George Herbert Mead [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
George Herbert Mead is a major figure in the history of
American philosophy, one of the founders of Pragmatism along with Peirce,
James, Tufts, and Dewey. He published numerous papers during his lifetime and,
following his death, several of his students produced four books in his name
from Mead's unpublished (and even unfinished) notes and manuscripts, from
students' notes, and from stenographic records of some of his courses at the
University of Chicago. Through his teaching, writing, and posthumous publications,
Mead has exercised a significant influence in 20th century social theory, among
both philosophers and social scientists. In particular, Mead's theory of the
emergence of mind and self out of the social process of significant
communication has become the foundation of the symbolic interactionist school
of sociology and social psychology. In addition to his well- known and widely
appreciated social philosophy, Mead's thought includes significant
contributions to the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of science,
philosophical anthropology, the philosophy of history, and "process
philosophy." Both John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead considered Mead a
thinker of the highest order.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Life
2. Writings
3. Social Theory
a. Communication and Mind
b. Action
c. Self and Other
4. The Temporal Structure of Human Existence
5. Perception and Reflection: Mead's Theory of Perspectives
6. Philosophy of History
a. The Nature of History
b. History and Self-Consciousness
c. History and the Idea of the Future
7. Sources
1. Life
George Herbert Mead was born in South
Hadley, Massachusetts, on February 27, 1863, and he died in Chicago, Illinois,
on April 26, 1931. He was the second child of Hiram Mead (d. 1881), a
Congregationalist minister and pastor of the South Hadley Congregational
Church, and Elizabeth Storrs Billings (1832-1917). George Herbert's older
sister, Alice, was born in 1859. In 1870, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio,
where Hiram Mead became professor of homiletics at the Oberlin Theological
Seminary, a position he held until his death in 1881. After her husband's
death, Elizabeth Storrs Billings Mead taught for two years at Oberlin College
and subsequently, from 1890 to 1900, served as president of Mount Holyoke
College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
George Herbert Mead entered Oberlin College
in 1879 at the age of sixteen and graduated with a BA degree in 1883. While at
Oberlin, Mead and his best friend, Henry Northrup Castle, became enthusiastic
students of literature, poetry, and history, and staunch opponents of
supernaturalism. In literature, Mead was especially interested in Wordsworth,
Shelley, Carlyle, Shakespeare, Keats, and Milton; and in history, he
concentrated on the writings of Macauley, Buckle, and Motley. Mead published an
article on Charles Lamb in the 1882-3 issue of the Oberlin Review
(15-16).
Upon graduating from Oberlin in 1883, Mead
took a grade school teaching job, which, however, lasted only four months. Mead
was let go because of the way in which he handled discipline problems: he would
simply dismiss uninterested and disruptive students from his class and send
them home.
From the end of 1883 through the summer of
1887, Mead was a surveyor with the Wisconsin Central Rail Road Company. He
worked on the project that resulted in the eleven- hundred mile railroad line
that ran from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and which
connected there with the Canadian Pacific railroad line.
Mead earned his MA degree in philosophy at
Harvard University during the 1887-1888 academic year. While majoring in
philosophy, he also studied psychology, Greek, Latin, German, and French. Among
his philosophy professors were George H. Palmer (1842-1933) and Josiah Royce
(1855-1916). During this time, Mead was most influenced by Royce's Romanticism
and idealism.
Since Mead was later to become one of the
major figures in the American Pragmatist movement, it is interesting that,
while at Harvard, he did not study under William James (1842-1910) (although he
lived in James's home as tutor to the James children).
In the summer of 1888, Mead's friend, Henry
Castle and his sister, Helen, had traveled to Europe and had settled
temporarily in Leipzig, Germany. Later, in the early fall of 1888, Mead, too,
went to Leipzig in order to pursue a Ph.D. degree in philosophy and
physiological psychology. During the 1888-1889 academic year at the University
of Leipzig, Mead became strongly interested in Darwinism and studied with
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) (two major founders
of experimental psychology). On Hall's recommendation, Mead transferred to the
University of Berlin in the spring of 1889, where he concentrated on the study
of physiological psychology and economic theory.
While Mead and his friends, the Castles,
were staying in Leipzig, a romance between Mead and Helen Castle developed, and
they were subsequently married in Berlin on October 1, 1891. Prior to George
and Helen's marriage, Henry Castle had married Frieda Stechner of Leipzig, and
Henry and his bride had returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Henry
continued his studies in law at Harvard.
Mead's work on his Ph.D. degree was
interrupted in the spring of 1891 by the offer of an instructorship in
philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. This was to replace
James Hayden Tufts (1862-1942), who was leaving Michigan in order to complete
his Ph.D. degree at the University of Freiburg. Mead took the job and never
thereafter resumed his own Ph.D. studies
Mead worked at the University of Michigan
from the fall of 1891 through the spring of 1894. He taught both philosophy and
psychology. At Michigan, he became acquainted with and influenced by the work
of sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), psychologist Alfred Lloyd,
and philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952). Mead and Dewey became close personal
and intellectual friends, finding much common ground in their interests in
philosophy and psychology. In those days, the lines between philosophy and
psychology were not sharply drawn, and Mead was to teach and do research in
psychology throughout his career (mostly social psychology after 1910).
George and Helen Mead's only child, Henry
Castle Albert Mead, was born in Ann Arbor in 1892. When the boy grew up, he
became a physician and married Irene Tufts (James Hayden Tufts' daughter), a
psychiatrist.
In 1892, having completed his Ph.D. work at
Freiburg, James Hayden Tufts received an administrative appointment at the
newly-created University of Chicago to help its founding president, William
Rainey Harper, organize the new university (which opened in the fall of 1892).
The University of Chicago was organized around three main departments:
Semitics, chaired by J.M. Powis Smith; Classics, chaired by Paul Shorey; and
Philosophy, chaired by John Dewey as of 1894. Dewey was recommended for that
position by Tufts, and Dewey agreed to move from the University of Michigan to
the University of Chicago provided that his friend and colleague, George
Herbert Mead, was given a position as assistant professor in the Chicago
philosophy department.
Thus, the University of Chicago became the
new center of American Pragmatism (which had earlier originated with Charles
Sanders Peirce [1839-1914] and William James at Harvard). The "Chicago
Pragmatists" were led by Tufts, Dewey, and Mead. Dewey left Chicago for
Columbia University in 1904, leaving Tufts and Mead as the major spokesmen for
the Pragmatist movement in Chicago.
Mead spent the rest of his life in Chicago.
He was assistant professor of philosophy from 1894-1902; associate professor
from 1902-1907; and full professor from 1907 until his death in 1931. During
those years, Mead made substantial contributions in both social psychology and
philosophy. Mead's major contribution to the field of social psychology was his
attempt to show how the human self arises in the process of social interaction,
especially by way of linguistic communication ("symbolic
interaction"). In philosophy, as already mentioned, Mead was one of the
major American Pragmatists. As such, he pursued and furthered the Pragmatist
program and developed his own distinctive philosophical outlook centered around
the concepts of sociality and temporality (see below).
