news. There'll also be a paragraph on a social media in China more precisely.

The Power of Social Media in Marketing
Social media has made reaching out to a bigger audience easier to businesses. Think about the many ads that pop up on your Instagram feed on the daily. Businesses now have to include a great social media strategy to help them grow. The biggest advantage that social media offers to businesses is the power of visuals. When using attention grabbing visuals the consumer would want to take action. Furthermore, since recently, businesses and content creators are able to advertise their posts on Instagram. By doing so, they select a certain audience they want to reach based on age, countries, accounts they follow, etc… It’s safe to say that social media, if used properly, can help boost a business and create a loyal consumer base.

The Power of Social Media in News
With social media, accessing news is as simple as touching a button. Nobody has to wait for the morning newspaper to get updated on a certain election or the gossips on celebrities. 2.4 billion of people resort to social media to get their news from, and 64.5% use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram instead of a news app such as BBC news. In the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”, ex-workers of big social media companies such as Instagram, Twitter and Google discussed this issue. They stated that if 3 people with different political views researched the same question about politics they’d have different responses. In other words, the search results we end up with are not facts, but they’re our own opinions somewhat changed to catch our attention. Hence, a person can’t resort to social media to get facts or news.

Social Media in China
In china, social media is much more controlled. The government has imposed laws that censors a lot of words that are deemed sensitive. If someone's post breaks this law in any form they might have their accounts banned. . During the coronavirus outbreak, a big number of keywords were censored from the media such as "Sars variation". The freedom of speech in China on social media is therefore very limited with their laws that are in place.

Conclusion
To put it into a nutshell, social media does have some advantages such as the ease of communication and staying in touch. For businesses, it helps them advertise their products way more easily. Yet, the downsides of social media are awful and create a big divide between people.

Introduction
History, even though it appears to be a clearly descriptive discipline has a very tight relationship with the notion of power. Already in the nineteenth century Friedrich Nietzsche definitely stated that the methodology of history does not lead to reaching some objective truth but to imposing historian’s own viewpoint and theories. In other words,, that knowledge is a form of power – the information recorded is the information that is considered worth recording. Another thinker that has seen the issue of power structures influencing the discipline was Michel Foucault. He continues Nietzsche’s thought that the historian is the person holding certain power. In his works, Foucault reveals a direct link between the past and the present, where one is used to make sense of another (and vice versa). It is most visible in his example of the Marxist historians who, even though still trying to make ‘positivist’ sense of it, think of the history as the way to perpetuate the revolution, relating it to the times they’re living in.

Eurocentric and elitist focus of history
One of the brightest examples of power’s connection with history is the general idea of what was recognized as part o history (until very recently). The historians recorded facts and information which were ‘worth noting’ and these were socially established by the elite, people with power. This way, most of the available records concern the life and actions of the upper class, which consisted mostly of rich and well educated males. Thus, it may be (mistakenly) inferred that only rich and well educated males were the ones contributing to the history and only their actions were of any value to the rest.

Narratives of nationalism
Another common narrative that can be considered a product of power is the narration of nationalism. State, as an entity that is holding power, decides how the history is taught in the country. Historical narration is usually organised in the way that has to maintain people’s sense of nationality and affiliation, thus the phrases such as patriotism, honor and duty are especially prominent.

Power in Geography
Geography is the study of land and its relationship to its inhabitants. It is interested both in the natural processes on the surface of the earth and the way people arrange themselves in this surface. Both these arrangements and the study of them are subject to being influenced to people's self-interest. Thus, they provide useful insight into the world's power structures and struggles.

Borders
Borders are the boundaries separating different areas. They are politically motivated and constructed by humans. As land is an important resource, the way it is distributed on a map is inextricably linked to power.

Borders can often bear evidence of colonisation. In Africa, the majority of the current borders were drawn by colonisers during the Berlin Conference. This was done to make it easier for the empires to trade African land. These borders were drawn to the benefit of the colonists, for instance creating larger states in low population density areas to save money rather than to reflect the complex political and cultural structures of the population. Many parts of Africa didn't previously have borders due to operating under different political systems to those of Europeans. The colonists saw that as evidence of primitiveness. The artificial borders created multiple problems. Communities were lumped together or split apart. The size of the state and the extent of artificiality in its borders are closely related to international conflict. In one area between Egypt and Sudan, two versions of the borders created by the colonists at different times led to the creation of a Terra Nulla called Bir Tawil.

The influence of power in borders goes beyond even colonialism, although colonialism's impact is vast. Often borders are drawn as a means to legitimise one's power over space and resources. For instance, there are territorial claims of parts of the East China sea from six different nations.￼ This is an example of how borders can be used as an instrument of exerting power.

Approaches to Geography
The power structures of our world are also reflected in the way we study Geography. For instance, while it may seem like maps are simply a reflection of the Earth's surface and thus cannot be biased, in fact many choices go into making the map the way it is, and often these reflect the world's power structures. The map commonly used today is the Mercator's projection, originally created in the sixteenth century for the purposes of navigation. This map places Europe at the top and at the centre, creating quite literally a Eurocentric picture of the world with a clear bias to the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, the projection sacrafices the accuracy of size for the accuracy of distances (as both at once are mathematically impossible to achieve on a flat projection of a round object). This results in Europe appearing much larger, and Africa much smaller, than they currently are. While Mercator's map can indeed be useful for navigation, its widespread use in most other areas over other projections speaks to the way the view of those with power shapes the field of Geography.

