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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/13148
Title: | Karl Marx and George Herbert Mead: Contributions to a Sociology of Knowledge |
Authors: | Goff, Wesley Thomas |
Advisor: | Brymer, R. |
Department: | Sociology |
Keywords: | Sociology;Sociology |
Publication Date: | May-1976 |
Abstract: | <p>The study concerns the historical debate between critics and proponents of the sociology of knowledge: an area within sociology which attempts to conceptualize and investigate the insight that the intellectual and social dimensions of human life are integrally related. Specifically, it investigates the hypothesis that an adequate perspective and response to the critics can be developed through a synthesis of relevant aspects of the writing of Marx and Mead; a hypothesis proposed frequently, but never fully elaborated.</p> <p>Critics have claimed that an empirical sociology of knowledge is quite impossible, because self-contradictory. If all ideas are fundamentally social, then thought is relativized, the possibility of truth (even for the sociology of knowledge) is denied, and man's capacity to reason is devalued. Sociologists have generally accepted these claims, but, short of denying the possibility of any valid formulation, they have rather denied its radical form and limited the insight's applicability by excluding certain areas of thought for social penetration.</p> <p>However, despite acceptance of the demand that at least some thought transcend social penetration especially the "knowledge about knowledge" presumed by the critics -- no formulation of the insight has successfully dealt with the impasse of relativism, and therefore none fully satisfy the critics. Because of this, the analysis of Marx and Mead is preceded by a detailed investigation of the Critique in order to evaluate its claims and the validity of the continual acceptance of its parameters.</p> <p>This analysis concludes that the Critique proceeds from positivistic presuppositions and that it is therefore historically rooted in an individualistic conception of knowledge which is antithetical to the insight that knowledge is an essentially social phenomenon. Thus, it is argued that because of this contradiction between insight and criterion by which it is judged, it is indeed impossible to develop an adequate, positivistic elaboration of the insight. At the same time, it is also demonstrated that there are insufficient grounds on which to justify an acceptance of positivistic criteria in preference to the insight.</p> <p>The subsequent consideration of Marx and Mead is therefore concerned both to discern ideas relevant to the discipline, and to demonstrate that their work "anticipates" the Critique, through development of a non-positivistic conception of thought and its validation consistent with the insight. It is demonstrated that their work is of essential relevance to the sociology of knowledge a) because they develop compatible, nonpositivistic conceptions of objectivity, and b) because while neither position alone is free of inadequacies, a synthesis of their ideas transcends the separate deficiencies and the impasse of relativism characteristic of positivistically oriented elaborations of the insight.</p> <p>This synthesis characterizes the sociology of knowledge as a critical study of ideas in relation to social form, and, more importantly, in relation to their adequacy to the fulfillment and development of human life. It assumes that men are beings of praxis whose ideas and interaction patterns are dialectically related, interdependent historical products, which are understood as contingent means facilitating human survival and development. As a critlcal discipline, it deals with an aspect of the issue of the distortion of praxis: the problem of the existence of reified ideas within the more general problem of human alienation; the problem:through which man's own products become apparent determinants of subsequent activity. In contrast to positivistic sociologies of knowledge, which intend a grasp of a presumed socialexistential determination of ideas (which appears the case through alienation), the critical perspective intends a grasp of the distortion of the actual, dialectical relationship between thought and social form. Whereas the former sociologies have been unable to resolve the basic issue of relativism, the critical perspective achieves this resolution by positing human praxis itself as the criterion of the objectivity of thought -- a criterion fully consistent with a social theory of knowledge.</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/13148 |
Identifier: | opendissertations/7973 9061 4398512 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
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fulltext.pdf | 145.36 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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