Mrs. Helen Castle Mead died on December 25,
1929. George Mead was hit hard by her passing and gradually became ill himself.
John Dewey arranged for Mead's appointment as a professor in the philosophy
department at Columbia University as of the 1931-1932 academic year, but before
he could take up that appointment, Mead died in Chicago on April 26, 1931.
Back to Table of Contents
2. Writings
During his more-than-40-year career,
Mead thought deeply, wrote almost constantly, and published numerous articles
and book reviews in philosophy and psychology. However, he never published a
book. After his death, several of his students edited four volumes from
stenographic records of his social psychology course at the University of
Chicago, from Mead's lecture notes, and from Mead's numerous unpublished
papers. The four books are The Philosophy of the Present (1932), edited
by Arthur E. Murphy; Mind, Self, and Society (1934), edited by Charles
W. Morris; Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936), edited
by Merritt H. Moore; and The Philosophy of the Act (1938), Mead's Carus
Lectures of 1930, edited by Charles W. Morris.
Notable among Mead's published papers
are the following: "Suggestions Towards a Theory of the Philosophical
Disciplines" (1900); "Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of
Meaning" (1910); "What Social Objects Must Psychology
Presuppose" (1910); "The Mechanism of Social Consciousness"
(1912); "The Social Self" (1913); "Scientific Method and the
Individual Thinker" (1917); "A Behavioristic Account of the
Significant Symbol" (1922); "The Genesis of Self and Social Control"
(1925); "The Objective Reality of Perspectives" (1926);"The
Nature of the Past" (1929); and "The Philosophies of Royce, James,
and Dewey in Their American Setting" (1929). Twenty-five of Mead's most
notable published articles have been collected in Selected Writings: George
Herbert Mead, edited by Andrew J. Reck (Bobbs-Merrill, The Liberal Arts
Press, 1964).
Most of Mead's writings and much of the
secondary literature thereon are listed in the Bibliography,
below.
Back to Table of Contents
3. Social Theory
Back to Table of Contents
a. Communication and Mind
In Mind, Self and
Society (1934), Mead describes how the individual mind and self arises out
of the social process. Instead of approaching human experience in terms of
individual psychology, Mead analyzes experience from the "standpoint of
communication as essential to the social order." Individual psychology,
for Mead, is intelligible only in terms of social processes. The
"development of the individual's self, and of his self- consciousness
within the field of his experience" is preeminently social. For Mead, the
social process is prior to the structures and processes of individual experience.
Mind, according to Mead,
arises within the social process of communication and cannot be understood
apart from that process. The communicational process involves two phases: (1)
the "conversation of gestures" and (2) language, or the "conversation
of significant gestures." Both phases presuppose a social context within
which two or more individuals are in interaction with one another.
Mead introduces the idea
of the "conversation of gestures" with his famous example of the
dog-fight:
Dogs
approaching each other in hostile attitude carry on such a language of
gestures. They walk around each other, growling and snapping, and waiting for
the opportunity to attack . . . . (Mind, Self and Society 14) The act of
each dog becomes the stimulus to the other dog for his response. There is then
a relationship between these two; and as the act is responded to by the other
dog, it, in turn, undergoes change. The very fact that the dog is ready to
attack another becomes a stimulus to the other dog to change his own position
or his own attitude. He has no sooner done this than the change of attitude in
the second dog in turn causes the first dog to change his attitude. We have
here a conversation of gestures. They are not, however, gestures in the
sense that they are significant. We do not assume that the dog says to
himself, "If the animal comes from this direction he is going to spring at
my throat and I will turn in such a way." What does take place is an
actual change in his own position due to the direction of the approach of the
other dog. (Mind, Self and Society 42-43, emphasis added).
In the conversation of
gestures, communication takes place without an awareness on the part of the
individual of the response that her gesture elicits in others; and since the
individual is unaware of the reactions of others to her gestures, she is unable
to respond to her own gestures from the standpoint of others. The individual
participant in the conversation of gestures is communicating, but she does not know
that she is communicating. The conversation of gestures, that is, is unconscious
communication.
It is, however, out of the
conversation of gestures that language, or conscious communication, emerges.
Mead's theory of communication is evolutionary: communication develops from more
or less primitive toward more or less advanced forms of social interaction. In
the human world, language supersedes (but does not abolish) the conversation of
gestures and marks the transition from non-significant to significant
interaction.
Language, in Mead's view,
is communication through significant symbols. A significant symbol is a
gesture (usually a vocal gesture) that calls out in the individual making the
gesture the same (i.e., functionally identical) response that is called out in
others to whom the gesture is directed (Mind, Self and Society 47).
Significant communication
may also be defined as the comprehension by the individual of the meaning
of her gestures. Mead describes the communicational process as a social act since
it necessarily requires at least two individuals in interaction with one
another. It is within this act that meaning arises. The act of communication
has a triadic structure consisting of the following components: (1) an
initiating gesture on the part of an individual; (2) a response to that gesture
by a second individual; and (3) the result of the action initiated by the first
gesture (Mind, Self and Society 76, 81). There is no meaning independent
of the interactive participation of two or more individuals in the act of
communication.
Of course, the individual
can anticipate the responses of others and can therefore consciously and
intentionally make gestures that will bring out appropriate responses in
others. This form of communication is quite different from that which takes
place in the conversation of gestures, for in the latter there is no
possibility of the conscious structuring and control of the communicational
act.
Consciousness of meaning
is that which permits the individual to respond to her own gestures as the
other responds. A gesture, then, is an action that implies a reaction.
The reaction is the meaning of the gesture and points toward the result (the
"intentionality") of the action initiated by the gesture. Gestures
"become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse in an individual
making them the same responses which they explicitly arouse, or are supposed
[intended] to arouse, in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are
addressed" (Mind, Self and Society 47). For example, "You ask
somebody to bring a visitor a chair. You arouse the tendency to get the chair
in the other, but if he is slow to act, you get the chair yourself. The
response to the gesture is the doing of a certain thing, and you arouse that
same tendency in yourself" (Mind, Self and Society 67). At this
stage, the conversation of gestures is transformed into a conversation of
significant symbols.
There is a certain
ambiguity in Mead's use of the terms "meaning" and
"significance." The question is, can a gesture be meaningful without
being significant? But, if the meaning of a gesture is the response to that
gesture, then there is meaning in the (non-significant) conversation of
gestures — the second dog, after all, responds to the gestures of the first dog
in the dog- fight and vice-versa.
However, it is the
conversation of significant symbols that is the foundation of Mead's
theory of mind. "Only in terms of gestures as significant symbols is the
existence of mind or intelligence possible; for only in terms of gestures which
are significant symbols can thinking — which is simply an internalized or
implicit conversation of the individual with himself by means of such gestures —
take place" (Mind, Self and Society 47). Mind, then, is a form of
participation in an interpersonal (i.e., social) process; it is the result of
taking the attitudes of others toward one's own gestures (or conduct in
general). Mind, in brief, is the use of significant symbols.