How power appropriates art for its own benefit ?
Arts has always been used by the persons at the head of the societies to spread their power and sometimes their ideas. They even often used it as propaganda to pray a certain person or a particular party. For that purpose, artists use many different tools : mostly symbols, such as significant colors, but also slogans.

To begin with, all monarchs had painters do their portrait. Few decades ago, the accent was put on the truth of the portraits. They really were made in a way that would put the queen/king forward. However, nowadays with the appearance of photography, those paintings have mostly been replaced by photographs which are obviously more close to the reality.

At a time where political power and religion were tightly linked, architecture was used as a way to show the power of the church. Majestic cathedrals were built all around Europe, such as St. Denis near Paris, to demonstrate the power of the monarchs, in this case Louis XVI. Moreover, the XXth century with the world wars and authoritarian regimes is a great example of how art was used as propaganda by the power. As an example, at that time in the USSR, propaganda poster were really common. They were praising the merits of the communist party. In this regard, the color red and all the other symbols of the party, such as the hammer and sickle, were used as tools.

Art as a counter power
Nevertheless, art can also be used as a counter power to denounce the actual power and its flaws. Some examples of the way it can be done are caricatures and cartoons published in the press but also street art. The importance of art as a counter power has increase all the more so as with the development of social media, there is no need to be a professional to touch a large group of person.

The emergence of social media also reconsiders the reliability of the art which is directly used by the power because it gives us the tools to re-evaluate it. For instance, to continue the previous example, nowadays, the official royal portraits can always be compared to paparazzi photos.

Introduction
Literature can be defined as «writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays. » . A human tends to learn how to read around the age of 6 to 7 years old. However, literature comes into our life even before that. Indeed, parents often spend time reading stories to babies as young as 4 months old, as it helps develop the baby's brain. . According to data from the American Time Use Survey, Americans spend less and less time reading, and more and more time watching television or going on the internet. In times where technologies continue to emerge, it is important to remember that Literature is very powerful.

Power of explanation
In a way, the words of other people allow us to reflect on the consequences and possibilities of our own experiences. It provides us with a better understanding of the world we live in. Literature helps to comprehend aspects of the human condition without needing to experience them. But not only is Literature allowing us to figure out how our current society functions, but also how past societies worked. Reading gives us the ability to step back in time and gather a better understanding of cultures in general. For example, Italian and Jewish Primo Levi's memoir: "If this is a man", published in 1947 describes his arrestation, in 1944, for being a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1944 to 1945. His words narrate the horror of life in a concentration camp as he explains his "day-to-day" life, without really giving his point of view or opinions. The type of Literature that narrates the horrors of the past, persuade us not to recreate them and make us want to work for a better world. As Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer said in his book Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage: "I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.".

Power in children's literature
Even though children read less and less, the power of literature and the stories written can influence children a lot. For example, according to Evelyn Arizpe and Vivienne Smith in Children as Readers in Children's Literature, children shouldn't read fiction and fantasy books too soon because they need to understand that what they are reading about will not come true. Because children learn a lot through books and stories and they are more likely to believe in what the books are talking about than adults that already have a critical sense. Therefore, the power of literature and the stories told are more extensive than with adults. . However, children definitely should continue reading any piece of Literature. Indeed, Literature helps put into words what they are thinking, but can't seem to express: their point of view on life, their emotions that are often troubled during teenage years... Margaret Atwood, a modern Canadian poet, and novelist said: "Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well."

Education In Human Rights
The right to education has been a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since its creation in 1948. While significant progress has been made in terms of worldwide accessibility to primary education, there remain several issues regarding gender discrimination and unequal access across various nations.

Instances of Unequal Access
63% of the world’s illiterate adult population (people above 15 years old) are women, many of whom live in developing areas. This demonstrates historical bias, and while it is improving, girls are still more likely to experience worse educational outcomes than their male counterparts, according to Campaign For Education. In nations with more developed education infrastructure, women are more likely to score lower in assessments where their gender is known to the examiner, shown by a recent study of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. COVID-19 led to the typical face-to-face interview being replaced with a gender-blind essay, which culminated in a higher proportion of female admissions. While this was more of an incidental study than an official one, the same results were found in a Harvard study regarding gender bias within orchestra auditions. Here, power dynamics are reinforced with no evidence to back them up, and their effect remains significant thought deeply-ingrained bias that, had these studies not occurred, could easily be explained by other factors.

Sources of Disadvantage
There are a variety of reasons these unfair power dynamics continue to manifest themselves within educational structures. For the girls themselves, perceiving themselves as conforming to the stereotype of being worse at math can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the same effect occurs if that stereotype is held by their teachers or parents. Aside from that, there are cultural barriers that can prevent women from accessing education. Lack of sanitation facilities can pose a problem in situations where girls and women do not have access to menstrual hygiene resources, especially in places where the topic remains culturally shameful. While both of the above are also indirect and institutionalized, a direct example would be violence within the household, which makes students more likely to drop out. However, because sexual assault is often more targeted towards girls, they are the larger proportion of affected individuals. Underage marriage, while on the decline, is still common in areas of South Asia, where cultural norms expect a family to quickly follow a marriage, and girls are simply not given the opportunity to complete an education because they are more valuable fulfilling the role of a housewife. All of these factors lead to educational systems that, directly or indirectly, continue discrimination against women by limiting career opportunities, which include political involvement. The vicious cycle of female representatives not having the power to make decisions in areas of the law that affect their rights continues, as many are relegated to childcare, housework, or to fighting for one of the "female spots" in a male-dominated group.

