Interactionist 1

?

Chalres Sanders Peirce 1839 - 1914:

  • idea of Semiotics. 
  • argument takes these steps: 
  • there is no direct relation between our thought and objects out there
  • signs come between throughts and objects. 
  • these signs come from the social world.
  • one sign leads to another, signs are associated with each other like links in a chain
  • this connection of signs with each other that makes up what we call our 'logic' 
  • dont think out of no where - like lego we put the puzzle and link it together.
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Semantics (meaning) and Syntax:

  • signs connect, in two ways. through semantics and syntax
  • semantic links are those in which words share meanings or bits of meaning with other words: words overlap each other. 
  • 'Luck' 'chance' 'fortune' 'gambling' have something all to do with each other. 
  • dont have much of an overlap as 'government' and 'parliment'
  • Syntactic connections are the squential ones, signs that follow, the signs that lead on from the one we are thinking about. 
  • e.g 'government decides to legalise online gambling for under 17's '
  • links to social science - we get all these signs from society. 
  • use what society offers and gives us to create our thoughts. 
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are they our thoughts at all?

  • we dont feel doubt (think we are dealing with truth) when the ideas are flowing in a way that seems natural or automatic, a way that convinces us of their absolute authority. 
  • pierce says they only flow like this because of their connection as signs.
  • we dont doubt simply becasue we are fitting together the blocks that are made to fit together
  • Pierce rackons this applies to all our thoughts, including emoitonal ones.
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What does Pierce mean by emotional thoughts?

  • the way we become convinced that we know how we feel about things (like people or events) 
  • we reach a view about how we feel because the thoughts fir together in a way that society has laid out for us.
  • more we try to depart from the connections which are already available to us the more doubt we will feel and the less convinced we will be. 
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What does Pierce mean by emotional thoughts?

  • the way we become convinced that we know how we feel about things (like people or events) 
  • we reach a view about how we feel because the thoughts fir together in a way that society has laid out for us.
  • more we try to depart from the connections which are already available to us the more doubt we will feel and the less convinced we will be. 
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What does Pierce mean by emotional thoughts?

  • the way we become convinced that we know how we feel about things (like people or events) 
  • we reach a view about how we feel because the thoughts fir together in a way that society has laid out for us.
  • more we try to depart from the connections which are already available to us the more doubt we will feel and the less convinced we will be. 
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Emotional thought also has Syntactic and Semantic

  • emotions are produced in same way as everything else, same sort of connections. 
  • deciding we are in love is just a case of fitting the blocks that society has given us.
  • one sign connects to another and so taking us on to the next feeling.
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Cooley 1864 - 1929

  • when people relate to each other they do it in their immagination 
  • lookin glass self. 
  • saying normal life is a bit like this becasue we might know who they are but we have to imagine what they are thinking - of us also. 
  • 'if there is something in you that is wholly beyon this and makes no impression upon me it has no social reality in this situation' cooley 
  • if we dont imagine them, then those other people arent real to us at all. 
  • Cooley says people are not socially real, they dont register, unless they are imagined by someone else. 
  • Someone may love and admire you from afar but they have no affect on you unless you become aware of thier intention. 
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how does it link to Social science?

  • Cooley - if we only relate to each other in our imagination then society is all in the mind: 
  • "in order to have society its evidently necessary that persons could get together somewhere; and they get together only as personal ideas in the mind" 
  • Later cooley says: 
  • "imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society' 
  • we should therefore study whats goin g on in people heads/ 
  • hes trying to get us to see that imagination we have of the law and its enforcers shapes our behaviour in respect of things that might be illegal. 
  • our imagination of what might happen if we got caught (doing illegal things) is a very solid fact that has a hug impact on our behaviour. 
  • prescense of law against our behaviour and police force will ahve no effect on us without that imagination. 

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