The essence of Mead's
so-called "social behaviorism" is his view that mind is an emergent
out of the interaction of organic individuals in a social matrix. Mind is not a
substance located in some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of
events that takes place within the human physiological structure. Mead
therefore rejects the traditional view of the mind as a substance separate from
the body as well as the behavioristic attempt to account for mind solely in
terms of physiology or neurology. Mead agrees with the behaviorists that we can
explain mind behaviorally if we deny its existence as a substantial entity and
view it instead as a natural function of human organisms. But it is neither
possible nor desirable to deny the existence of mind altogether. The
physiological organism is a necessary but not sufficient condition of mental
behavior (Mind, Self and Society 139). Without the peculiar character of
the human central nervous system, internalization by the individual of the
process of significant communication would not be possible; but without the
social process of conversational behavior, there would be no significant
symbols for the individual to internalize.
The emergence of mind is
contingent upon interaction between the human organism and its social
environment; it is through participation in the social act of communication
that the individual realizes her (physiological and neurological) potential for
significantly symbolic behavior (i.e., thought). Mind, in Mead's terms, is the
individualized focus of the communicational process — it is linguistic
behavior on the part of the individual. There is, then, no "mind or
thought without language;" and language (the content of mind) "is
only a development and product of social interaction" (Mind, Self and
Society 191- 192). Thus, mind is not reducible to the neurophysiology of
the organic individual, but is an emergent in "the dynamic, ongoing social
process" that constitutes human experience (Mind, Self and Society
7).
Back to Table of Contents
b. Action
For Mead, mind arises out of the social
act of communication. Mead's concept of the social act is relevant, not only to
his theory of mind, but to all facets of his social philosophy. His theory of
"mind, self, and society" is, in effect, a philosophy of the act from
the standpoint of a social process involving the interaction of many
individuals, just as his theory of knowledge and value is a philosophy of the
act from the standpoint of the experiencing individual in interaction with an
environment.
There are two models of the act in Mead's
general philosophy: (1) the model of the act-as-such, i.e., organic
activity in general (which is elaborated in The Philosophy of the Act),
and (2) the model of the social act, i.e., social activity, which is a
special case of organic activity and which is of particular (although not
exclusive) relevance in the interpretation of human experience. The relation
between the "social process of behavior" and the "social
environment" is "analogous" to the relation between the
"individual organism" and the "physical-biological
environment" (Mind, Self and Society 130).
The Act-As-Such
In his analysis of the act-as-such (i.e.,
organic activity), Mead speaks of the act as determining "the
relation between the individual and the environment" (The Philosophy of
the Act 364). Reality, according to Mead, is a field of situations.
"These situations are fundamentally characterized by the relation of an
organic individual to his environment or world. The world, things, and the
individual are what they are because of this relation [between the individual
and his world]" (The Philosophy of the Act 215). It is by way of
the act that the relation between the individual and his world is defined and
developed.
Mead describes the act as developing in
four stages: (1) the stage of impulse, upon which the organic individual
responds to "problematic situations" in his experience (e.g., the
intrusion of an enemy into the individual's field of existence); (2) the stage
of perception, upon which the individual defines and analyzes his
problem (e.g., the direction of the enemy's attack is sensed, and a path
leading in the opposite direction is selected as an avenue of escape); (3) the
stage of manipulation, upon which action is taken with reference to the
individual's perceptual appraisal of the problematic situation (e.g., the
individual runs off along the path and away from his enemy); and (4) the stage
of consummation, upon which the encountered difficulty is resolved and the
continuity of organic existence re- established (e.g., the individual escapes
his enemy and returns to his ordinary affairs) (The Philosophy of the Act
3-25). ]
What is of interest in this description is
that the individual is not merely a passive recipient of external,
environmental influences, but is capable of taking action with reference to
such influences; he reconstructs his relation to his environment through
selective perception and through the use or manipulation of the objects
selected in perception (e.g., the path of escape mentioned above). The objects
in the environment are, so to speak, created through the activity of the
organic individual: the path along which the individual escapes was not
"there" (in his thoughts or perceptions) until the individual needed
a path of escape. Reality is not simply "out there," independent of
the organic individual, but is the outcome of the dynamic interrelation of
organism and environment. Perception, according to Mead, is a relation between
organism and object. Perception is not, then, something that occurs in
the organism, but is an objective relation between the organism and its
environment; and the perceptual object is not an entity out there,
independent of the organism, but is one pole of the interactive perceptual
process (The Philosophy of the Act 81).
Objects of perception arise within the
individual's attempt to solve problems that have emerged in his experience,
problems that are, in an important sense, determined by the individual himself.
The character of the individual's environment is predetermined by the
individual's sensory capacities. The environment, then, is what it is in
relation to a sensuous and selective organic individual; and things, or
objects, "are what they are in the relationship between the individual and
his environment, and this relationship is that of conduct [i.e., action]"
(The Philosophy of the Act 218).
Back to Table of Contents
c. The Social Act
While the social act is analogous to the
act-as-such, the above-described model of "individual biological
activity" (Mind, Self and Society 130) will not suffice as an
analysis of social experience. The "social organism" is not an
organic individual, but "a social group of individual organisms" (Mind,
Self and Society 130). The human individual, then, is a member of a social
organism, and his acts must be viewed in the context of social acts that
involve other individuals. Society is not a collection of preexisting atomic
individuals (as suggested, for example, by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau), but
rather a processual whole within which individuals define themselves through
participation in social acts. The acts of the individual are, according to
Mead, aspects of acts that are trans- individual. "For social psychology,
the whole (society) is prior to the part (the individual), not the part to the
whole; and the part is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms
of the part or parts" (Mind, Self and Society 7). Thus, the social
act is a "dynamic whole," a "complex organic process,"
within which the individual is situated, and it is within this situation that
individual acts are possible and have meaning.
Mead defines the social act in
relation to the social object. The social act is a collective act
involving the participation of two or more individuals; and the social object
is a collective object having a common meaning for each participant in the act.
There are many kinds of social acts, some very simple, some very complex. These
range from the (relatively) simple interaction of two individuals (e.g., in
dancing, in love-making, or in a game of handball), to rather more complex acts
involving more than two individuals (e.g., a play, a religious ritual, a
hunting expedition), to still more complex acts carried on in the form of
social organizations and institutions (e.g., law- enforcement, education,
economic exchange). The life of a society consists in the aggregate of such
social acts.
It is by way of the social act that
persons in society create their reality. The objects of the social world
(common objects such as clothes, furniture, tools, as well as scientific
objects such as atoms and electrons) are what they are as a result of being
defined and utilized within the matrix of specific social acts. Thus, an animal
skin becomes a coat in the experience of people (e.g., barbarians or pretenders
to aristocracy) engaged in the social act of covering and/or adorning their
bodies; and the electron is introduced (as a hypothetical object) in the
scientific community's project of investigating the ultimate nature of physical
reality.
Communication through significant symbols
is that which renders the intelligent organization of social acts possible.
Significant communication, as stated earlier, involves the comprehension of
meaning, i.e., the taking of the attitude of others toward one's own gestures.
Significant communication among individuals creates a world of common
(symbolic) meanings within which further and deliberate social acts are
possible. The specifically human social act, in other words, is rooted in the
act of significant communication and is, in fact, ordered by the conversation
of significant symbols.