Power of Social media in politics
Technology and social media changed the game in politics and diplomacy. It is probably the one discipline that was the most challenged because of technology and the way we use social media to do politics. Indeed, now politicians are faced with a public that has access to information like no one could before and they have to adapt to deliver content on those platforms. Nowadays, social medias are the centre of political campaign. We can also see for example that Twitter is at the centre of the political stage with politicians and presidents using it every day to easily pass on messages. The most famous example of that is probably the president of the United States, Donald Trump that uses its Twitter account daily to talk about everything.

Social media changes 2 things in politics, the first one being the number of information, communications and news changes the way people have information and how they perceive it and second, politicians now have the power to shape their program and ideas to reach a wider audience and especially the younger ones. Social media had the power to influence people and have a wider audience for politicians.

The power of social media in politics is from the change of dynamics from traditional politics to the ‘technological politics’ where the lines between the cultural, the political and the popular’ are blurred. Social media offer a way to express emotions and to challenge the conventional ways politics are being made and who can participate.

Politicians are not the only one to pass on political messages because social media are platforms where even simple citizen with no background in politics can become activists. Indeed, it’s now very easy to make petitions reach a wider audience than just a city but also sometimes a whole country.

Social media give power to everyone and not just the politicians like before which means that the power is shifting from a small number of people to a much larger number of people that can bring new ideas and ways of thinking.

Facebook - Cambridge Analytica Scandal
The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal is one of the most famous scandals of social media being intrusive of politics. The scandal involved Facebook that sold more than 87 million people’s data to advertise election and influence candidates. The data was collected by Cambridge Analytica and then processed to build a psychological profile on users. The firm sought to sell these data to a political campaign that now had the ability to target the right audience.

This leak is one of the greatest in the history of social media that involved politics and it shows that it is easy for people to have the power of others because of information that they thought was private and only on their social media platforms.

Introduction
Religion can be defined as “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects“. Many religions include the belief in a higher power that stands above us as humans.

There is no doubt that the development of religions has had an immense impact on humanity throughout history. There have been books written about the various religions, religious studies are a subject taught at school and theology is a degree available at university. The development of religious belief has gone hand in hand with the establishment of religious institutions, which ultimately became the means of exertion of religious power.

Religion and social control
Religious beliefs in a higher power determining what is right and wrong were often as a way of legitimizing the enforcement of rules within society. These rules might be based on pragmatic intentions. For instance, rather than simply forbidding it early religious law stated that pork meat is impure in god’s eyes to prevent the early Hebrew population from consuming it after people had died from doing so. The reason, unknown at the time, was that the meat had to be cooked through in order not to be harmful to the body. Thus, religion was the mechanism for developing and enforcing codes of conduct.

In other cases, however, the intentions underlying the reference to religion were directly linked to furthering political power. Thus, in pre-democratic Europe, European monarchs derived legitimacy through the approval of their reign by a religious institution. The crowning ceremonies kings and queens took place in churches, confirming that their right to rule was god-given.

Religion was also an extremely powerful way of strengthening the sense community in empires, binding people together through a common belief. Again, that goes back to the idea of motivating a community to do something by declaring that it is god’s will. An example would be the crusades, that combined religious as well as political motivations.

Religion and control over women
Religious institutions find justification for their actions and beliefs, including their perception of women’s positions within society, in interpretations of religious texts. However, most of these texts have been written and further interpreted by men themselves, thus legitimizing prejudices against women in the name of religion. The fact that in some religions women are regarded as “unclean” while menstruating, are forbidden control of their own sexuality (e.g. when it comes to contraception), or that some positions in religious institutions can only be occupied by men, only reflect men’s claim of power over women, both historically and in contemporary society.

Conclusion
For many people, religion is a source of comfort and spiritual growth. However, undeniably, religion and religious institutions are inextricably linked to questions power in human social structures.

What is political activism
Political activism occurs when people, usually as a collective, speak out and protest against perceived injustices in order to create change and often encourage or force their governments to make policy changes. Political activism has always been rife throughout society however has been especially prevalent since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, with the Black Lives Matter movement to encourage people to take a stand against police brutality and several environmental movements to encourage climate change awareness.

White Saviour Complex
“White Saviour Industrial Complex”, a term created by the writer Teju Cole, demonstrates the somewhat perceived power of being a “white saviour” within activism. The term helps to describe the disconnect that many white activists have with the issues that they protest, especially racially charged ones. Cole describes President Obama as having to be “wary of being seen as the “angry black man,”” an issue that many people of colour face whilst trying to create change, especially on more local levels such as workplace environments.

Another effect of white saviour complex and white fragility within activist issues is that it prevents people of colour from having their voices heard, even within issues that directly concern them. Often within this, white fragility and need to be validated can take away from creating real change as it leads to performative activism. This was a common occurrence during the Black Lives Matter movement where social media “challenges” and trends overcame the movement, reducing it to something that white people could participate in without feeling the burden that people of colour have had to endure for generations.

The dimensions of power
According to Steven Lukes in Power: a Radical View there are three dimensions of power. The first dimension of power, as formulated by Robert A. Dahl, is when “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.”. This dimension can be referred to as the power of decision-making or direct coercive power.

The second dimension of power, as formulated by Bachrach and Baratz demonstrates that power is also exercised when A uses social, political and institutional structures to limit the options of B and sustain the dynamics that keep A powerful. The difference is that the first face of power uses explicit decision-making whereas the second face of power focuses on institutions and values. This dimension can be referred to as the power of non-decision making or indirect coercive power.

