The Sociology of the Individual
-The Elemental Reduction Approach
addendum
2005-2014 Iwao Otsuka
General Theory.
Elemental Reduction Approach in Sociology
[Abstract]
The elemental reduction approach aims at a sociology of the individual, a "visible sociology of the individual," which clearly visualizes the individual as particles and constituent parts that operate within the whole society.
It aims to share a perspective with psychology by incorporating the activities of the psychological and nervous systems of the individuals who make up society into a perspective that analyzes the whole society.
To critique the traditional sociological view that society is more than the sum total of the individuals, and that it is something external and binding to the individual.
Society is a collection of interacting individuals, nothing more and nothing less.
Society, as an element, is reduced to the psychology of the individual and the connectors that connect individuals to each other. Social behavior is reduced to the interactions between individual nervous systems.
[Elemental reduction of society]
The elemental reduction approach is - sociology.
The elemental reduction approach aims at a "sociology of the individual", a sociology that clearly visualizes the individuals acting in the whole society as particles and constituent parts.
It aims to share a perspective with psychology by incorporating the activities of the psychological and nervous systems of the individuals who make up society into a perspective that analyzes the whole society.
To critique the traditional sociological view that society is more than the sum total of the individuals, and that it is something external and binding to the individual.
Society is a collection of interacting individuals, no more and no less. It must not be external beyond the individual.
Society, as an element, is reduced to the psychology of the individual and the connectors that connect individuals to each other. Social behavior is reduced to interactions between individuals.
Culture is reduced to the individual's mind and nervous system.
2005.05-2006 First published.
Society can be returned to the individual.
Emergence that society cannot be reduced to the individual is an illusion.
For one actor, society is the aggregate of the rest of the people. It is an entity that does not do one person's will, does not do as he or she wishes, does not listen to him or her. It is more than an individual in that it is an aggregate of individuals and can be reduced to an individual, but cannot be run by an individual.
Each individual has his or her own individual circumstances and tries to do what is convenient for him or her, which may be a nuisance to others.
People try to behave differently when others are around and when they are not. When humans are surrounded by people who try to do the same thing as they do, they get fired up and feel as if their self has been expanded, and they do different things than when they are alone. When a human being is surrounded by even a few people who share the same culture as he or she does, the human being gets fired up and is able to do things that he or she would not be able to do alone.
The explanation has been given that it's because of "society" because getting big-hearted doesn't happen alone. Indeed, the psychology of an individual is different when he or she is alone and when there are many others around. This is because when there are others around, a bridge for communication and interaction is established between the individual and the others.
This is because we think we have the assistance of others, so we feel bigger. There is certainly a psychology that occurs only in the presence of others, which does not occur alone. It has been argued that society cannot be explained on an individual basis alone.
However, this can actually be reduced to an individual's psychology that occurs in the presence of others of the same class. It is more likely that this is not the result of "external society" but rather the result of a psychological mechanism that is genetically engineered into the nervous system of each human being that makes him or her feel more excited when they find others of their own kind. Ugh.
The activities of biological individuals must be built on the activities at the cellular level.
To assert that society is established independently, separate from and beyond the psychology and physiology of the individual, and to view society as something more than a set of individuals, is the same as asserting that the activities of the biological individual are not governed by cellular activity, but take place (arise, are determined) in a separate dimension from cellular activity. In other words, it is the same as thinking that the activity of an organism can be constructed without regard to the cellular level. This is nonsense.
This is a sociology that is faceless to the individual, an impersonal theory that disregards the power of each individual and ignores the will of the individual.
Apart from these ideas, the following ideas are also valid. That is, society does not exist beyond the individual. Society is the sum of individuals and is reduced to individuals. Society is neither more nor less than the sum of individuals. In other words, it is a sociology in which the individual is visible, and by moving in this direction, future sociology will gain a new perspective on the individual that has never been seen before.
In other words, we do not see society as a unique entity beyond the individual, but as a collection of individuals.
2005-2006 First published.
Can you say that society cannot give back to the individual?
