1 / 43

What is There to Control?

What is There to Control?. Human nature from antiquity to the present (in an hour). http://djjr-courses.wikidot.com/soc112:history-of-the-sociology-of-deviance. Takeaways. Identify thinkers associated with good, bad, and mixed and vice versa Understand what we mean by “veneer” theory .

bill
Télécharger la présentation

What is There to Control?

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. What is There to Control? Human nature from antiquity to the present (in an hour) http://djjr-courses.wikidot.com/soc112:history-of-the-sociology-of-deviance

  2. Takeaways • Identify thinkers associated with good, bad, and mixed and vice versa • Understand what we mean by “veneer” theory

  3. Aristotle magnanimity/virtue Plato/Upanishads Chariot Temperaments SCMP Judeo-Christian The fall Rousseau s.o.n. “good” A Smith compassion natural Marx property corrupts Durkheim society-norms-integration Hobbes distrust>woaaa Darwin social emotions/natural selection Freud society as super-ego Evolutionary Psych altruism as adaptive Hayek selfish-rule following Psych Types M/B, NFST Mid-century Sociology Internalized shared values de Waal against “veneer” theory NOT lines of descent per se

  4. Basic Logic • Individuals have similar needs/wants • that bring them • Control of SOMETHING by SOMETHING • But why does the something need to be controlled? • And what kind of thing is it?

  5. Three Basic Models = pro-social (altruistic) = selfish = pro-social AND selfish • People are good • People are bad • People are good and bad

  6. NOT a course on Ethics

  7. By nature, split

  8. Self as Charioteer http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2009/10/platos-allegory-of-the-charioteer.html

  9. Plato I divided each soul into three -- two horses and a charioteer; [253d] and one of the horses was good and the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. [253e] The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. (Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Jowett: http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/jowett/phaedrus9.htm)

  10. Card VII of Tarot Deck

  11. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • Founder of psychoanalysis • Behavior and cognition aredetermined by innate, largely unconscious, drives (id) that interact with control mechanism (superego) that derives from social world • Like Durkheim, control can be too much or too little

  12. Another logic of splitting

  13. The Four Humors • Antiquity through 19th century • Linked environment/body/soul • Balance vs. presence of bad

  14. Contemporary Manifestations • Personality tests widely used • Human resources • Consulting/coaching • Counseling • Family court )

  15. By Nature, Bad

  16. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/2628128818_06b67e45b0.jpghttp://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/2628128818_06b67e45b0.jpg

  17. Dominant Judeo-Christian Narrative • God made humans in his image, i.e., good • Human’s screwed up (perhaps with help) and took on board a measure of evil. • Rest of story is striving to regain god-like qualities

  18. Judeo-Christian Model • Humans “made” in god’s image (good) • Humans “fall” : become flawed • Potential for redemption – goodness as something that can be achieved • Reformation: salvation cannot be achieved, but one can still strive to dominate one’s wickedness

  19. Leviathan is written in 1651 • Argument • Individuals are more or less similar/equal • Want same things, no obvious alpha-individuals • Quarrel arises from competition, distrust, glory • Without common power to fear war of all against all • Life is “nasty, brutish, and short” • Passion plus reason CAN help us out… • Fear of death + desire of comfort + hope by industry to get things • can give up some rights to sovereign and "contract" for peace *war of all against all

  20. Hayek and Neoclassical Economics • 1899 – 1992 • Austrian economist/philosopher • Caricature is of humans as selfish individualists • But distinguish between models and beliefs • Still, the thing to be controlled is an actor with self interests to which we can “appeal” with the proper incentives

  21. By Nature, good

  22. Good = Natural Yet I cling to [my ideals] because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

  23. Rousseau (1712 – 1778) The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

  24. Adam Smith

  25. Karl Marx

  26. Contemporary views

  27. Undersocialized vs. Oversocialized

  28. Natural Selection I: Altruism Impossible • Suppose some individuals selfish, some not • Altruists help selfish, no reciprocation • Altruists suffer, selfish benefit • Over time, selfish reproduce more, altruists die out.

  29. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • Natural selection • Also theorized about emotions • Humans are animals but/and social emotions (compassion, sympathy, shame) result of natural selection • NOTE: Ideas hijacked by social Darwinists with “survival of fittest” as justification for unrestrained economic competition

  30. Natural Selection II: Contingent • Help only your relatives • Help now for benefit later (reciprocity)

  31. Franz de Waal (b 1948) against “veneer” theory • “veneer” theory = morality as thin overlay on otherwise nasty human nature • de Waal: pro-social emotional dispositions of non-human primates constitute the “building blocks” of human morality • turns on its head the idea that “the animal in us” is the bad part

  32. A Contemporary Multifactor Model

  33. Babies and Vicarious Social Control http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/28/infants-prefer-an-nasty-moose-if-it-punishes-an-unhelpful-elephant/

  34. How We Talk About It Now • Altruism vs. Selfishness

  35. Altruism and Social Theory • Comte: altruism as stage in cultural evolution • 19th century – science – demystification : rejected unexplained “god” but substituted roots of “universalism” – new emancipation from old society in favor of new (utopias of various kinds – the new man) • Parsons, "universalism"and "affectiveneu-trality," act

  36. Summary • Three tracks: good, bad, mixed • Constant desire for single theory • Approaches to social control have “model of man” (or “human nature”) behind them • Paying attention to actor model helps elucidate mechanisms implied by theories

  37. Hobbes

  38. Durkheim

  39. Tension: Altruism v. Selfishness

More Related