scholarly journals Knowledge From Vice: Deeply Social Epistemology

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (515) ◽  
pp. 887-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Levy ◽  
Mark Alfano
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
Human Social Life

Abstract In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field. To the traditional question that has dominated the debate — under what conditions does belief amount to knowledge? — they have added questions about testimony, epistemic virtues and vices, epistemic trust, and more. This broadening of the range of epistemic concern has coincided with an expansion in conceptions of epistemic agency beyond the individualism characteristic of most earlier epistemology. We believe that these developments have not gone far enough. While the weak anti-individualism we see in contemporary epistemology may be adequate for the kinds of cases it tends to focus on, a great deal of human knowledge production and transmission does not conform to these models. Furthermore, the dispositions and norms that are knowledge-conducive in the familiar cases may not be knowledge-conducive generally. In fact, dispositions that, at an individual level, count as epistemic vices may be epistemic virtues in common social contexts. We argue that this overlooked feature of human social life means that epistemology must become more deeply and pervasively social.

scholarly journals Predicting the Future: Art and Algorithms

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 893-911
Author(s):  
Akos Rona-Tas
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Consumer Credit ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Predictive Algorithms ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Governance

Abstract Predictive algorithms are replacing the art of human judgement in rapidly growing areas of social life. By offering pattern recognition as forecast, predictive algorithms mechanically project the past onto the future, embracing a peculiar notion of time where the future is different in no radical way from the past and present, and a peculiar world where human agency is absent. Yet, prediction is about agency, we predict the future to change it. At the individual level, the psychological literature has concluded that in the realm of predictions, human judgement is inferior to algorithmic methods. At the sociological level, however, human judgement is often preferred over algorthms. We show how human and algorithmic predictions work in three social contexts—consumer credit, college admissions and criminal justice—and why people have good reasons to rely on human judgement. We argue that mechanical and overly successful local predictions can result in self-fulfilling prophecies and, eventually, global polarization and chaos. Finally, we look at algorithmic prediction as a form of societal and political governance and discuss how it is currently being constructed as a wide net of control by market processes in the USA and by government fiat in China.

Social Control and Youth Suicidality: Situating Durkheim's Ideas in a Multilevel Framework

2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Maimon ◽  
Danielle C. Kuhl
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Parental Attachment ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Although the suicide rate among U.S. youth between the ages of 10 to 24 dramatically increased during the past 50 years, little research has examined this outcome within larger social contexts of the adolescent environment. Relying on Durkheim's theory of social integration, we examine the effect of individual- and structural-level social integration on adolescents' suicidality. Using a sample of 6,369 respondents within 314 neighborhoods, we examine the assumptions that high levels of religious, familial, neighborhood, and school integration are associated with fewer suicide attempts among youths. We find support for the traditional Durkheimian assumptions; specifically, the proportion of religiously conservative residents in a neighborhood reduces youths' risk of attempting suicide, as do individual-level controls of school and parental attachment. Moreover, we find evidence for a cross-level interaction between depression and neighborhood level of religiosity. Depression increases youths' risk of attempting suicide, but in places where religion is very important, this positive effect of depression is diminished.

scholarly journals POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: RISKS OF “THE EPOCH OF NOSTALGIA

PRIMO ASPECTU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Nadezhda BAGDASARYAN ◽  
Marina KOROL
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Protective Mechanisms ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Historical Past

The article considers the state of socio cultural reality of post-Soviet Russia, which carried out transit from socialism to capitalism. Transformation of Russia into a new capitalist country of the post-communist bloc during the reforms of the1990s was associated with privatization, as a result of which there was a rapid stratification of society, income polarization, wrongfully impoverishment of the population and with massive downward mobility. Over the past quarter-century, a new stratification model has emerged. This model cannot be considered as a stable connection of social life subjects not only by age characteristics, experience of socialization, attitude to property, but also because this structure is due to the entire socio cultural state of the post-Soviet space. In society, the mood of idealization of the Soviet past is growing to find protective mechanisms against the uncertain future. The critical optics of the "epoch of nostalgia" concept, which is dedicated to the posthumously published work of the outstanding British sociologist Z. Bauman "Retropia," permits to light up the risks and threats of the mood of the idealization of the past. The past must be seen not as a frozen ideological construct, but as a continuum that can help to understand the origins of the social contexts of the present and the prospects of the future. Memory culture is also the policy of a state that works subtly with its historical past in the information field of mass consciousness: gross manipulation of it in modern society can produce unpredictable results.