If we assume that the total number of people in society was about 10, and if we say that society is an extrinsic entity that cannot be reduced to an individual, does that mean that if we erase the head or the heart (nervous system) from the 10 people one by one in turn, society will continue to remain "as an extrinsic entity" even if we erase them all?
Until there are two people left, society is external because a connector for communication between the two is established, but does such a realization really boil over with only two people? Isn't it natural to simply feel that the individual psychology of another person is right in front of you, and the existence of the society disappears as a sensation?
If only one person remains, and the information of that person's origin, which was found by other (disappeared) members, is stored in the head, in the nervous system of that person, it can be said that the community with the (disappeared) extrinsic member is alive in the nervous system of the remaining person. However, it is possible to identify who the extrinsic member left the information and who the information is derived from, which means that the information is redeemable for the individual. Moreover, if the information that the external member has is not the first information found by the member, but has been passed down through various unspecified members since ancient times, can we really say that the information is derived from the external society? Simply because the parcel or clue as to who first said it has been lost over the course of a long history, it was someone in particular who first discovered or invented the content of the information. The discovery, the invention happens in the mind of the individual, and in the initial state, it is not shared in the minds of the other members of the society. In this regard, the information was not present in the society from the beginning, but can be attributed to the discovery and invention of the individual.
2005-2006 First published.
Differences from the conventional reductionism
In the elemental reduction approach, the movement of each individual, i.e., the movement and interaction of each grain of element, is made visible (as an object of observation).
This is different from traditional reductionism. That is, it differs from psychological reductionism, which sees society as reduced to the psychology of the individual, or social reductionism, which reduces everything to society, assuming that the individual is merely a social being.
Particles = the culture in the individual's head (nervous system) becomes viral and infects the nervous system of others. Infection occurs when a bridge for communication is established between the nervous system of others and the nervous system of others, allowing information to be exchanged between the nervous systems.
2005-2006 First published.
The elemental reduction approach and the boxy garden society
In the elemental reduction approach, the study of the boxed society is useful.
With about 15 to 50 particles, we create a small society that is a shrunken or miniature version of the total society, where the movements of the society composed of the particles are compactly simulated and schematized.
Examples of simulated boxy society made up of a small number of particles include a society that operates with pattern D (dry society) and a society that operates with pattern W (wet society). The pattern D and pattern W are taken as small societies, with a group of gas molecules and a group of liquid molecules, respectively, and the motion of the particle groups in the computer simulation is captured on video.
For example, each member of Group A is infected with a cultural virus called "A" in common, and those infected with the same cultural virus are viewed with a sense of familiarity with each other as friends. On the other hand, each member of Group B is commonly infected with a cultural virus called "Anti-A" and is in a state of opposition to each other's culture, as opposed to Group A.
The grains and elements of the culture, as culture viruses, can be displayed in the diagram. For each culture virus, the individual applies a value label in his or her mind, promoting and affirming or negating it.
2005-2006 First published.
[Sociology and the Individual]
Society as an aggregate of individuals
Society is an aggregate of individual psychology and intentions.
Society is seen as an aggregate based on the interaction of people.
It was originally implanted from other people's psychological systems, but it was perceived as if "society", an entity independent of the individual, had created a mode of behavior.
The consensus of the individual is that social decision-making is the consensus of the individual.
Because there are people with various conflicting ideas, they check, drag each other, attack and hinder each other to their advantage, so that the will of society, as a collection of individuals, is not at the mercy of each individual. This leads to the illusion that society is a "monster" with its own will, independent of the individual.
In a society, individuals with many disparate ideas and arguments clash with each other and influence each other, resulting in a society that is out of the control of the individual. It only makes it appear as if society is real beyond the individual, when in fact it is all reduced to the individual.
It is easier to see society as more substantive if we see it as a large aggregate of individuals.
2005-2006 First published.
The necessity of dealing with human psychology in sociology
It is a mistake for sociology not to deal with human psychology as it has traditionally done.
