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WEEK 2-ASSIGNMENT

Aspects of Social Understanding

SOC 5110 Sociological Theory

Mary Ware

Instructor: Dr. Tiffenia Archie

Nov 20, 2019

Understanding others is an essential part of life and as a human being in general. Social understanding is to believe to have started in as early as toddlerhood, as well as the early school years. Some children’s awareness of others’ thoughts and feeling are sometimes not parallel to many others their age and this can go well into adulthood and affect the now adult’s social understanding of others around them (Hughes, 2011).

In this paper I will, explain the concept of “epistemology” or “how we know what we know. Then I will discuss the following elements of social understanding: evidence, theory, value, and beliefs. Next, I will explain the concept of “reflexivity” in social understanding. As well as discuss how humans can gain each element of social understanding or how elements are formed. Also, I will defend the importance each element of social understanding has on human knowledge. Then I summarize how the elements of social understanding work together. Then finally, I will try and justify the potential impact if citizens in society do or do not embrace all elements of social understanding.

Explain the concept of “epistemology” or “how we know what we know.”

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge is a philosophical theory that has been examined throughout many centuries past by some the greatest minds and intellectuals alike. Scholars like Descartes, Durkheim, Bernard, Aristotle, and Plato. Although Plato was the one who believed and then classified knowledge as the being of three concepts: truth, belief, and evidence, and gave a definition of truth as “ that what reflects reality (Vejar, 2019).”

Discuss the following elements of social understanding: evidence, theory, value, and beliefs.

The concept of evidence is vital to epistemology and the philosophy of science. In epistemology, evidence is frequently taken to be applicable to justified belief, the latter, sequentially, is characteristically believed to be essential for knowledge. Perhaps, then, an understanding of evidence is significant and designed for appreciating the two leading matters of epistemological concern, i.e., knowledge and justified belief (Fieser & Dowden, 1998).

In the philosophy of science, evidence is a staunch belief that what confirms or counters scientific theories, and thus establishes grounds for realistically determining amid contending pictures of the biosphere. Evidence, in terms of philosophy, has been reserved to comprise of such effects as, “experiences, propositions, observation-reports, mental states, states of affairs, and even physiological procedures, such as the stimulation of one's sensory surfaces (Fieser & Dowden, 1998).”

Theories allows us to see and make logic of social formulae in society. Theories, consequently, are apparatuses for understanding individuals’ lives and just how society works. A theory in essence, is formed by a single or a small sum of sociologists working collectively; it tries to explicate a specific facet of the social structure or a form of social communication amongst individuals. Theoretical perspectives frame the social world for sociologists. They bring awareness to some portions of human behavior and distort others. Countless sociologists use the lenses of many theoretical perspectives to recompense for the theoretical lapses of each perspective (Korgen & Atkinson, 2019).

Belief happens once individuals/person grants validity toward such a fact, and evidence is a person's capacity to defend such a statement. For example, if you are crossing a highway, one must determine how safe it is to cross the highway. To determine that , you must use the knowledge and your ability to reason to make that determination. From looking at the highway, you may determine that it is safe to cross, because there is no traffic, therefore there is a belief that it is safe to cross the highway. If there is someone who has already made it safely on the other side then, one would determine that the belief that it is safe to cross the highway is true (Vejar, 2019).

Values are a culture’s standard for deciding what is moral and fair in society. Values are very rooted and critical for conveying and educating a culture’s beliefs. Beliefs are the views or principles that people embrace to be true. One can believe in anything but without evidence that doesn’t make that true (Giddens, Duneier & Applebaum,1991).

Author & Philosopher Jonathan Leicester; proposes that belief has the resolve of guiding action rather than being indicative of truth. In epistemology, the term "belief" is used by philosophers in reference to personal attitudes connected with true or false thoughts and ideas. Nevertheless, "belief" does not necessitate active self-examination and watchfulness (Pasnau, 2013).

Those in a society have particular beliefs, but they also have shared collective values. Values help form a society by signifying what is moral and immoral, attractive and unattractive, wanted or evaded. Values often advise how people ought to behave, but they don’t truthfully replicate how people do behave (Giddens, Duneier & Applebaum,1991).

Explain the concept of “reflexivity” in social understanding.

Reflexivity has been used by a diverse group of theorists in reference to different phenomena consistent with what mutually the entity and topic of reflection is known to be. This practice of this term was further established by Author Anthony Giddens, who contends that one of the key characteristics of late modernism is a keen importance of reflexivity in this logic, at the individual and the societal level mutually. It has been argued by Giddens, that most facets of social activity are answerable to constant adjustment in the light of new evidence or knowledge but sociology itself is a key foundation of such reflexivity at the level of the society (science.jrank.org, 2019.)

Reflexive theories offer an alternate viewpoint on sociological intervention and an construal of existing social circumstances that expose new opportunities for the theoretical professional and societal recentering of sociological preparation to what is generally called the "sociology of practice." From a reflexive perspective point of view, sociological data and commonplace knowledge are correlated through a method of shared transformation in customs that foster a merging of theoretical and applied topics, redraw the limitations amid sociological, and the added sociological activities, and entail innovative methods of lay-expert meeting in which lay knowledge plays an impractical role, upon that engagement reflexive criteria will be met. The sociology of practice is recentered as a functional form of knowledge applicable pertaining to the labor of all sociologists and vital for enriching social problems (science.jrank.org, 2019.).

Discuss how humans can gain each element of social understanding or how elements are formed.

(2019)Reflexivity: Reflexivity In Sociology. Retrieved by: https://science.jrank.org/pages/11000/Reflexivity-Reflexivity-in-Sociology.html

Fieser, J., & Dowden, B. (1998). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP). URL: http://www. Philosophy pages. com/dy/e9. htm# eth (accessed: February 25, 2011).

Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. S. (1991). Introduction to sociology. New York: Norton.

Hughes, C. (2011). Social understanding and social lives: From toddlerhood through to the transition to school. Psychology Press.

Korgen, K. O., & Atkinson M. P. (2019) Sociology in action (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Pasnau, R. (2013). Epistemology Idealized. Mind, 122(488), 987-1021. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/24489588

Vejar, C. (2019). Epistemology. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=89164199&site=eds-live&scope=site