Archive for the ‘Sociology’ Category
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
Revise the notation to be suggestive of the standard terminology in intentional psychology – which is to say BDA psychology. The least disruptive change I judge to be as follows:
B(x)[ argument ] is the 'belief' of x about ‘argument’, which replaces E(x)[ argument ]
D(x)[ argument ] is the 'desire' ...
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Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
Interests
A significant part of the standard conception of a group is that group membership is valued because it is estimated that it will advance particular interests that are salient and weighty for the group member. We previously said that where a group is generally believed to particularly advance the interest ...
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Friday, June 22nd, 2012
In order for G to retain its membership it needs to be the case that continuing membership of G is believed to be more likely to advance the salient and weighty interests of x than relinquishing membership of G. This Retention Condition may be expressed as follows:
For x ∈ |G|,
Let ...
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Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
Previously, we have said that groups are organized wrt subsets of the membership, thus:
O(G) = {r1, …, rn} ∈ 2|G| is the Organization of G, where ri are the roles in G, satisfying
(∀x ∈ |G|)(∃r ∈ O(G)) [x ∈ r]
(∀x ∈ |G|)(∀ri, rj ∈ O(G)) [x ∈ ri & x ...
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Sunday, June 17th, 2012
Blalock and Wilken (Intergroup Processes, NY: Free Press, 1979, p. 330) note that there are at least two conceptions of social power that are in play in sociological theorizing. The first conception concerns the actual achievement of goals and may apply more readily to larger scale elements of the sociological ...
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Friday, June 15th, 2012
A Selection of Actions in the World of Groups
There are a number of actions in the social world that can be associated with groups as actors.
The following are actions that are associated with single groups.
Formation: A group is formed when several individuals come together.
A book club is formed to ...
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Friday, June 15th, 2012
The perfectly informed and perfectly rational agent (assumed here) is acceptable for a first approximation of agency; however, it is reasonably easy to modify the formulae above to take account of various forms of imperfection.
Functions and variables, V say, that are estimated by x or are otherwise subjective wrt x ...
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Thursday, June 14th, 2012
The fundamental atom of social theory must be the individual agent.
We are interested in those aspects of the agent that are relevant to its role in the social world.
The agent is first of all an actor, acting to improve the degree of satisfaction of its interests.
The model for ...
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Monday, June 11th, 2012
Group Definition
A group is essentially an organization of individuals in pursuit of their common interests.
Each individual has an interest
That interest is advanced by group action
An organization exists to coordinate the actions of members in pursuit of that interest
Interests and Satisfaction
Let I(x) = {i1, …, in} be the Interests of ...
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Saturday, June 9th, 2012
Group Definition
The typical definition of a social group includes some combination of the following characteristics or characteristics that are equivalent to these:
Two or more people
Direct interaction amongst the members
Members are aware of their membership
Members share an interest or a cause
There is an organizational structure
Insofar as membership of the group ...
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