scholarly journals Multiple reputation domains and cooperative behaviour in two Latin American communities

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1683) ◽  
pp. 20150009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane J. Macfarlan ◽  
Henry F. Lyle
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Partnership Formation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Advice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Human Social Life

Reputations are a ubiquitous feature of human social life, and a large literature has been dedicated to explaining the relationship between prosocial reputations and cooperation in social dilemmas. However, humans form reputations in domains other than prosociality, such as economic competency that could affect cooperation. To date, no research has evaluated the relative effects of multiple reputation domains on cooperation. To bridge this gap, we analyse how prosocial and competency reputations affect cooperation in two Latin American communities (Bwa Mawego, Dominica, and Pucucanchita, Peru) across a number of social contexts (Dominica: labour contracting, labour exchange and conjugal partnership formation; Peru: agricultural and health advice network size). First, we examine the behavioural correlates of prosocial and competency reputations. Following, we analyse whether prosocial, competency, or both reputation domains explain the flow of cooperative benefits within the two communities. Our analyses suggest that (i) although some behaviours affect both reputation domains simultaneously, each reputation domain has a unique behavioural signature; and (ii) competency reputations affect cooperation across a greater number of social contexts compared to prosocial reputations. Results are contextualized with reference to the social markets in which behaviour is embedded and a call for greater theory development is stressed.

IDEOLOGY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN ALBANIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 2033-2040
Author(s):  
Roland Lami
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government

In this paper, ideological confusion is explained based on the structural-functionalist perspective. Analysis of the phenomenon in question focuses mainly on the interdependence created between the “deeply-social” factors of and political discourse. This analysis is undertaken to better understand the circumstances that condition political parties on representing social categories in different social contexts and on showing the implications of political identity building based on the type of discourse used by the political actors. For this reason, while Almond (1968), Easton (1865), Luhmann (1981) analyze the ideology, they pay attention directly to the way of society structuring, and not as much to the political discourse. According to them, no partial aspect of social life and no isolated phenomenon can be understood unless it is linked with historical integrity and social structure conceived as a general unit. In this study, macro analysis focuses on the identification and treatment of several important indicators in terms of influences in structuring the political identity as important elements even for the empirical testing to the solutions this paper proposes. In this article the political discourse of Democratic Party and Socialist Party is analyzed in three different time periods, 1992 - 1996, 1997 - 2001 and 2002 - 2012. In the first period, on the one hand, the government of the right wing undertook many structural reforms, while on the other hand it does not neglect social assistance for certain groups affected by these reforms. During this period, the Socialist Party is focused more on dealing with itself in terms in order to break with the past than to create a particular profile in an ideological sense - in relation to the opponent. This approach makes political parties differ little from one another. The only difference between them in this period is the discourse: “anticommunism” and “antiberishism”. Democratic Party refers to the origin of Socialist Party to attack it for its relation with the past, while Socialist Party denounces the whole Democratic Party for its leadership qualities. More specifically, each attitude of SP in opposition was labeled as a reminiscence of the former Labour Party, while for the SP every each attitude of the government manifested authoritarian, provincial and tribal tendencies of Berisha.

scholarly journals REVITALISASI NALAR HUKUM ISLAM: DARI GERAKAN POLITIK MENUJU KESADARAN ETIK

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Hijrian A. Prihantoro
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Text ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
Human Social Life

This paper aims to discuss the revitalization of the logical reasoning’s epistemology of Islamic Jurisprudence using the sociology of knowledge' approach as the reconstructive effort to see the relation of the religious text and political context of Indonesian social reality. Based on the historical analysis of the diachronic data, comparing the various political phenomena in the past Islamic history to the nowadays situation, the study revealed that the logical reasoning of Islamic jurisprudence was always related dialectically with the human social life as a fact that Islamic studies have been able to change the paradigm and mindset of the civilization.