In addition to its role in the
organization of the social act, significant communication is also fundamentally
involved in the creation of social objects. For it is by way of significant
symbols that humans indicate to one another the object relevant to their
collective acts. For example, suppose that a group of people has decided on a
trip to the zoo. One of the group offers to drive the others in his car; and
the others respond by following the driver to his vehicle. The car has thus
become an object for all members of the group, and they all make use of it to
get to the zoo. Prior to this particular project of going to the zoo, the car
did not have the specific significance that it takes on in becoming
instrumental in the zoo-trip. The car was, no doubt, an object in some other
social act prior to its incorporation into the zoo-trip; but prior to that
incorporation, it was not specifically and explicitly a means of transportation
to the zoo. Whatever it was, however, would be determined by its role in some
social act (e.g., the owner's project of getting to work each day, etc.). It is
perhaps needless to point out that the decision to go to the zoo, as well as
the decision to use the car in question as a means of transportation, was made
through a conversation involving significant symbols. The significant symbol
functions here to indicate "some object or other within the field of
social behavior, an object of common interest to all the individuals involved
in the given social act thus directed toward or upon that object" (Mind,
Self and Society 46). The reality that humans experience is, for Mead, very
largely socially constructed in a process mediated and facilitated by the use
of significant symbols.
3c. Self and Other
The Self as Social Emergent
The self, like the mind, is a
social emergent. This social conception of the self, Mead argues, entails that
individual selves are the products of social interaction and not the (logical
or biological) preconditions of that interaction. Mead contrasts his social
theory of the self with individualistic theories of the self (i.e., theories
that presuppose the priority of selves to social process). "The self is
something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but
arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in
the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole
and to other individuals within that process" (Mind, Self and Society
135). Mead's model of society is an organic model in which individuals are
related to the social process as bodily parts are related to bodies.
The self is a reflective process —
i.e., "it is an object to itself." For Mead, it is the reflexivity of
the self that "distinguishes it from other objects and from the
body." For the body and other objects are not objects to themselves as the
self is.
It is
perfectly true that the eye can see the foot, but it does not see the body as a
whole. We cannot see our backs; we can feel certain portions of them, if we are
agile, but we cannot get an experience of our whole body. There are, of course,
experiences which are somewhat vague and difficult of location, but the bodily
experiences are for us organized about a self. The foot and hand belong to the
self. We can see our feet, especially if we look at them from the wrong end of
an opera glass, as strange things which we have difficulty in recognizing as
our own. The parts of the body are quite distinguishable from the self. We can
lose parts of the body without any serious invasion of the self. The mere
ability to experience different parts of the body is not different from the
experience of a table. The table presents a different feel from what the hand
does when one hand feels another, but it is an experience of something with which
we come definitely into contact. The body does not experience itself as a
whole, in the sense in which the self in some way enters into the experience of
the self (Mind, Self and Society 136).
It is, moreover, this reflexivity
of the self that distinguishes human from animal consciousness (Mind, Self
and Society, fn., 137). Mead points out two uses of the term
"consciousness": (1) "consciousness" may denote "a
certain feeling consciousness" which is the outcome of an organism's
sensitivity to its environment (in this sense, animals, in so far as they act
with reference to events in their environments, are conscious); and (2)
"consciousness" may refer to a form of awareness "which always
has, implicitly at least, the reference to an 'I' in it" (i.e., the term
"consciousness" may mean self- consciousness) (Mind, Self
and Society 165). It is the second use of the term
"consciousness" that is appropriate to the discussion of human
consciousness. While there is a form of pre-reflective consciousness that
refers to the "bare thereness of the world," it is reflective (or
self-) consciousness that characterizes human awareness. The pre-reflective
world is a world in which the self is absent (Mind, Self and Society
135-136).
Self-consciousness, then, involves
the objectification of the self. In the mode of self- consciousness, the
"individual enters as such into his own experience . . . as an
object" (Mind, Self and Society 225). How is this
objectification of the self possible? The individual, according to Mead,
"can enter as an object [to himself] only on the basis of social relations
and interactions, only by means of his experiential transactions with other
individuals in an organized social environment" (Mind, Self and Society
225). Self-consciousness is the result of a process in which the individual
takes the attitudes of others toward herself, in which she attempts to view
herself from the standpoint of others. The self-as-object arises out of the
individual's experience of other selves outside of herself. The objectified
self is an emergent within the social structures and processes of human
intersubjectivity.
Symbolic
Interaction and the Emergence of the Self
Mead's account of the social
emergence of the self is developed further through an elucidation of three
forms of inter-subjective activity: language, play, and the
game. These forms of "symbolic interaction" (i.e., social
interactions that take place via shared symbols such as words, definitions,
roles, gestures, rituals, etc.) are the major paradigms in Mead's theory of
socialization and are the basic social processes that render the reflexive
objectification of the self possible.
Language, as we have seen, is
communication via "significant symbols," and it is through
significant communication that the individual is able to take the attitudes of
others toward herself. Language is not only a "necessary mechanism"
of mind, but also the primary social foundation of the self:
I know
of no other form of behavior than the linguistic in which the individual is an
object to himself . . . (Mind, Self and Society 142). When a self does
appear it always involves an experience of another; there could not be an
experience of a self simply by itself. The plant or the lower animal reacts to
its environment, but there is no experience of a self . . . . When the response
of the other becomes an essential part in the experience or conduct of the
individual; when taking the attitude of the other becomes an essential part in
his behavior — then the individual appears in his own experience as a self; and
until this happens he does not appear as a self (Mind, Self and Society
195).
Within the linguistic act, the
individual takes the role of the other, i.e., responds to her own gestures in terms
of the symbolized attitudes of others. This "process of taking the role of
the other" within the process of symbolic interaction is the primal form
of self-objectification and is essential to self- realization (Mind, Self
and Society 160-161).
It ought to be clear, then, that
the self-as-object of which Mead speaks is not an object in a mechanistic,
billiard ball world of external relations, but rather it is a basic structure
of human experience that arises in response to other persons in an organic social-symbolic
world of internal (and inter- subjective) relations. This becomes even clearer
in Mead's interpretation of playing and gaming. In playing and gaming, as in
linguistic activity, the key to the generation of self-consciousness is the
process of role-playing." In play, the child takes the role of another and
acts as though she were the other (e.g., mother, doctor, nurse,
Indian, and countless other symbolized roles). This form of role-playing
involves a single role at a time. Thus, the other which comes into the child's
experience in play is a "specific other" (The Philosophy of the
Present 169).
The game involves a more complex
form of role-playing than that involved in play. In the game, the individual is
required to internalize, not merely the character of a single and specific
other, but the roles of all others who are involved with him in the
game. He must, moreover, comprehend the rules of the game which condition the
various roles (Mind, Self and Society 151). This configuration of
roles-organized-according-to- rules brings the attitudes of all participants
together to form a symbolized unity: this unity is the "generalized
other" (Mind, Self and Society 154). The generalized other is
"an organized and generalized attitude" (Mind, Self and Society
195) with reference to which the individual defines her own conduct. When the
individual can view herself from the standpoint of the generalized other,
"self- consciousness in the full sense of the term" is attained.