The third dimension of power, as formulated by Lukes is “the power ‘to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things’.”. This dimension can be referred to as ideological power.

What constitutes a cult?
Dena S. Davis refers to the Cult Awareness Network’s definition of a cult as “a closed system whose followers have been unethically and deceptively recruited through the use of manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control.”. Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony outline 6 characteristics of cults stating that “These groups are usually: (1) authoritarian in their leadership; (2) communal and totalistic in their organization; (3) aggressive in their proselytizing; (4) systematic in their programs of indoctrination; (5) relatively new and unfamiliar in the United States; and (6) middle class in their clientele.”. Cults recruit people at vulnerable stages in their lives, often young people in uncertain times. One could argue that cults take advantage of impressionable people by offering to provide answers to the many uncertainties of life.

Power dimensions within cults
Cults are organisations that rely on a clear hierarchical structure based on firm power dynamics. There is often a strong, charismatic leader at the top of this hierarchy that holds power over the members of the cult. All three dimensions of power can be found within the organisational structure of the typical cult.

The first dimension of power is present in many cults as members are subject to the decisions of cult leaders. An example of this is the case of the self-help guru, James Arthur Ray, who initiated sweat lodges as a way to help his followers push boundaries and overcome fears. The annual event was known as the “spiritual warrior” event and in 2009 it resulted in the hospitalization of 18 people and the deaths of 3. A witness and attendee of the spiritual warrior event witnesses hearing Ray urge the participants to stay in the sweat lodge: “You are not going to die. You might think you are, but you are not going to die.”. This tragic event can be seen as a prime example of the first dimension of power as James Arthur Ray possessed the power to make individuals perform actions they would not otherwise partake in, in this case proving to be fatal.

An example of the second dimension of power, the power of non-decision making, can be seen in the concept of disconnection within the Church of Scientology through which members are excluded if they maintain contact with so-called suppressive people; previous members who have chosen to leave the cult or are in other ways critical of Scientology. By setting an agenda in which the members concerned are aware of their potential exclusion, they are under the influence of the power of the cult to make a decision to either maintain or cut off contact with a previous loved-one.

The third dimension of power is perhaps the most inherent within the cult organisation as it leads members to believe that they are choosing to adhere to cult rules out of their own free will when in reality they are the products of biased education and socialisation within the cult by leaders and other members. They are made to believe that certain abnormalities are in fact normal. An example of this is the extreme case of the Heaven’s Gate cult where 39 members were indoctrinated to such an extent that they ended their lives in a ritual collective suicide in March 1997. The education and socialisation based on the cult’s beliefs regarding UFOs led members to believe that a collective suicide would lead them to higher levels of existence. The manipulative nature of the third dimension of power of the cult leaders over their members is arguably responsible for causing these members to perform an act (in this case suicide) that they would otherwise not do while simultaneously making them believe that this is their “role in the existing order of things”.

Conclusion
The authoritarian nature of cult organisations and the strategies of indoctrination and manipulation they entail are subject to analysis by all three of Dahl; Bachrach and Baratz; and Lukes’ dimensions of power. Here illustrated by three specific examples, one can begin to understand the power dynamics of cult organisation and the power they possess over their followers.


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User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 9/Truth

This is the sandbox page for the issue: Truth.

Introduction
While the fictional and interpretive nature of literature seems to undermine the notion of objective truth, its position in the artistic canon lends aesthetic truth, the universal function of art, and contextual information as well as experiential and emotive truth as experienced by the writer and explored and interpreted by the reader.

Aesthetic truth
Deconstructionist literary theory advocates the union of philosophy and literature and demarcates aesthetics as the point of convergence. While the aesthetic underpinnings of literature are contested due to a lack of perceptual appearance, an analytically aesthetic approach explores different properties of literature related to the aesthetic experience, a prominent common denominator between literature and other works of art being meaning and concepts. While this seems too contrary as a reason for the aesthetic approach to literature to be held as truth, Kant’s rejection of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism#:~:text=Relativism%20is%20a%20family%20of,in%20which%20they%20are%20assessed. relativist] approach to aesthetic judgement and his assertion that such a judgement requires a demand for normativity underlines the fact that while not empirical, one’s experiential perception of art is enough of a truth in itself.

The insistence the expressive truth art induces in the works of Kant and Croce supports the notion of literature as a receptacle of truth and contends with the rejection of the idea that due to interpretive role of the reader literature cannot lay claim to truth.

Historical Truth
Whether literature holds historical or empirical truth is a less contentious point than that of aestheticism and the question lies in the mode of its conception: language. It has been established that the emotive nature of literature is capable of conveying interpretive and experiential truths but its fictional nature seems to undermine any assertive claims it makes. Despite this, the influence of contemporary context is inseparable from any close reading of a text. For example, two thematic focuses of the Lost Generation, a group of expatriate American writers including, Fitzgerald, Stein and Hemingway, were disillusionment and hedonism; this very much reflected the Post-WW1 cultural dissatisfaction characteristic of 1920s America. While it is still limited in describing the contemporary mentalities of those living at the time except that specifically of the writer, literature is inevitably a contextually reflective or reactive response thus can be used as a mode of conveying truth from the time it was written.

