Comments on Idealism

 
Lecture 2-Idealism - 
Reactions to and notes on John Wilson. Social Theory. Prentice-Hall. Englewood
Cliffs. NJ: 1983. 

Idealism: 
Sociologists should be concerned with the understanding of the meaning of
people's actions.  Subject-matter is the directing, willing, spontaneously acting
individual.  Actions must be explained by the end for which they are performed. 
Explanations consist of giving reasons and motives rather than invoking
universal laws.  Social reality is cognitive, ideas-thoughts-contents of
consciousness.  Extreme position ..existence of material things is illusion since
they are actually correlates or creations of consciousness.  Ideas do not obey
laws of physics-they are aspatial, not open to the senses.  Social world is not
a natural world, but rather a "text" which must be read and interpreted.  Actors
are not objects but interpreters.  Humans' social world is a world of meaning. 
Minds categorize and order events, thereby giving meaning, coherence, and
predictability to world around them.  Experience is application of meaning
structures to events.  Individual never confronts reality directly, but always
through use of interpretative schemes. 
Weber, Simmel, Husserl James and Dewey tied to this tradition. 
Ontology-nature of social reality  
The individual as social actor is an active creator of his/her own world. 
Individuals have the capacity to imagine alternative futures.  Difference between
positivist and idealist seen in notion of norms versus rule guide behavior. 
Positivist sees norms as constraints or determinants of behavior.  Norms resemble
obstacles which direct flow of interaction.  Idealist sees behavior as rule
guided.  Rules are not abstract, fixed, givens, unchanging, but rather open to
continual re-interpretation.  Rules are nested in their use.  A description of
rules constitutes an explanation of how interaction comes to be, an account of
the production of interaction. Rules set limits, but within behavior is
undetermined.  Reality is a social construction.  Data of sociologist are
pre-interpreted. Meanings that are agreed, already have developed tacitly agreed
on rules of interpretation that allow people to understand one another.
Subject-matter for sociologist is the meanings, structure of rules, and processes by
which meaning and rules are produced. 
Epistemology-knowing social reality   Natural events are not inherently
meaningful.  We can categorize natural events without worrying about essence of
meaning.  Social acts are intrinsically meaningful.  Positivists  don't recognize
interpretation as form of explanation.  To them action is explained by pointing
to necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.  For idealists
intentions and actions are inseparable.  We cannot determine the existence of an
action apart from ascertaining its intention because the intention tells us what
the action is. Motives cannot be treated as antecedent causes of subsequent
actions.  The connection is implicative.  Intention implies existence of goal
state.  Action moves toward goal state implies intention.  Intention and action
are tautological. Explanations stress agent causality.  Intention and action form
the subject-matter of subjective meaning (motives).  Where subjective meaning
(motives) are fixed (stable) and shared, we have objective meaning.  Objective
meanings are conventions.  They are rules describing what is an action of a
certain type.  They are stipulative.  These rules are called constitutive
meanings...taken for granted by actors...assumed as natural.
Concepts:  For positivist concepts must be precise, unambiguous, and context
free.  For idealist concepts are context-specific.
Explanation-attribution of agency to actor
Validation-inter-subjective communication criterion of adequacy of understanding
of rules