Proportion of Individuals With Past-Year Suicidal Ideation Who Attempted Suicide Over the Past 10 Years in the United States, and the Influence of Age and Sex

Crisis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Shannon Lange ◽  
Courtney Bagge ◽  
Charlotte Probst ◽  
Jürgen Rehm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Random Effects ◽  
Attempted Suicide ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Age Category

Abstract. Background: In recent years, the rate of death by suicide has been increasing disproportionately among females and young adults in the United States. Presumably this trend has been mirrored by the proportion of individuals with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. Aim: We aimed to investigate whether the proportion of individuals in the United States with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide differed by age and/or sex, and whether this proportion has increased over time. Method: Individual-level data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 2008–2017, were used to estimate the year-, age category-, and sex-specific proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. We then determined whether this proportion differed by age category, sex, and across years using random-effects meta-regression. Overall, age category- and sex-specific proportions across survey years were estimated using random-effects meta-analyses. Results: Although the proportion was found to be significantly higher among females and those aged 18–25 years, it had not significantly increased over the past 10 years. Limitations: Data were self-reported and restricted to past-year suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Conclusion: The increase in the death by suicide rate in the United States over the past 10 years was not mirrored by the proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide during this period.

Fast Foes: The affective consequences of interacting in a negative self-disclosure situation.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gordils ◽  
Jeremy Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Cardiovascular Responses ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Negative Behaviors ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Affective Consequences

Background and Objectives: Social interactions involving personal disclosures are ubiquitous in social life and have important relational implications. A large body of research has documented positive outcomes from fruitful social interactions with amicable individuals, but less is known about how self-disclosing interactions with inimical interaction partners impacts individuals. Design and Methods: Participants engaged in an immersive social interaction task with a confederate (thought to be another participant) trained to behave amicably (Fast Friends) or inimically (Fast Foes). Cardiovascular responses were measured during the interaction and behavioral displays coded. Participants also reported on their subjective experiences of the interaction. Results: Participants assigned to interact in the Fast Foes condition reported more negative affect and threat appraisals, displayed more negative behaviors (i.e., agitation and anxiety), and exhibited physiological threat responses (and lower cardiac output in particular) compared to participants assigned to the Fast Friends condition. Conclusions: The novel paradigm demonstrates differential stress and affective outcomes between positive and negative self-disclosure situations across multiple channels, providing a more nuanced understanding of the processes associated with disclosing information about the self in social contexts.

The True Believers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Risman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Gender Differentiation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Gendered Expectations

This is the first data chapter. In this chapter, respondents who are described as true believers in the gender structure, and essentialist gender differences are introduced and their interviews analyzed. They are true believers because, at the macro level, they believe in a gender ideology where women and men should be different and accept rules and requirements that enforce gender differentiation and even sex segregation in social life. In addition, at the interactional level, these Millennials report having been shaped by their parent’s traditional expectations and they similarly feel justified to impose gendered expectations on those in their own social networks. At the individual level, they have internalized masculinity or femininity, and embody it in how they present themselves to the world. They try hard to “do gender” traditionally.

Cranford

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Dinah Birch
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Personal Tragedy ◽  
The Way

A man … is so in the way in the house!’ A vivid and affectionate portrait of a provincial town in early Victorian England, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women. Undaunted by poverty, but dismayed by changes brought by the railway and by new commercial practices, the ladies of Cranford respond to disruption with both suspicion and courage. Miss Matty and her sister Deborah uphold standards and survive personal tragedy and everyday dramas; innovation may bring loss, but it also brings growth, and welcome freedoms. Cranford suggests that representatives of different and apparently hostile social worlds, their minds opened by sympathy and suffering, can learn from each other. Its social comedy develops into a study of generous reconciliation, of a kind that will value the past as it actively shapes the future. This edition includes two related short pieces by Gaskell, ‘The Last Generation in England’ and ‘The Cage at Cranford’, as well as a selection from the diverse literary and social contexts in which the Cranford tales take their place.

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