What is Truth in Criminal Law?
Truth is defined as "the property of being true," although the process of deriving truth differs across disciplines. The aim of the law, is to uphold the truth and therefore to differentiate right from and wrong. In criminal law, those who are found guilty are punished, and this means heavy emphasis is placed on unearthing what are the facts, and seeing information through an objective, rather than subjective lens. Although the legal system has no theories of truth of their own, other theories of truth can be applied to help make sense of how truth is realised in the court setting.

How does Criminal Law realise its truths?
Truth is realised in criminal law through the evaluation of evidence, which can include oral and written witness statements and forensic evidence, amongst other forms. Before giving a statement, a witness must take the oath, where they "swear to tell the truth," demonstrating the importance of truth in criminal courts, and how fundamental a part of the legal system they are. Witness statements can, however, be more nuanced and prone to personal biases. This means that although the witness may try to be objective, because the witness statement is a personal account of an event that's occurred, it is dependent on their own perspective and perception of the events that have occurred, rendering their version of the truth subjective. Although the ultimate goal may be to provide objective truths, this is incredibly hard to achieve, because an individuals perception of the truth is relative, so witness statements are an example of relative truth used in criminal law. With relative truths, the 'truth' differs from person to person, depending on a wide range of factors. So what might be true for one person, may not be true for another, showing how truth is not just an extension of facts, but rather a fusion of facts and beliefs. This is an example of the constructivist theory of truth, where the truth is dependent on our own human perception.

Forensic evidence is based on objective scientific evaluation, with the goal of using scientific method to assess relevant data in criminal trials and uphold justice. The aim of forensics is to use physical evidence and the data it provides to give an accurate representation of the events that occurred and the reality of what happened. The truths formed from this type of evaluation are not seen to be a social construction: they are not influenced or biased by language or personal emotion and opinion, so are the opposite of witness statements, offering a positivist approach to the truth. This relationship between truth and reality is the correspondence theory of truth, which is, and has historically been, heavily relied upon in natural scientific disciplines, and by extension, forensic science in the legal system.

Proof beyond reasonable doubt
Beyond reasonable doubt is a legal standard that prosecutors must meet in order to find a deferent guilty in a criminal case in a court of law. In the U.K, a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. On a fundamental level, this means that the evidence given in a courtroom is such a clear indication that the defendant is guilty, that it cannot be disputed by any person of sound mind. If a verdict is believed beyond reasonable doubt, it has been accepted as a truth in the court of law, because it cannot be contested. In this sense, the idea of belief beyond reasonable doubt is an example of an absolute truth, as if the verdict is not open to any doubt, it holds true no matter the context and personal opinions surrounding the case - the evidence is enough for the jury to be convinced that the defendant committed the crime and that this truth cannot be denied. Belief beyond reasonable doubt is an incredibly important truth in the law, as a guilty verdict will change the course of the defendants life completely. When using this legal standard, a much higher level of certainty must be held than with other truths we come across in everyday life, where decisions are often made despite considerable doubt, and where truths are not universally held by everyone. This shows just how much power and authority truth can hold, as it has the potential to irrevocably change lives forever.

Inquisitorialism
However, neither the prosecution nor the defence is really concerned with the truth, but with winning, and will do what is necessary to distract the jury from the truth. In other European nations, there is the concept of inquisitorialism, the neutral search for the objective truth. An independent, impartial, judicial police team is appointed to collate all the evidence, both for and against, and all placed in one file to be inspected both by the prosecution and the defence. It is the essential gathering of the truth, as opposed to what any defence or prosecution might wish for the jury to decide upon. Under this system, there is no jury, no guilty pleas or plea-bargaining between parties. The dossier is presented to a single judge to rule upon.

Conclusion
Different theories of truth can be applied to criminal law to characterise its truths. Regardless of the type of truth, all truths hold high levels of power and authority in a criminal court, as each truth is a determiner of guilt vs innocence. Although positivism and social constructivism are often seen in opposition and as separate approaches, in the case of criminal law, the truths work in tandem, resulting in a final truth from which a verdict is formed.

Debate about Knowledge in Economics
Economics can be seen to be at the crossroads between positivist and constructivist forms of knowledge. On the one hand many economists and experts contend its theories are as objective and absolute as those seen in ‘[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science#:~:text=Natural%20science%20is%20a%20branch,the%20validity%20of%20scientific%20advances. natural sciences]’, while on the other, some argue that major crises and upheavals such as the 2008 financial crisis go a long way in showing how economic theories are simply constructed, and the ideas the discipline holds to be ‘true’ may in fact be subject to change.

Assumptions in Economic Theory and Issues with Truth
Several assumptions that economic theory holds true have been questioned. One of these is the rational ‘economic man’ or homo economicus, which is the concept that humans always behave rationally and seek to maximise utility. Largely derived from Milton Friedman’s 1953 "Essays in Positive Economics", it became the default view within economic research despite valid criticism from Herbert Simon garnering interest, and him winning a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences precisely for an arguably more realistic alternative theory of ‘bounded rationality’. It is also difficult to see how economics can produce evidence-based truths and knowledge which mirrors reality, as positivist proponents of ‘scientific economics’ in the last 50 years have claimed is possible, when the complex phenomenon it seeks to explain relating to the real rather than a theoretical world are difficult to conclusively test and institute experimentation on. An overarching theme of these assumptions within the discipline is the view that economics is ‘objective’, however it is easy to identify how concepts which are perceived as being factual in its study can in fact be influenced by and be in contention with political inclinations, policy preferences and individual biases. The views of critical economists regarding these issues have themselves shifted over the last five decades.