It is a mistake to view human psychology as confined to the individual, as conventional psychology does. Human psychology has inputs and outputs. Inputs and outputs always require an input source and output partner. When we act, interaction with the other person is inevitable. Some, like self-reflection, may be their own output destination. Thus, human psychology is inherently social and requires a partner.
For example, in clinical psychology, depression is considered troubling because of the inability to get along with others or to provide effective functioning to others, and in this respect, it is not a problem for one individual alone, but always involves others.
The psychology that psychology has traditionally dealt with in the absence of others and in the absence of interaction with others can be called a single psychology. On the other hand, when others are present, the psychology of being with several people at the same time can be called the group psychology.
This can be divided into two types of psychology: object psychology, such as the visual psychology of an object partner, and interpersonal psychology, such as the psychology of life (pets, animals and plants) and human partners. In this case, life can also include things like robots and appliances that turn on when energized, for example.
2005-2006 First published.
Three layers of sociology, psychology and physiology
Sociology, psychology, and physiology form a three-tiered structure, and discussing sociology requires the prerequisite knowledge and ideas of the more foundational psychology and physiology. Sociologists need to know the more fundamental brain and nervous system activities that form the basis of human behavior and their relationship to behavior.
↑Applications
Sociology To investigate how multiple brains work together.
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Psychology Examining the relationship between a single brain and behavior.
Available at: ------
Physiology The study of the physiological basis of the brain.
The ↓ base
The traditional way of going in sociology, which considers society as independent of human psychology and physiology, needs to be changed.
First published in March 2015.
Necessity of individual-centered sociology
We need a sociology that is individual-centered and individual-driven.
It is not a mass of "society" that affects the individual.
Society can actually be seen as a coordinated play between individuals with various roles and functions. The movement of society can be viewed by spreading it out to individual players.
For example, the impact of television can be captured in the coordinated play of people who
The person who caused the incident.
People who watched the case.
interviewer
Editor.
Announcers and broadcast equipment operators
This diagram illustrates the cooperative behavior of multiple players in chronological order.
The various players each try to exert their own influence on the other players around them. They are motivated by a desire to communicate information or to spread their own work or ideas, as in the case of cultural virus infection. It can be divided into two categories: those related to events, events and episodes, such as "X happened at X time and X time"; those related to know-how, such as "this is the way to move"; and those related to opinions, such as "this is the way to do it".
It should be possible to decompose and analyze the movement of society down to the individual players, and to draw on a large sheet of paper, like a large map, the movement of each individual player and its chain of functions.
The movement of human-biological society is decomposed into individual players by viewing the individuals moving in society as particles and molecules, and society is captured as an aggregate of the movement of each player, like the movement of multiple molecules.
Social activities, behaviors, and operations are divided into parts and illustrated in chronological order, with "→" representing what information and culture the players work on other players in order. This can be called a "social behavior diagram" (business behavior diagram), in which the behavior of individuals is the main subject. The social (business) behavior diagram is made into a pattern and parts, and by combining well-functioning parts, the whole society to business is constructed. The social (business) behavior diagram is mainly composed of individual players.
Conventional sociology takes the view that what has been viewed as the movement of society as a large mass of movements that cannot be divided any further can be broken down into the movements of each individual player that makes up society.
Molecular biology has grown out of the division of the workings of life into individual genes. In a similar way, the sociology of elemental reduction approach tries to elucidate the workings of society by dividing it into individual individuals (particles) and then looking at the interactions between individuals.
2005-2006 First published.
A comparison between "sociology of the individual" and conventional sociology
July 2008 First published
In the following, we compare the sociology of individual visibility with traditional sociology, using the example of displaying poll results as an example.
The two methods of displaying public opinion results should be presented below.
The display of public opinion, as traditionally done in conventional sociology, makes the individual's intentions invisible, dissolved and buried in the whole society presented in a pie chart.
The emphasis is on the will of the society as a whole, and the existence of the individual as a foundation is ignored.
In contrast, the "sociology of the visible individual" should make it clear that public opinion is expressed as a collection of individual intentions (Mr. A, Mr. B, Mr. C...). In public opinion, the movements of individuals are visible and visible. It can be said to be an individual-oriented sociology that respects the existence of each individual in society.
