Final Flashcards
What is the Sociological definition of self and self concept?
The self is a relatively stable set of perceptions of who we are in relation to ourselves, to OTHERS, and to SOCIAL SYSTEMS. The self is organized around a self-concept, the ideas and feelings that we have about ourselves.
What is a griefer?
A griefer is an online version of a spoilsport. Someone who takes pleasure in shattering the world of play itself. What they enjoy most about online games is to make other players not enjoy them. Their work is complete when their victims log off in a huff.
What is a cyber bully/stalker?
These people use the internet to to harass a particular target, often using fake identities or public websites to enable the harassment. Unlike trolls or griefers, who often seem to select random or ideologically-motivated targets, cyberr bullies/stalkers tend to target people they know from everyday life.
What is a social network?
The term social network was coined long before the internet existed. It was used to describe the structure formed by human relationships, and as a visual representaion of the people and organizations in society, and various one-to-one relationships between them. Sociologists developed a branch of mathematics called social network analysis to help them understand and explore social organization.
Who is Charles Taylor?
He is a Canadian philosopher best known for his contributions to political philosophy and philosophy of social science. He won a ton of awards.
What are some of Charles’s Taylors main beleifs?
He believed that facts are, in part, infected by values. Human action is essentially teleogical.
What is Teleology?
The belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent in nature.
The doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces, but that they also move toward certain goals of self realization.
What does Charles Taylor reject?
He rejects that facts and values are distinct, and rejects that human actions is essentially mechanistic.
What are Charles Taylors three malaises?
1- Excessive Individualism
2- Instrumental Rationality
3- “Soft” despotism
What is Excessive Individualism?
It is one of Charles Taylors three malaises. In modernity, laws and morals have sprung up to protect individuals against large collective forces, such as oppressive cultural traditions, overreaching government powers, etc. The downside of breaking out of old hierarchies is a loss of meaning. By assigning a place to each thing and person, hierarchical societies made the world meaningful. In breaking out of these hierarchical constraints, individualist society loses a grand sense of meaning. The dark side of individualism is a withdrawal into out own narcissistic pleasure and pains with little regard for others or society. Individualism leads to loss of meaning, fading moral horizons, and breeds selfishness.
What is Instrumental Rationality?
It is one of Charles Taylors three malaises. It is the kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical applications of means to a given end. Maximum efficiency, the best cost-output ration, is it’s measure of success. The fear is that we will use cost-output calculations to measure things that deserve a better standard of evaluation. i.e. The ways the demands of economic growth are used to justify very unequal distributions of wealth and income, or make us insensitive to the needs of the environment, to the point of disaster. Instrumental reason explains the prestige of technology and it’s increased use in areas of life where it is not optimal, such as the emotional care of patients. Summary: Economic growth is used to justify inequalities. Quality is sacrificed for efficiency. People use other people, rather than engaging in relationships.
What is “Soft” despotism?
It is one of Charles Taylor’s three malaises . Soft despotism results from a government keeping us content individually, without calling for our participation. This gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. We lose freedom because we are too self-concerned. Consumers are too self-absorbed to bother with politics.
What is Charles Taylor’s definition of self?
Self is not merely subjective perceptions and not merely a social phenomenon either. Self is the voice of nature within which gives us our moral sense.
What is Charles Taylor’s definition of self concept?
Self concept is a place and moment of Earth which negates its very nonexistence.
Why does Charles Taylor think the goal of self-fulfilment fails?
It fails because it doesn’t take into account: The demands of our ties with others, and the demands emanating from something more, or other than human desires or aspirations.
What does Charles Taylor think Authenticity requires?
It requires that we develop our unique characteristics in relation to something beyond our own desires. Our identities are shaped and maintained through our concerns and interactions with ‘significant’ others.
What is the authentic self?
The authentic self is outside the range of conscious reflection. It is an inner self that is good, pure and well-intentioned Your self is what you are.
What did Marshal McLuhan believe?
He believed that media are extensions of humanity. Each media extends some natural human process. “The book is an extension of the eye, electric circuity is an extension of the central nervous system, the wheel is an extension of the foot. The medium is the message. Certain meida are better at conveying certain ideas than others. Media is often overlooked because we are focused on the content.
What is Marshal McLuhan’s tetrad?
It is four questions to help analyze a new medium and foresee it’s effects: Enchanced, Obsolesced, Retrieval, and Reversal.
What is Enhanced?
It is one of the questions in McLuhans’s Tetrad. What does the new medium enhance, intensify, make possible or accelerate? (Washing Machine: Speed of doing Laundry)
What is Obsolesced?
It is one of the questions in McLuhans’s Tetrad. If some aspect of a situation is enlarged or enhance by a new medium, simultaneously the old condition or unenhanced situation is displaced thereby. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium? (Washing Machine: Tub and scrub board)
What is Retrieval?
What recurrence or retrieval of earlier actions and services is brought into play simultaneously by the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and inheres in the new form? (Washing Machine: Super clean house expected again)