Truth in economics essentially has a history, and has changed depending on the prevailing school of thought at any given time. For example, economists were confident they could accurately predict inflation and unemployment in a nation's economy. This was seen as being true because it was seemingly ‘proven’ during periods of good economic performance such as in the mid-1960s and 1990s-early 2000s. Both these periods however were followed by crises, Great Stagflation in the 1970s and the financial crisis of 2008. Edward Leamer, in the introduction to his book titled "Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories", summarised this by writing, “You may want to substitute the more familiar scientific words "theory and evidence" for "patterns and stories." Do not do that. The words "patterns and stories" much more accurately convey our level of knowledge, now, and in the future as well.” (Leamer, 2008)

Nassim Taleb wrote in "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable", "Our tendency to construct and believe coherent narratives of the past make it difficult for us to accept the limits of our forecasting ability." It is argued that everything is easier with hindsight and predicting economic outcomes is more algorithmically based than theory based. Emotion is involved in the interpretation of economic truths.

Potential Solution
One potential way to refocus economics is to consider it in terms of the concept of ‘effective theory’. Derived from one of Harvard astrophysicist Lisa Randall’s publications, it seeks to investigate how knowledge is derived and argues knowledge may be accepted without full awareness of what underlies it. Instead of thinking of it as a “science” with absolute truths, effective theory is relational in that it states a theory is only ever effective when there is certainty it will work in that particular context. Knowledge is therefore always verifiable, which would be an important standard for economics because while economists have knowledge, they may apply theories to contexts and problems far beyond the scope of the ‘truths’ they are working with.

Truth in Theology

Theology is organised around a set of disciplines that interact with each other. The study of all these branches, each with its own tools and methodologies, is therefore one of the humanistic study courses within the university system. Theology refers to the philosophical discipline which deals with the nature of God. It strives to identify God's properties in an argumentative and deductive way. By this we mean that theology is the study of religions.

What is Truth in Theology?
The question of truth is a point of convergence of all philosophical questions, so it is therefore very complicated to define truth and therefore to teach this discipline. For this reason, people find it very difficult to agree on the definition and criteria of truth. Philosophers observe that if one knew what truth was, one would not need to search for it. In everyday life, truth is knowledge that is recognised as a right, consistent with its purpose and possessing an absolute and ultimate value. In short, it is the opposite of falsehood. For some people, a proposition or theory is "true" when it conforms to reality and can be attested by observation or experimentation.

Is there Truth in Religion?
This question, which is nowadays largely occulted, is quite decisive for those who believe, who adhere by tradition or by choice to a religion, although truths vary between different religions. One way to answer this can be seen through the Christian religion, known as Christianity. Indeed, for them, "God is Truth Himself." Christian theology is based on God's revelation to mankind, as long as man can understand the Truth. In the Bible, which is the whole of the Holy Scriptures of the Christian religion, God himself says "Now this is eternal life : that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17 : 3). . For Christians, the Bible helps to pass on a form of truth to future generations. Truth can therefore be seen as a form of knowledge.

The issue of Evidentialism
One key aspect of theology revolves around the question of God's existence. Throughout history there have been numerous attempts at trying to prove that God does exist. Theories began with the Ontological Argument, formed by Anselm, and have been continued by a huge variety of theologians, like Aquinas and Augustine, as well as numerous philosophers such as Descartes, Hume and Locke. Particularly with Descartes, he sees God's existence as the first truth that we experience beyond the comprehension our own existence of ourselves in a form of ontological argument. None of these proofs have successfully and undisputedly proved the existence of God, but instead they have introduced the concept that it isn't entirely irrational for God to exist and that there are ways that we could potentially rationalise God's existence.

Today the debate has shifted towards the concept of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentialism#:~:text=Evidentialism%20is%20a%20thesis%20in,supports%20his%20or%20her%20belief. Evidentialism], which entails that a belief is only justified if there is conclusive evidence for it. Hence, the tradition of proofs for God's existence stand aiming to provide the evidence to justify a belief in God in an evidentialist fashion. However, the debate, today, exists around whether religious beliefs should be governed by these rule of evidentialist, or to what extent religious beliefs should be. To exemplify recent challenges to this belief, I will draw upon the works of two key 20th century philosophers, Wittgenstein and Plantinga. Wittgenstein, a once logical positivist turned fideist, introduces the concept of language games. A language game is the concept that words only hold any meaning in the context of the language, ie. the game played . This relates back to epistemology as the concept of epistemology differs depending on which one of these games are being played. We are transposing scientific standards of epistemology into an area where the scientific approach shouldn't be used. Plantinga has many issue with evidentialism, but his main idea, of reformed epistemology argues that a belief in god is a "fundamental belief" and should not be deduced from other truths. He draws upon concepts such as the fact that we can believe in other minds, it should be equally rational that we can believe in God for both are based of which we cannot prove but we should take to be true. . He also criticises the evidentialist roots in classical foundationalism, where he argues that the latter is "self-referentially incoherent" due to it failing its own rules.

Truth in Politics
Political science deals with day to day public life, the interaction of systems on a local, regional, national and international level. Political science searches for the analytical or logical evidence so that the political system can deliver solutions for the common good. Political theory, economy, methodology are all aspects of the discipline and largely dependent on normative argument that gives perspective across a large spectrum, appealing to the public mood and wins elections. In the UK, politics is separate from religion. In the US, religion plays a fundamental part in political partisanship.