The game, then, is the stage of the
social process at which the individual attains selfhood. One of Mead's most
outstanding contributions to the development of critical social theory is his
analysis of games. Mead elucidates the full social and psychological
significance of game-playing and the extent to which the game functions as an
instrument of social control. The following passage contains a remarkable piece
of analysis:
What
goes on in the game goes on in the life of the child all the time. He is
continually taking the attitudes of those about him, especially the roles of
those who in some sense control him and on whom he depends. He gets the
function of the process in an abstract way at first. It goes over from the play
into the game in a real sense. He has to play the game. The morale of
the game takes hold of the child more than the larger morale of the whole
community. The child passes into the game and the game expresses a social
situation in which he can completely enter; its morale may have a greater
hold on him than that of the family to which he belongs or the community in
which he lives. There are all sorts of social organizations, some of which
are fairly lasting, some temporary, into which the child is entering, and he
is playing a sort of social game in them. It is a period in which he likes
"to belong," and he gets into organizations which come into existence
and pass out of existence. He becomes a something which can function in the
organized whole, and thus tends to determine himself in his relationship
with the group to which he belongs. That process is one which is a striking
stage in the development of the child's morale. It constitutes him a
self-conscious member of the community to which he belongs (Mind, Self and
Society 160, emphasis added).
The
"Me" and the "I"
Although the self is a product of
socio-symbolic interaction, it is not merely a passive reflection of the
generalized other. The individual's response to the social world is active; she
decides what she will do in the light of the attitudes of others;
but her conduct is not mechanically determined by such attitudinal structures.
There are, it would appear, two phases (or poles) of the self: (1) that phase
which reflects the attitude of the generalized other and (2) that phase which responds
to the attitude of the generalized other. Here, Mead distinguishes between
the "me" and the "I." The "me" is the social
self, and the "I" is a response to the "me" (Mind, Self
and Society 178). "The 'I' is the response of the organism to the
attitudes of the others; the 'me' is the organized set of attitudes of others
which one himself assumes" (Mind, Self and Society 175). Mead
defines the "me" as "a conventional, habitual individual,"
and the "I" as the "novel reply" of the individual to the
generalized other (Mind, Self and Society 197). There is a dialectical
relationship between society and the individual; and this dialectic is enacted
on the intra-psychic level in terms of the polarity of the "me" and
the "I." The "me" is the internalization of roles which
derive from such symbolic processes as linguistic interaction, playing, and
gaming; whereas the "I" is a "creative response" to the
symbolized structures of the "me" (i.e., to the generalized other).
Although the "I" is not
an object of immediate experience, it is, in a sense, knowable (i.e.,
objectifiable). The "I" is apprehended in memory; but in the memory
image, the "I" is no longer a pure subject, but "a subject that
is now an object of observation" (Selected Writings 142). We can
understand the structural and functional significance of the "I," but
we cannot observe it directly — it appears only ex post facto. We remember
the responses of the "I" to the "me;" and this is as close
as we can get to a concrete knowledge of the "I." The objectification
of the "I" is possible only through an awareness of the past; but the
objectified "I" is never the subject of present experience. "If
you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the 'I' comes in, the
answer is that it comes in as a historical figure" (Mind, Self and
Society 174).
The "I" appears as a
symbolized object in our consciousness of our past actions, but then it has
become part of the "me." The "me" is, in a sense, that
phase of the self that represents the past (i.e., the already-established
generalized other). The "I," which is a response to the
"me," represents action in a present (i.e., "that which is
actually going on, taking place") and implies the restructuring of the
"me" in a future. After the "I" has acted, "we can
catch it in our memory and place it in terms of that which we have done,"
but it is now (in the newly emerged present) an aspect of the restructured
"me" (Mind, Self and Society 204, 203).
Because of the temporal-historical
dimension of the self, the character of the "I" is determinable only after
it has occurred; the "I" is not, therefore, subject to
predetermination. Particular acts of the "I" become aspects of the
"me" in the sense that they are objectified through memory; but the
"I" as such is not contained in the "me."
The human individual exists in a
social situation and responds to that situation. The situation has a particular
character, but this character does not completely determine the response of the
individual; there seem to be alternative courses of action. The individual must
select a course of action (and even a decision to do "nothing" is a
response to the situation) and act accordingly, but the course of action she
selects is not dictated by the situation. It is this indeterminacy of response
that "gives the sense of freedom, of initiative" (Mind, Self and
Society 177). The action of the "I" is revealed only in the
action itself; specific prediction of the action of the "I" is not
possible. The individual is determined to respond, but the specific character
of her response is not fully determined. The individual's responses are conditioned,
but not determined by the situation in which she acts (Mind, Self and
Society 210-211). Human freedom is conditioned freedom.
Thus, the "I" and the
"me" exist in dynamic relation to one another. The human personality
(or self) arises in a social situation. This situation structures the
"me" by means of inter-subjective symbolic processes (language,
gestures, play, games, etc.), and the active organism, as it continues to develop,
must respond to its situation and to its "me." This response of the
active organism is the "I."
The individual takes the attitude
of the "me" or the attitude of the "I" according to
situations in which she finds herself. For Mead, "both aspects of the 'I'
and the 'me' are essential to the self in its full expression" (Mind,
Self and Society 199). Both community and individual autonomy are necessary
to identity. The "I" is process breaking through structure. The
"me" is a necessary symbolic structure which renders the action of
the "I" possible, and "without this structure of things, the
life of the self would become impossible" (Mind, Self and Society
214).
The Dialectic
of Self and Other
The self arises when the
individual takes the attitude of the generalized other toward herself. This
"internalization" of the generalized other occurs through the
individual's participation in the conversation of significant symbols (i.e.,
language) and in other socialization processes (e.g., play and games). The self,
then, is of great value to organized society: the internalization of the
conversation of significant symbols and of other interactional symbolic
structures allows for "the superior co-ordination" of "society
as a whole," and for the "increased efficiency of the individual as a
member of the group" (Mind, Self and Society 179). The generalized
other (internalized in the "me") is a major instrument of social
control; it is the mechanism by which the community gains control "over
the conduct of its individual members" (Mind, Self and Society
155)."Social control," in Mead's words, "is the expression of
the 'me' over against the expression of the 'I'" (Mind, Self and
Society 210).
The genesis of the self in social
process is thus a condition of social control. The self is a social emergent
that supports the cohesion of the group; individual will is harmonized, by
means of a socially defined and symbolized "reality," with social
goals and values. "In so far as there are social acts," writes Mead, "there
are social objects, and I take it that social control is bringing the act of
the individual into relation with this social object" (The Philosophy
of the Act 191). Thus, there are two dimensions of Mead's theory of
internalization: (1) the internalization of the attitudes of others toward
oneself and toward one another (i.e., internalization of the interpersonal
process); and (2) the internalization of the attitudes of others "toward
the various phases or aspects of the common social activity or set of social
undertakings in which, as members of an organized society or social group, they
are all engaged" (Mind, Self and Society 154-155).
The self, then, has reference, not
only to others, but to social projects and goals, and it is by means of the
socialization process (i.e., the internalization of the generalized other
through language, play, and the game) that the individual is brought to
"assume the attitudes of those in the group who are involved with him in
his social activities" (The Philosophy of the Act 192). By learning
to speak, gesture, and play in "appropriate" ways, the individual is
brought into line with the accepted symbolized roles and rules of the social
process. The self is therefore one of the most subtle and effective instruments
of social control.