Why do we need to place the individual at the center of our understanding of society?
This is because the existing, sociological and conventional way of going about social systems theory, which deals only with interactions between individuals, has the problem of not being able to deal with the content (collection of ideas and modes of action) that is in the heads of individuals.
This is because the contents (content and contents) of behavioral patterns, business knowledge, know-how and culture are originally in the mind (mind and nervous system) of the individual (stored and copied) and not in the interaction itself. In analyzing the movement of society, the individual must be placed at the center of the analysis in order to deal with the content that is in the individual's head and that determines the movement of society.
Individuals are the actors who perform tasks, move society, and make decisions and judgments, and therefore, it is necessary to place the inside of their heads (the nervous system) at the center of the analysis in order to understand their behavior within the framework of the analysis.
In that sense, society is a society that depends on the individual's nervous system, and the society alone is merely a collection of bridges that connect individuals.
If society as it is, it is just a collection of individuals with different values and directions they want to go.
The particle reduction approach, which reduces society to individuals or sees society as an aggregate of individuals, is more effective than the conventional sociological approach, which assumes that society cannot be reduced to individuals or looks only at the interactions between individuals and not at the individuals themselves. The more we can handle the dynamics of content in the minds of individuals, such as adaptation know-how, the better we can explain the movement of the social system.
There are two ways of understanding society: one is to extract the interaction between individuals, and the other is to include the contents of the individual's mind in the society. I would like to suggest that the latter approach, which includes the individual's nervous system, is preferable. The advantage of this approach is that it allows us to deal with cultural viruses (memes, ideologies, etc., depending on the person) that are spread by infection from one's mind to another, as has been said.
Culture viruses enter the head of one individual through lectures, broadcasts, word of mouth, and other forms of communication (through the corridors of social elements) and infect the head of another individual in a way that changes the shape of the individual's neural circuits. A social movement, or a boom, can be seen as a massive outbreak of this psychological infection of a culture or mode of behavior. When an individual is infected, he or she cannot help but adopt that newly infected mode of behavior. This is the onset of the "disease" caused by the culture virus.
The content of the culture virus may be business know-how or event information for a company employee. Or, if you are an office worker, it can be racist ideology, or if you are in a high school classroom, it can be knowledge of differential and integral mathematics.
If we relate cultural transmission to the dry/wetness of a society, the wetter the society that values mutual unity and denseness, the more prevalent the cultural virus transmission is. The same culture infects a large number of people at the same time, a simultaneous infection occurs.
2005-2006 First published.
Compatibility with dry and wet behavioral studies
For example, the author's study of dry-wet behavioral patterns is an attempt to look at multiple particle-human movements at the same time, which is consistent with the elemental reduction approach, which reduces society to the activities of particles.
2005-2006 First published.
Two Protagonists in Sociology
In sociology, there is a conflict between the two views: whether the individual is the protagonist of the object of analysis, or whether communication and interaction themselves are the protagonists.
Conventional social systems theory has viewed communication itself or interaction itself as the protagonist to be analyzed. This was an impersonal grasp of individual absence and individual negation, and the individual was outside the scope of analysis. The root of this is the same as that of the conventional business management theory, which focuses on the organization, such as a department or division, and does not allow the individual player to be seen.
On the other hand, the individual is the object of analysis in the social theory of the elemental reduction approach, which is human-centered, individual-centered and visible. In the case of management, this approach can be used as a schematic diagram or pattern of the best behavior of each individual. It is a way of making the movement of each individual that composes the organization visible at all times.
2005-2006 First published
[social-mindedness issues]
Refutation of the social mind
Society, in the conventional view, cannot have content in itself, such as culture or modes of behavior, because it is merely a pathway and connector for the exchange of information and goods. It is the individual's psychology and nervous system that has the content. This problem is solved by including the individual's psychology in society.
The existing theory of social systems, which looks only at interactions and not at individual human beings, is like saying, for example, that in a computer system, you can understand the system if you only monitor the LAN cables that connect computers to each other (information that passes through them).
