Sociology Plus
Definition
“Adequacy on the Level of Meaning” refers to the belief that sociology must consider the intents and motives of the person to be a legitimate scientific study of society. Weber, who followed Dilthey in saying that, unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences need to analyze both the subjective and the objective worlds, firmly supported this viewpoint. “Adequate at the level of meaning” is another name for it.
Explanation
A coherent sequence of activity is seen to be “adequate on the level of meaning” when its constituent elements are acknowledged as belonging to a “typical” complex of meaning concerning one another.
Motivation is a conglomeration of subjective meanings that, in the eyes of the actor or the observer, provides a sufficient justification for the behavior in the issue.
When and to the extent that a coherent course of action’s constituent elements is acknowledged to make up a “typical” complex of meaning when considered together in their reciprocal connection, Weber applies the phrase “adequacy on the level of meaning” to the subjective interpretation of that course of conduct.
On the other hand, interpreting a series of events will be referred to as causally adequate insofar as there is a chance that it will always actually occur in the same manner, per established generalizations from societal experience.
The phrase “what is, according to our existing rules of computation or thinking, the proper solution of an arithmetical issue” is an example of adequacy on the level of meaning in this sense.
On the other hand, a causally sufficient analysis of the same phenomena would focus on the statistical likelihood that the identical problem would be solved correctly or incorrectly by validated generalizations from societal experience.
This relates to recognized norms today, but it also means accounting for common mistakes or confusion. Therefore, determining the probability that a given observable event will be followed or accompanied by another event is a prerequisite for causal explanation. This probability, which in the rare ideal case can be numerically stated, is always, in some sense, calculable.
From a sociological perspective, sufficiency on the level of meaning only has causal importance since there is some proof for the existence of a likelihood that action typically takes the route that has been determined to be meaningful.