For Mead, however, social control
has its limits. One of these limits is the phenomenon of the "I," as
described in the preceding section. Another limit to social control is
presented in Mead's description of specific social relations. This description
has important consequences regarding the way in which the concept of the
generalized other is to be applied in social analysis.
The self emerges out of "a
special set of social relations with all the other individuals" involved
in a given set of social projects (Mind, Self and Society 156-157). The
self is always a reflection of specific social relations that are themselves
founded on the specific mode of activity of the group in question. The concept
of property, for example, presupposes a community with certain kinds of
responses; the idea of property has specific social and historical foundations
and symbolizes the interests and values of specific social groups.
Mead delineates two types of
social groups in civilized communities. There are, on the one hand,
"concrete social classes or subgroups" in which "individual
members are directly related to one another." On the other hand, there are
"abstract social classes or subgroups" in which "individual
members are related to one another only more or less indirectly, and which only
more or less indirectly function as social units, but which afford unlimited
possibilities for the widening and ramifying and enriching of the social
relations among all the individual members of the given society as an organized
and unified whole" (Mind, Self and Society 157). Such abstract
social groups provide the opportunity for a radical extension of the
"definite social relations" which constitute the individual's sense
of self and which structure her conduct.
Human society, then, contains a multiplicity
of generalized others. The individual is capable of holding membership in
different groups, both simultaneously and serially, and may therefore relate
herself to different generalized others at different times; or she may extend
her conception of the generalized other by identifying herself with a
"larger" community than the one in which she has hitherto been
involved (e.g., she may come to view herself as a member of a nation rather
than as a member of a tribe). The self is not confined within the limits of any
one generalized other. It is true that the self arises through the
internalization of the generalized attitudes of others, but there is, it would
appear, no absolute limit to the individual's capacity to encompass new others
within the dynamic structure of the self. This makes strict and total social
control difficult if not impossible.
Mead's description of social
relations also has interesting implications vis-a-vis the sociological problem
of the relation between consensus and conflict in society. It is clear that
both consensus and conflict are significant dimensions of social process; and
in Mead's view, the problem is not to decide either for a consensus
model of society or for a conflict model, but to describe as directly as
possible the function of both consensus and conflict in human social life.
There are two models of
consensus-conflict relation in Mead's analysis of social relations. These may
be schematized as follows:
Intra-Group Consensus — Extra-Group
Conflict
Intra-Group Conflict — Extra-Group
Consensus
In the first model, the members of
a given group are united in opposition to another group which is characterized
as the "common enemy" of all members of the first group. Mead points
out that the idea of a common enemy is central in much of human social
organization and that it is frequently the major reference-point of intra-group
consensus. For example, a great many human organizations derive their raison
d'etre and their sense of solidarity from the existence (or putative
existence) of the "enemy" (communists, atheists, infidels, fascist
pigs, religious "fanatics," liberals, conservatives, or whatever).
The generalized other of such an organization is formed in opposition to the
generalized other of the enemy. The individual is "with" the members
of her group and "against" members of the enemy group.
Mead's second model, that of
intra-group conflict and extra-group consensus, is employed in his description
of the process in which the individual reacts against her own group. The
individual opposes her group by appealing to a "higher sort of
community" that she holds to be superior to her own. She may do this by
appealing to the past (e.g., she may ground her criticism of the bureaucratic
state in a conception of "Jeffersonian Democracy"), or by appealing
to the future (e.g., she may point to the ideal of "all mankind," of
the universal community, an ideal that has the future as its ever-receding
reference point). Thus, intra-group conflict is carried on in terms of an
extra-group consensus, even if the consensus is merely assumed or posited. This
model presupposes Mead's conception of the multiplicity of generalized others,
i.e., the field within which conflicts are possible. It is also true that the
individual can criticize her group only in so far as she can symbolize to
herself the generalized other of that group; otherwise she would have nothing
to criticize, nor would she have the motivation to do so. It is in this sense
that social criticism presupposes social- symbolic process and a social self
capable of symbolic reflexive activity.
In addition to the above-described
models of consensus-conflict relation, Mead also points out an explicitly
temporal interaction between consensus and conflict. Human conflicts often lead
to resolutions that create new forms of consensus. Thus, when such conflicts
occur, they can lead to whole "reconstructions of the particular social
situations" that are the contexts of the conflicts (e.g., a war between
two nations may be followed by new political alignments in which the two
warring nations become allies). Such reconstructions of society are effected by
the minds of individuals in conflict and constitute enlargements of the social
whole.
An interesting consequence of
Mead's analysis of social conflict is that the reconstruction of society will
entail the reconstruction of the self. This aspect of the social dynamic is
particularly clear in terms of Mead's concept of intra-group conflict and his
description of the dialectic of the "me" and the "I." As
pointed out earlier, the "I" is an emergent response to the
generalized other; and the "me" is that phase of the self that
represents the social situation within which the individual must operate. Thus,
the critical capacity of the self takes form in the "I" and has two
dimensions: (1) explicit self- criticism (aimed at the "me") is
implicit social criticism; and (2) explicit social criticism is implicit self-
criticism. For example, the criticism of one's own moral principles is also the
criticism of the morality of one's social world, for personal morality is
rooted in social morality. Conversely, the criticism of the morality of one's
society raises questions concerning one's own moral role in the social
situation.
Since self and society are dialectical
poles of a single process, change in one pole will result in change in the
other pole. It would appear that social reconstructions are effected by
individuals (or groups of individuals) who find themselves in conflict with a
given society; and once the reconstruction is accomplished, the new social
situation generates far-reaching changes in the personality structures of the
individuals involved in that situation." In short," writes Mead,
"social reconstruction and self or personality reconstruction are the two
sides of a single process — the process of human social evolution" (Mind,
Self and Society 309).
Back to Table of Contents
4. The Temporal Structure of Human Existence
The temporal
structure of human existence, according to Mead, can be described in terms of
the concepts of emergence, sociality, and freedom.
Emergence and Temporality
What is
the ground of the temporality of human experience? Temporal structure,
according to Mead, arises with the appearance of novel or "emergent"
events in experience. The emergent event is an unexpected disruption of
continuity, an inhibition of passage. The emergent, in other words, constitutes
a problem for human action, a problem to be overcome. The emergent
event, which arises in a present, establishes a barrier between present and
future; emergence is an inhibition of (individual and collective) conduct, a
disharmony that projects experience into a distant future in which
harmony may be re-instituted. The initial temporal structure of human
time-consciousness lies in the separation of present and future by the emergent
event. The actor, blocked in his activity, confronts the emergent problem in
his present and looks to the future as the field of potential resolution of
conflict. The future is a temporally, and frequently spatially, distant realm
to be reached through intelligent action. Human action is action-in-time.
Mead
argues out that, without inhibition of activity and without the distance
created by the inhibition, there can be no experience of time. Further, Mead
believes that, without the rupture of continuity, there can be no experience at
all. Experience presupposes change as well as permanence. Without disruption,
"there would be merely the passage of events" (The Philosophy of
the Act 346), and mere passage does not constitute change. Passage is pure
continuity without interruption (a phenomenon of which humans, with the
possible exception of a few mystics, have precious little experience). Change
arises with a departure from continuity. Change does not, however, involve the
total obliteration of continuity — there must be a "persisting non-passing
content" against which an emergent event is experienced as a change (The
Philosophy of the Act 330-331).