For a correct understanding of a computer system, the information held by the individual computers (servers, clients, P2P local machines ・・・・) as well as the information flowing under the LAN cables, and the programs that determine their behavior (and even the movements of the people operating the computers) are the subject of the analysis If we apply this analogy to understanding the social system, it is essential to analyze the contents of the individual's nervous system or the contents of the individual's mind.
2005-2006 First published
Is it true that society is an outlier?
There is a view that society is objectively external, beyond the individual. On the other hand, there is the view that society is only in the minds and nervous systems of the individuals who make up the society and is not external.
The rationale for society being external has been explained by the fact that, for example, in the case of a company or government organization, there is an "organizational chart" that binds the individual from the outside. In reality, however, the organization chart is based on the premise that members learn the contents of the organization chart by memorizing the contents of the chart and understand in advance that the people lower in the organization hierarchy need to follow the instructions of the superior. If a member does not remember the contents of the organization chart well or does not understand the logic of the organization that subordinates should follow superiors, he or she does not work according to the instruction system of the organization chart very often. In that case, the organization chart cannot be said to be functioning effectively, and the organization chart is not external to the member.
In short, for the organization chart to function, its contents need to be firmly learned in the minds of the members. In that sense, in order for the externalization of society and the external restraint of its members to be effective, the first step is internalization by the members, and where it is internalized is imprinted in the individual's nervous system, in his or her mind, so that in the end, in order to understand this problem correctly, sociology must deal with the psychology of the individual It is essential. In this sense, it can be said that the organization chart, which appears to exist objectively, actually exists only in each member's nervous system, in the head. The organization chart on paper is not effective, but it is effective only when a member looks at it and internalizes its contents in his or her nervous system. If the most recent contents of the organizational chart have not yet fully entered the mind of any member, and the paper of the organizational chart is buried with some document and becomes unreadable, then the organizational chart, although it certainly continues to exist extrinsically, is invalid to each member.
The whole social picture is impossible to see alone, due to the limitations of our psychological information processing capacity as human beings. The fact is that the internalized image of the society differs from one individual to another. There are people who are interested in the news in the entertainment industry, and there are people who are mainly interested in diplomatic issues and do not care about anything else. For each person, the same society is not "external" in common, nor do they share the same image of society. For example, there will be a considerable gap between right-wingers and left-wingers in their perceptions of a society that extends outside of themselves. Individuals are not able to see the whole society, but only parts of it. Each individual can see only his or her own field of expertise.
Therefore, even if we say that the society is external, the manner of its externalization differs according to each individual's field of expertise and position. Therefore, it cannot be said that the same society imposes the same externalizing constraints on all its members.
In this case, the strength of sympathetic orientation is ultimately attributed to the individual's psychological tendencies, and the reason why everyone was sympathetic is because the majority of the population was engaged in rice farming and they all happened to live in village communities with the same strong maternal influence, which placed great value on mutual unity. . In other words, it is only when a common cultural virus is widely disseminated in the minds of the individuals who make up a society that they can share the same social image. A unified society cannot be said to be objectively external to the individual from the beginning, but rather a common external image of society can be formed only when a certain cultural virus is commonly internalized by the individual.
2005-2006 First published.
Does social consensus go beyond individual psychology?
It is often said that non-smoking areas in stations are the result of a social consensus, and that this social consensus is a collective one that cannot be reduced to an individual.
In this traditional sociological view, however, the non-smoking etiquette on station platforms has nothing to do with the individual decisions made by the railway company employees in charge of improving the station environment, but is the product of a more transcendent entity, a "group" or "society" that came out of nowhere to create its own. becomes.
In the first place, the anti-smoking rule was based on the persuasive arguments of a small number of individual medical professionals who advocated that smoking is harmful, and this argument, as a valid idea, infected people's psychology and was accepted by the majority of people and spread so quickly that it became established as a rule. can be.
In this regard, it could be said that the "no smoking" rule has its roots not in "society" but in individual medical professionals who prepared compelling data that smoking is harmful.
