Division of Social Sciences

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

Plato/UpanishadsChariot

Judeo-ChristianThe fall

Aristotlemagnanimity/virtue

Evolutionary Psychaltruism as adaptive

Hayekselfish-rule following

Hobbesdistrust>woaaa

Marxproperty corrupts

Rousseaus.o.n. “good”

A Smithcompassion natural

Durkheimsociety-norms-integration

Freudsociety as super-ego

Mid-century SociologyInternalized shared values

de Waalagainst “veneer” theory

Darwinsocial emotions/natural selection

NOT lines of descent per se

Psych TypesM/B, NFST

TemperamentsSCMP

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?

Three Basic Models

•People are good

•People are bad

•People are good and bad

= pro-social (altruistic)

= selfish

= pro-social AND selfish

NOT a course on Ethics

BY NATURE, SPLIT

Self as Charioteer

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

PlatoI 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)

Card VII of Tarot Deck

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

ANOTHER LOGIC OF SPLITTING

The Four Humors

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

Humour Element Organ Temperament Characteristics

Blood air liver sanguine courageous, hopeful, amorous

Yellow bile fire spleen choleric easily angered, bad tempered

Black bile earth gall bladder melancholic despondent, sleepless, irritable

Phlegm water brain/lungs phlegmatic calm, unemotional

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

Contemporary Manifestations

• Personality tests widely used – Human resources– Consulting/coaching– Counseling– Family court

)

Ancient name Keirsey Temperaments Meyers Briggs Type Inventory

sanguine artisan intuition (N) feeling (F)

choleric idealist sensing (S) perception (P

melancholic guardian sensing (S) judgment (J)

phlegmatic rational intuition (N) thinking (T)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTI, http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/overview_temperaments.asp

BY NATURE, BAD

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

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

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

• Leviathan is written in 1651• Argument

I. Individuals are more or less similar/equal Want same things, no obvious alpha-individuals

Quarrel arises from competition, distrust, glory

II. Without common power to fear war of all against all Life is “nasty, brutish, and short”

III. 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

Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) bellum omnium contra omnes*

*war of all against all

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

BY NATURE, GOOD

Good = Natural

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

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

Adam Smith

Karl Marx

CONTEMPORARY VIEWS

Undersocialized vs. Oversocialized

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.

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

Natural Selection II: Contingent

• Help only your relatives• Help now for benefit later (reciprocity)

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

A Contemporary Multifactor Model

Babies and Vicarious Social Control

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/28/infants-prefer-an-nasty-moose-if-it-punishes-an-unhelpful-elephant/

How We Talk About It Now

• Altruism vs. Selfishness

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"a nd "affectiven eu-trality," act

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

Hobbes

Durkheim

Tension: Altruism v. Selfishness