Experience
begins with the problematic. Continuity itself cannot be experienced unless it
is broken; that is, continuity is not an object of awareness unless it becomes
problematic, and continuity becomes problematic as a result of the emergence of
discontinuous events. Hence, continuity and discontinuity (emergence) are not
contradictories, but dialectical polarities (mutually dependent levels of
reality) that generate experience itself. "The now is contrasted with a
then and implies that a background which is irrelevant to the difference
between them has been secured within which the now and the then may appear.
There must be banks within which the stream of time may flow" (The
Philosophy of the Act 161).
Emergence,
then, is a fundamental condition of experience, and the experience of the
emergent is the experience of temporality. Emergence sunders present and future
and is thereby an occasion for action. Action, moreover, occurs in time;
the human act is infected with time — it aims at the future. Human
action is teleological. Discontinuity, therefore, and not continuity (in the
sense of mere duration or passage), is the foundation of time-experience (and
of experience itself). The emergent event constitutes time, i.e., creates the necessity
of time.
The
Function of the Past in Human Experience
The
emergent event is not only a problem for ongoing activity: it also constitutes
a problem for rationality. Reason, according to Mead, is the search for causal
continuity in experience and, in fact, must presuppose such continuity in its
attempt to construct a coherent account of reality. Reason must assume that all
natural events can be reduced to conditions that make the events possible. But
the emergent event presents itself as discontinuous, as a disruption without
conditions.
It is by
means of the reconstruction of the past that the discontinuous event
becomes continuous in experience: "The character of the past is that it
connects what is unconnected in the merging of one present into another"
("The Nature of the Past" [1929], in Selected Writings 351).
The emergent event, when placed within a reconstructed past, is a determined
event; but since this past was reconstructed from the perspective of the
emergent event, the emergent event is also a determining event (The
Philosophy of the Present 15). The emergent event itself indicates the
continuities within which the event may be viewed as continuous. There is,
then, no question of predicting the emergent, for it is, by definition and also
experientially, unpredictable; but once the emergent appears in experience, it
may be placed within a continuity dictated by its own character. Determination
of the emergent is retrospective determination.
Mead's
conception of time entails a drastic revision of the idea of the irrevocability
of the past. The past is "both irrevocable and revocable" (The
Philosophy of the Present 2). There is no sense in the idea of an
independent or "real" past, for the past is always formulated in the
light of the emerging present. It is necessary to continually reformulate the
past from the point of view of the newly emergent situation. For example, the
movement for the liberation of African-Americans has led to the discovery of
the American black's cultural past. "Black (or African-American)
History" is, in effect, a function of the emergence of the civil rights
movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the subsequent development of
that movement. As far as most Americans were hitherto concerned, there simply
was no history of the American black — there was only a history of white
Europeans, which included the history of slavery in America.
There
can be no finality in historical accounts. The past is irrevocable in the sense
that something has happened; but what has happened (i.e., the
essence of the past) is always open to question and reinterpretation. Further,
the irrevocability of the past "is found in the extension of the necessity
with which what has just happened conditions what is emerging in the
future" (The Philosophy of the Present 3). Irrevocability is a
characteristic of the past only in relation to the demands of a present looking
into the future. That is to say that even the sense that something has
happened arises out of a situation in which an emergent event has appeared
as a problem.
Like
Edmund Husserl, Mead conceives of human consciousness as intentional in
its structure and orientation: the world of conscious experience is
"intended," "meant," "constituted,"
"constructed" by consciousness. Thus, objectivity can have meaning
only within the domain of the subject, the realm of consciousness. It is not
that the existence of the objective world is constituted by
consciousness, but that the meaning of that world is so constituted. In
Husserlian language, the existence of the objective world is transcendent,
i.e., independent of consciousness; but the meaning of the objective
world is immanent, i.e., dependent on consciousness. In Mead's
"phenomenology" of historical experience, then, the past may be said
to possess an objective existence, but the meaning of the past is
constituted or constructed according to the intentional concerns of historical
thought. The meaning of the past ("what has happened") is defined by
an historical consciousness that is rooted in a present and that is opening
upon a newly emergent future.
History
is founded on human action in response to emergent events. Action is an attempt
to adjust to changes that emerge in experience; the telos of the act is the
re-establishment of a sundered continuity. Since the past is instrumental in
the re-establishment of continuity, the adjustment to the emergent requires the
creation of history. "By looking into the future," Mead observes,
"society acquired a history" (The Philosophy of the Act 494).
And the future- orientation of history entails that every new discovery, every
new project, will alter our picture of the past.
Although
Mead discounts the possibility of a transcendent past (i.e., a past independent
of any present), he does not deny the possibility of validity in historical
accounts. An historical account will be valid or correct, not absolutely, but in
relation to a specific emergent context. Accounts of the past
"become valid in interpreting [the world] in so far as they present a
history of becoming in [the world] leading up to that which is becoming today .
. . . " (The Philosophy of the Present 9). Historical thought is
valid in so far as it renders change intelligible and permits the continuation
of activity. An appeal to an absolutely correct account of the past is not only
impossible, but also irrelevant to the actual conduct of historical inquiry. A
meaningful past is a usable past.
Historians
are, to be sure, concerned with the truth of historical accounts, i.e.,
with the "obciousness fostered by the Romantic movement has
permitted us to view human institutions as "structures which arose in a
process, and which simply expressed that process at a certain moment" (Movements
of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 149). For Mead, the ideas of process
and structure do not exclude each other, but are related dialectically in
actual historical developments. Historical thought, then, becomes one way of
getting into "the structure, the movement, the current of the
process" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 149).
Historical
consciousness is a way of comprehending change. But it is also a way of
fostering change; that is, by comprehending the direction of historical change,
one can place oneself within a given current of change and pursue the
historical success of that current. In this way, the historically minded
individual or group can contribute to the development of new structures within
the process of time. This, as Mead points out, is a way of "carrying over
revolution into evolution" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth
Century 149).
Mead's
conception of historical consciousness is rooted in his view of intelligence as
the reconstruction of human experience in response to "new
situations." As has been shown earlier, Mead views the novel event as the
basis of intelligent conduct. "If there were no new situations, our
conduct would be entirely habitual . . . . Conscious beings are those that are
continually adjusting themselves, using their past experience, reconstructing
their methods of conduct . . . . That is what intelligence consists in, not in
finding out once and for all what the order of nature is and then acting in
certain prescribed forms, but rather in continual readjustment" (Movements
of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 290). The historical resort to the
past has reference to new situations that emerge in a present and that suggest
a future. Human thought, including historical consciousness, is a confrontation
with novelty and is aimed at passing from a problematic present to a
non-problematic future. And the past is called in and reconstructed in relation
to this project of coming to grips with the novelty of experienc to an organic individual. The body-object and the physical object
arise with reference to each other, and it is this relationship, in Mead's
view, that constitutes the reality of each referent. "It is over against
the surfaces of other things that the outside of the organism arises in
experience, and then the experiences of the organism which are not in such contacts
become the inside of the organism. It is a process in which the organism is
bounded, and other things are bounded as well" (The Philosophy of the
Act 160). Similarly, the resistance of the object to organic pressure is,
in effect, the activity of the object; and this activity becomes the
"inside" of the object. The inside of the object, moreover, is not a
projection from the organism, but is there in the relation between the
organism and thing (see The Philosophy of the Present 122-124, 131,
136). The relation between organism and object, then, is a social
relation (The Philosophy of the Act
109-110).