Rules are not created out of nowhere by a "society" that diverges from the individual, but by persuasive arguments (which are ideas conceived by the individual) that change the psychology of the individual.
Even if you can't persuade individual psychology to follow through, you can force the police and others to follow through, but this should also be able to be broken up into decisions by individual police employees, even police bureaucrats and officers.
In the case of a collective agreement to prohibit smoking in stations, the individual must see a notice made by the railroad company or learn from others about the contents of the request from the railroad company, and then individually agree, agree, and accept the request.
Consensus is an individual thing, and the sum of individual agreement and approval is a social and collective agreement. If it is more than a percentage of all the people, then an agreement has been made. If almost, most people agree, agree, and agree, it is a social agreement.
So, even if you don't want to smoke, people may or may not agree with you. In that regard, there is no transcendent social agreement beyond the sum of the individuals' agreement and consensus.
If 80% of people agree to quit smoking, the reality of "social consensus on smoking cessation" in this case would be that if 80% of people agree to quit, the remaining 20% of smokers would have no choice but to go along, thinking that even if they don't agree, a large number of other people are in favor of quitting, and therefore losing out in terms of numbers, or at a disadvantage. The point is that it comes down to the question of the number of individual people agreeing or disagreeing with each other, and the victory or defeat it brings about, which can be broken down into the confirmation of the number of people agreeing or disagreeing with each person on the spot, and the individual level of judgement of advantage or disadvantage in relation to that.
So even if the government, which is supposed to rule and control society, makes laws from above, they will not work or be a social consensus unless a large number of people individually agree or disagree with them. "I don't know what's going on, but some pissed-off people in another part of the world have come up with some weird laws. Let's all just ignore them and oppose them. It's something we should all ignore or oppose. This is also true in business organizations, where the rules made by the upper echelons are not always followed.
If the idea that smoking is harmful to the body and that it is better to eliminate it is not constantly agreed upon and shared by each individual, then no matter how much station staff and others may say, smoking is not allowed in station spaces.
2005-2006 First published.
Relationship with emotional self-management
For example, it appears as if hereditary behaviors, such as emotional development, common to all humans, are regulated by society. The point is that we try to align our attitudes with each other through the eyes of others around us and through surveillance.
Is self-management of emotions, in this case, a product of society? This, too, is actually a construct that is based on the assumption that an individual's mind is originally designed to exchange input and output with other objects around him or her (e.g., objects, etc.), and emotions can occur even with an object opponent (e.g., "A big stone is rolling over here. Wow, it will crush me if it doesn't. I'm scared, let's run away. etc.). This is until the object of that input and output, or the object of emotional exchange, happens to be a human being.
So in the end, we can say that the nature of emotions comes down to the psychology of the individual.
In the case of "A cockroach comes out and I really want to run away screaming, but there are people around me, so I try to be calm so that I don't make a scene", in addition to "I'm afraid of the cockroach", the individual's mind has the following feelings: "I'm afraid of the cockroach", "I don't want to make a fuss and attract attention from people", "I don't want people to pay attention to There is an inherent mindset towards others, such as "I don't want to be thought of as a petty person afraid of cockroaches". This can be traced back to the more fundamental ideas that individuals have (a sense of privacy and a sense of pride): "I don't want my privacy to be invaded by strange things that draw attention to me," and "I don't want to be thought of as a petty person and be made fun of.
This fundamental psychology is common to all humans and can be viewed as a pre-human genetic and biological inheritance. It is unreasonable to assume that they are extrinsically defined by societies created later by humans.
2005-2006 First published.
[Social elements, units]
Society exists only in the nervous system.
Society exists only in the head (nervous system) of each individual. It does not exist externally outside the head.
For example, when all the members of a society are brain dead, if society continues to exist outside of them, it will have perished.
A book or other book that has been left behind will not be resurrected unless the contents are deciphered again by people in another society and the contents are put back into their minds and nervous systems.
2005-2012 First published.
The concept of "social elements and units
Society is to be viewed as a chain of interactions and flows of exchanges (pipeline flows) between two parties (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many).