Truth.... or Not.
Winston Churchill once said, "Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies". In today's political arena, truth is obscured by lies, pseudo-lies, half-truths, claims and counter-claims, distortion and social media platforms, in particular Facebook and Twitter where anyone or bot can put up any story, true or untrue.

There is an argument that our political systems have moved into a post-democratic, post-truth world where it is accepted that there are no truthful politicians. As the new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma shows us, what you see on your newsfeeds is different to what I see, depending on your political slant, and in his book Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari says this doesn't matter because "Humans are a post-truth species". Recent political events in Russia, Ukraine, Syria, China, the United States of America, the United Kingdom - any country where the leader could be a demagogue, re-enforce this (Crimea, Brexit, Syrian war, ISIS), but it is not a new phenomena; propaganda and disinformation have always played a large part in wars and politics. George Orwell said “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”

Polarising Populism
However, as the public, we accept that politicians lie to us and unconsciously decide where on our personal "lie-scale" they are. In the run up to the British election in December 2019, in one televised debate, a member of the public asked Boris Johnson if he valued the truth; the audience burst into laughter. This infers that the electorate does not believe in how truthful our politicians are, but who seems to be the more capable at "getting things done" - driving through their political theories (Brexit for Boris). Political theory is subjective; constructivist; referred back to the individual. In this context then, objective argument, empirical evidence and truth, are less important. Johnson is a good example of a 'populist'politician - trying to separate the "people" from the "elite", even though he is himself a part of the elite.

In the US, Donald Trump is also a populist, and polarising, President. Unable to undertake many of the things he sought to do on being elected ("Draining the Swamp", "Building the Wall"), he turned to Executive Orders which bypass agreement from the Senate or Congress. He has also appointed 194 judges (24% of the total) in his first term. He has appointed three Supreme Court judges,(lifetime appointments), swinging the influence of the Judiciary behind Right leaning political thought, by 6-3. This, then, blurs the independence of the Executive that is found in the UK system, it questions the case for applying "Inquisitorialism" within the political system. It asks about the independence of the Judiciary and their ability to make impartial judgements, whether on American Civil Liberties or Women's Rights such as Roe vs Wade.

Conclusion
Politics causes an emotional response in us, with little attention to the truth. When we agree with a politician, it makes us feel good and happy about ourselves; when we disagree we have feelings of anger, outrage, even disgust. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in 1771 that fiction caused as much emotional response as real events. We are in an age where politics relies on the interpretation of facts, how they emotionally charge us. Truth in politics is interrelated to the evidence, the power and the history behind the story and little to do with the evidence-base of the science.

The Philosophy of Truth in Art
As the etymology "poiesis" of the word Art indicates, we are talking about a discipline where one has to create. Effectively artists reproduce the truth and the realities of our world. As the etymology "Aletheia" demonstrates, the work of art is to reveal the forgotten truths. Through art, one displays a revelation, creation, and expressions.

Heidegger and truth in Art
Heidegger doesn't use a scientific definition to talk about truth. For him, truth isn't just the adequation between a name and an object. He goes back to the meaning of Aletheia seeing truth as an essence that hides behind a veil that we need to tare apart to grasp. The cover put over things are the illusions, the appearances that hide the idea, the essence. In the Platonic tradition, the truth is the being hidden behind the appearance. Heidegger departs from Platonic thought when he asserts that Art reveals the truth. The work of Art draws each thing and each emotion out of the generality that covers them, to make them appear in their singularity and reveal their uniqueness. Faced with the impoverishing generalizations of action and idea, Art makes us rediscover the wonders of the world in front of us. In this world, each being, each emotion, shines with a unique and singular radiance.

Plato and truth in Art
According to Plato, the sensitive world is filled with appearances that are always deceptive, where everything changes and is corrupt. Indeed, Plato wrote in his Republic, that he believed the artist to be “an imitator of images and is very far removed from the truth” (Republic X, 27). And the painter reproducing appearances only takes us further away from the essence. Indeed, suppose the idea of the object is already a degradation of the concept of the flower, the idea which is eternal, which is the essence. In that case, the painter's canvas representing the object flower takes us away from the idea a second time by the admiration it can inspire. It is a second degradation of the idea. Plato drew a distinction between two types of imitative art: a true likeness (akin to the scientific idea that their truth corresponds to the state of the world, i.e. mirroring reality) versus intentionally distorted representations of reality (which he described as "the art of making appearances"). This idea can be seen as a precursor to Jean Baudrillard's conceptualisation of the simulacrum.

The Western Canon
In the arts, a canon is a selection of works which are agreed upon by a group of individuals to be of high quality and importance. Largely this term is used in the context of Western academia: the Western canon is a selection of works, primarily literature, which are seen as worth studying in an academic context in the West. Despite this, the Western canon’s concept of “classic” literature exists elsewhere; hip-hop communities mark influential and important albums as “classics”.

The Western canon can be seen as a form of truth in studies of the arts. There is an observance among those who study art that its expression and appreciation are highly based in subjective experience. However, the existence of a canon, through university reading lists and the description of certain works as "masterpieces", promotes the idea that consensus among academics on the merits of a work shows an objective level of quality. It should be stressed that canons are not fixed, and are subject to change.