Interactions, pipelines and connectors shall be viewed as "social elements/units".
They shall be classified as follows.
(1) Temporary or ongoing relationships.
(2) Thin or thick relationship?
(3) Is it a two-way relationship or a one-way relationship?
(4) Is it a conflict of interest or a free/volunteer relationship?
(5) Expensive (high cost) or cheap (low cost) relationships
The content of the exchange flow is as follows.
Culture -> Event information, opinions and know-how
Supplies -> Gifts, etc.
They ultimately come down to the exchange of functions.
Social elements are the smallest unit of interaction and communication between individuals (passages and bridges of information and other information exchanged in interaction).
A cluster of cultural elements (cultural viruses), which are the smallest units of behavioral patterns, reside in an individual's head (nervous system) and circulate and pass through the established social elements, infecting the head of one connected by social elements to the head of the other (nervous system).
A social behavioral cell or a social behavioral block is a unit among the interactions and chains of actions between individuals playing multiple roles (functions) connected by social elements.
Multiple blocks of social action can be connected to each other, and by connecting many of them, they can be developed into a picture scroll, which can be used as a simulacrum of infinity. That is the whole picture of society.
In order to deal with the culture that exists in the minds of individuals and the know-how necessary for environmental adaptation, conventional social system theory that looks only at the social elements (interactions between individuals) is inadequate; we need an approach that looks inside the heads of the individuals who interact with each other (the contents of the nervous system).
2005-2006 First published.
Relationship with the "Cultural Pool" and "Behavioral Pattern Pool"
In the human mind, ideas that we came up with by ourselves, various behaviors and cultures that we learned from our ancestors and parents or from others at school, enter and are stored and remembered. In this respect, the human mind, or the nervous system, is a container for a group of cultural elements (the smallest unit of culture) and plays the role of a "pool" for storing them. This aspect of the nervous system can be called the "culture pool". Through communication, copies of the cultural elements accumulated in the nervous system flow out to the nervous system of others.
Until now, the nervous system has been excluded from the analysis of sociology, because it is not socially acceptable and only expresses a psychology closed to the individual. However, considering this function of the nervous system as a "cultural pool" for storing the culture of interaction with others, the function of the nervous system can be considered as an object of sociology.
In this case, human behavioral patterns include both genetically determined instincts and acquired behaviors, and the two are mixed together to produce a person's behavioral patterns.
It is conceivable that a genetic behavioral pattern (neuronal circuitry) for one person may not be pre-input genetically in another person, but may be copied by acquired learning.
2005-2006 First published (2014 addendum)
Relationship with the "culture virus"
A cultural virus is born in the mind of the inventor and discoverer and is transmitted from person to person. There have long been theories that cultural transmission and socialization of individuals can be viewed as the transmission of a cultural virus between individuals. This is the same as the infection of the flu, an infection of the nervous system. It does not affect the organism of the neuron itself, but acts in a way that alters the shape of the neural network. The widespread sharing of cultural viruses among members of a society creates a common awareness among members and leads to the establishment of a society.
2005-2006 First published.
[Conclusion]
Current sociology as a type of religious thought
In the end, existing sociology is unconvincing because it ignores the contents of the individual's head and heart.
For example, if I told you that a company is run by an organization that transcends the individual employees, you wouldn't feel it, or you'd probably think I was wrong. However, for some reason, it is common to hear people say that a society consisting of a collection of individuals is autonomously operated by a "society" that transcends its members and is extrinsic to them. The "society" in this case is a transcendent, god-like entity that is the object of religious belief, and in this respect, sociology, which believes in such a discourse, is more of a type of religious thought than a science.
The reason why this kind of discourse is so common is that society is an entity that does not allow each of its members to do what they want to do, and it is difficult for them to grasp the whole picture due to the limitations of their information processing abilities. A society is composed of multiple, disparate members, each of whom is not at the mercy of the other members, and each of whom is not at the mercy of the other members. In order to survive in a changing natural environment, these disorganized entities must work together, work well together, and function together in cooperation with each other. When confronted with this difficult task, members are tempted to assume a transcendent being that can unite them all, and that this being is the mirage of the "external society," a disembodied entity.
2005-2006 First published.
[Essays]
functionalism
For more information, see the author's book on functionalism.
Social Humidity.
For more information, see the author's books on dry and wet sensations, personality and society.
Nervous System and Society.
For more information, please refer to the author's books on the nervous system and society and culture.
Relationships with the Psychological System
Psychological and social systems
The organismal system of human beings can be broadly divided into two levels: the physiological level system, which takes in oxygen, water and nutrients, and the psychological level system, which controls behavior and memory in response to changes in the external environment.
In this case, it can be said that the movement at the physiological level is maintained in equilibrium by homeostasis, and the conventional system theory of the structure-function analysis type is applicable. Although there are small fluctuations in body temperature and other parameters at the physiological level, these fluctuations are within a certain range that do not disrupt the equilibrium (intra-equilibrium fluctuations). If the body temperature rises or falls beyond a certain level, the human being - the organism - dies.
However, at the psychological level, we continually learn, invent and discover new behaviors that have never been seen before in a way that adapts to the fluctuations in the surrounding environment. For example, the Copernican turn is called the "Copernican turn" in the sense that the Copernican theory of geocentrism resulted in the fundamental destruction of the system at the psychological level of each person, which was consolidated by the traditional heliocentric theory, and resulted in a major change in the system.
This fundamental variation occurred initially within the psychological system of the Copernican individual. The fundamental fluctuations in the Copernican individual's psychological system propagated to the psychological system of each person who read Copernicus' publications, which fundamentally shook the nature of each person's psychological system. In this sense, social change can be viewed as the sum total of fluctuations in the way each individual's psychological system is.
Society can be viewed as the interaction of psychological systems.
A phenomenon such as the Copernican turn, in which values are fundamentally upset, is an out-of-balance change that abolishes the existing systemic equilibrium. In this sense, it can be said that the system at the psychological level, unlike the physiological level, is oriented to fluctuate in such a way that learning, inventions and discoveries are constantly breaking the equilibrium and taking place at new levels of environmental adaptation. Therefore, we cannot apply the traditional structure-function analysis type of systems theory.
For a system at the psychological level, "function" can be understood as a useful function in adapting to an ever-changing environment, as behavioral patterns constantly change through learning and invention.
The actual social system consists of the interaction of individual psychological systems. Therefore, it is considered that the social system is constantly changing from the conventional equilibrium state to a new stage (out-of-equilibrium change) with the interaction of psychological systems that has been changed by new learning, inventions and discoveries. The driving force behind this psychosocial system change is the inherent pressure on humans to improve their level of environmental adaptation. This pressure is what drives human beings to learn, to invent, to discover.
It can be argued that the failure of T. Parsons et al. in their analysis of structure-function has been due to the fact that they sought a model for social systems in a physiological system that only allowed for variation within a certain range (within equilibrium variation). In order to break free from the stagnation of functionalism in conventional sociology, we should seek a model of social system in the form of a psychological system that permits out-of-balance variation by actively rewriting the conventional structure and framework.
Conventional sociology, under the influence of sociologism since E. Durkheim, has tended to think that social changes occur independently at the social system level apart from the psychological system, but this view has to be changed.
For example, the widespread use of mobile phones has certainly changed the social system regarding how we communicate. In this respect, it is fair to say that mobile phones have caused a social change. In this case, social change is the accumulation of behavioral changes of individual telephone users and is a reflection of changes in the psychological system of individual users. The changes do not occur independently at the social level, independent of the nature of the psychological system of the individual telephone user.
Where, exactly, are the fluctuations in the psychological system that occur in synchronization with social changes?
It is likely that the results of individual learning, inventions and discoveries are stored in the plasticity (variability) of the long-term memory of the psychological system.
Fluctuations in the individual's psychological system are probably caused by large changes in the wiring between neurons in the long-term memory. And isn't this variation in wiring leading to variation at the social level?
(c) 1999-2000 First published.