History of Truth in the Form of Objective Quality in Visual Arts
Giorgio Vasari's 1550 book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects has been described as "the first important book on art history". Largely a selection of biographies of Italian artists, the act of titling the artists contained within as the "Most Excellent" suggests an attempt from Vasari at creating an objective canon of great visual artists. An earlier example of attempting to objectively assess art is found in Leon Battista Alberti's 1441 book De Pictura,. In this he put forward that history paintings (those depicting historical events) were the "noblest" genre, mainly because they are the most difficult to create. This hierarchy of genre continued through to the 18th Century: academies like the French Academy of Fine Arts, influenced by Italian renaissance values such as those in De Pictura, created a hierarchy where history remained at the top, with still life paintings marked as least important.

A paradigm shift began in the 19th Century where these rigid genre conventions, along with their rankings, began to be seen as limiting and too conservative. Today, if the Western canon isn't being described as a classist metric of quality, it is being expanded to include a more wide range of voices: in the 20th Century the Western literary canon saw an expansion to include more works by women and ethnic minorities, for example via the awarding of a Nobel Prize in Literature to Wole Soyinka in 1986.

Conceptual Engineering as a Discipline
Conceptual engineering has emerged as both a useful methodology and, more broadly, a growing field of metaphysical research and study. A working definition of the field as provided by Australian philosopher David J. Chalmers reads as follows: "Conceptual engineering is the process of designing, implementing, and evaluating concepts." Some may argue the approach of conceptual engineering has been used throughout philosophical history, though it has not been until recent history in which a distinct disciplinary study of conceptual engineering has emerged. The case for conceptual engineering as a discipline seems justifiable insofar as it implements a unique methodology, quite an established lexicon, and a subject matter that while thoroughly considered in other sub-disciplines of metaphysics, presents entirely differently based on the framework conceptual engineering provides.

Conceptual Engineering as a Mirror of Reality
Given the apparent paradigmatic shift brought about with the emergence of conceptual engineering in metaphysics, it follows logically that many definitions of truth are likely to be fulfilled in the discipline given its broad newfound applications. One such example is that of the neo-classical realist conception of truth, or one which claims to mirror the presentation of reality as that which "is." The methodology and academic pursuit of conceptual engineering follows the classical correspondence theory quite closely. At its base level, the correspondence theory operates under the assumption that what is believed to be true is so if it corresponds to the facts of reality. Conceptual engineering as a discipline aims to remove the ambiguity from, and therefore refine, our generally accepted understanding of established concepts. This task can be considered a movement toward more accurate reflections of reality which supports the central thrust of realist truth conceptions.

Pragmatist Definition of Truth in Conceptual Engineering
Conceptual engineering also implements pragmatist conceptions of truth. As the field attempts to continuously refine generally-accepted conceptual understanding, with each subsequent iteration of a concept theoretically approaching a more accurate, or "true" reflection of reality, it would follow that a concept is valid once it has reached the "end of inquiry." The pragmatist understanding bases itself on the practical value of truth. The iterative nature of conceptual engineering aligns well with the view of pragmatism that current true beliefs are not beyond being subjected to future revision and inquiry and instead strives to reassess common assumption in the pursuit of the most accurate reflection of factual reality.

Examining Truth in Anthropologist’s Methodology
Social anthropology is an academic discipline in which the examination of one’s society’s characteristics is performed. The concept of truth within this discipline lies in the methods employed for conducting research and producing knowledge: conducting fieldwork, ethnography, data gatherings and analysis. Some would argue that analyzing and recounting one’s social and cultural context would systematically be partial and biased. The produced knowledge is shaped by the perception of the anthropologist, his experience, his own socio-cultural background and his interest. Upon these terms, the collected objective truths of an anthropologist is automatically tainted with his own social conditions. Some would argue that to get closer to an objective form of truth, the anthropologist must “practice”. He must perform ethnographic work, which includes fieldwork, participant observation and gathering insights, as a research method to fully grasp and micro the reality of one’s subjective experience. This immersion in one’s culture would put an emphasize on the other’s culture and allow the study conductor to enter the studied culture in a realistic way. Although, once again some would claim that the worker’s positionnality automatically creates strong gaps between his perception of reality and the reality, the objective, neutral representation of a society and its culture. One school of thought promote the idea that objectivity within the field of anthropology is a crucial element for the production of a form of truth. However, one can postulate that the simple fact of verbally recounting, using words and phrases leads to the loss of objectivity. Yet the dilemma of truth and objectivity within anthropology, is one that is inevitable for a lot of anthropologists as this discipline studies social relations. Thus, by its own nature it involves a knowledge that is constructed upon intersubjectivity.

Truth in Linguistics
Linguistics is the ‘science of language’, and examines the form, meaning, and contextual function of language. Its study is the observation and examination of the relationship between sound and meaning, and encompasses a broad selection of subfields and cross disciplinary applications. Truth in linguistics is one of correspondence: finding, and most accurately representing and describing, what can be observed in the language. This requires meta-linguistic awareness. That there are any core truths in linguistics is debated. Stockhof and Van Lambalgen have argued that no central consensus in linguistics has been established.

Truth in Spelling
Spelling is the order of letters used to form a meaningful synthetic translation of ideas, and is an application of an orthography. An orthography is a general code for written language, forming a convention for spelling, capitalisation, hyphenation amongst other concepts. They are established through social standardisation of the transcription of ideas, taking into account linguistic constraints alongside non-linguistic factors including sociopolitics, economics, and culture . Orthographies are not static, they change with shifts in the morphology and phonology of their associated spoken language. These shifts can be gradual or sudden. Correct spelling depends on what conventions have been established in the current orthography. Dictionaries are ways to communicate orthography, along with other lexical information.

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