Thus,
the relation between a natural object (or event) and the system within which it
exists is not unidirectional. The character of the object, on the one hand, is
determined by its membership in a system; but, on the other hand, the character
of the system is determined by the activity of the object (or event). There is
a mutual determination of object and system, organism and environment,
percipient event and consentient set (The Philosophy of the Act 330).
While
this mutuality of individual and system is characteristic of all natural
processes, Mead is particularly concerned with the biological realm and lays
great emphasis on the interdependence and interaction of organism and
environment. Whereas the environment provides the conditions within which the
acts of the organism emerge as possibilities, it is the activity of the
organism that transforms the character of the environment. Thus, "an
animal with the power of digesting and assimilating what could not before be
digested and assimilated is the condition for the appearance of food in his
environment" (The Philosophy of the Act 334). In this respect,
"what the individual is determines what the character of his environment
will be" (The Philosophy of the Act 338).
The
relation of organism and environment is not static, but dynamic. The activities
of the environment alter the organism, and the activities of the organism alter
the environment. The organism-environment relation is, moreover, complex rather
than simple. The environment of any organism contains a multiplicity of
processes, perspectives, systems, any one of which may become a factor in the
organism's field of activity. The ability of the organism to act with reference
to a multiplicity of situations is an example of the sociality of natural
events. And it is by virtue of this sociality, this "capacity of being
several things at once" (The Philosophy of the
Present 49), that the organism is able to encounter novel occurrences.
By
moving from one system to another, the organism confronts unfamiliar and
unexpected situations which, because of their novelty, constitute problems of
adjustment for the organism. These emergent situations are possible given the
multiplicity of natural processes and given the ability of natural events
(e.g., organisms) to occupy several systems at once. A bee, for example, is
capable of relating to other bees, to flowers, to bears, to little boys, albeit
with various attitudes. But sociality is not restricted to animate events. A
mountain may be simultaneously an aspect of geography, part of a landscape, an
object of religious veneration, the dialectical pole of a valley, and so forth.
The capacity of sociality is a universal character of nature.
There
are, then, two modes of sociality: (1) Sociality characterizes the
"process of readjustment" by which an organism incorporates an
emergent event into its ongoing experience. This sociality in passage, which is
"given in immediate relation of the past and present," constitutes the
temporal mode of sociality (The Philosophy of
the Present 51). (2) A natural event is social, not only by virtue of its
dynamic relationship with newly emergent situations, but also by virtue of its
simultaneous membership in different systems at any given instant.
In any given present, "the location of the object in one system places it
in the others as well" (The Philosophy of the Present 63). The
object is social, not merely in terms of its temporal relations, but also in
terms of its relations with other objects in an instantaneous field. This mode
of sociality constitutes the emergent event; that is, the state of a system at
a given instant is the social reality within which emergent events occur, and it
is this reality that must be adjusted to the exigencies of time. Thus, the
principle of sociality is the ontological foundation of Mead's concept of
emergence: sociality is the ground of the possibility of emergence as well as
the basis on which emergent events are incorporated into the structure of
ongoing experience.
Temporality
and the Problem of Freedom
When
Mead's theory of the self is placed in the context of his description of the
temporality of human existence, it is possible to construct an account, not
only of the reality of human freedom, but also of the conditions that give rise
to the experience of loss of freedom.
Mead
grounds his analysis of human consciousness in the social process of
communication and, on that foundation, makes "the other" an integral
part of self- understanding. The world in which the self lives, then, is an
inter- subjective and interactive world — a "populated world"
containing, not only the individual self, but also other persons.
Intersubjectivity is to be explained in terms of that "meeting of
minds" which occurs in conversation, learning, reading, and thinking (The
Philosophy of the Act 52-53). It is on the basis of such socio-symbolic
interactions between individuals, and by means of the conceptual symbols of the
communicational process, that the mind and the self come into existence.
The
human world is also temporally structured, and the temporality of experience,
Mead argues, is a flow that is primarily present. The past is part of my
experience now, and the projected future is also part of my experience now.
There is hardly a moment when, turning to the temporality of my life, I do not
find myself existing in the now. Thus, it would appear that whatever is
for me, is now; and, needless to say, whatever is of importance
or whatever is meaningful for me, is of importance or is meaningful now.
This is true even if that which is important and meaningful for me is located
in the "past" or in the "future." Existential time is time
lived in the now. My existence is rooted in a
"living present," and it is within this "living present"
that my life unfolds and discloses itself. Thus, to gain full contact with
oneself, it is necessary to focus one's consciousness on the present and to
appropriate that present (that "existential situation") as one's own.
This
"philosophy of the present" need not lead to a careless, "live
only for today" attitude. Our past is always with us (in the form of
memory, history, tradition, etc.), and it provides a context for the
"living present." We live "in the present," but also
"out of the past;" and to live well now,
we cannot afford to "forget" the past. A fully meaningful human
existence must be "lived now," but with continual reference to the
past: we must continue to affirm "that which has been good," and we
must work to eliminate or to avoid "that which has been bad."
Moreover, a full human existence must be lived, not only
in-the-present-out-of-the-past, but also in- the-present-toward-the-future. The
human present opens toward the future. "Today" must always be lived
with a concern for "tomorrow," for we are continually moving toward
the future, whether we like it or not. Further, we are "called" into
this future, toward ever new possibilities; and we must, if we wish to live
well, develop a "right mindfulness" which orients our present-
centered consciousness toward the possibilities and challenges of the impending
future. But we must "live now" with reference to both past and
future.
The
self, as we have seen, is characterized in part by its activity (the
"I") in response to its world, and how the individual is
active with respect to his world is through his choices and his awareness of
his choices. The individual experiences himself as having choices, or as being
confronted with situations which require choices on his part. He does not
(ordinarily) experience himself as being controlled by the world. The world
presents obstacles to him, and yet he experiences himself as being able to
respond to these obstacles in a variety (even though a finite variety) of ways.
One
loses one's freedom, even one's selfhood, when one is unaware of one's choices
or when one refuses to face the fact that one has choices. From the
standpoint of Mead's description of the temporality of action and his emphasis
on the importance of problematic situations in human experience, emergencies or
"crises" in one's life are of the utmost existential significance. I
am a being that exists in relation to a world. As such, it
is essential that I experience myself as "in harmony with" the world;
and if this proves difficult or impossible, then I am thrown into a
"crisis," i.e., I am threatened with separation (Greek, krisis)
from the world; and separation from the world, from the standpoint of a being-
in-the-world, is tantamount to non- being. It is in this context that the loss
of one's freedom, the experience of lost autonomy, becomes a real possibility.
Encountering a crisis in the process of life, the individual may well
experience himself as paralyzed, as "stuck" in his situation, as
patient rather than as agent of change. But it is also the case that the
experience of crisis may lead to a deepened sense of one's active involvement
in the temporal unfolding of life. From Mead's point of view, a crisis is a
"crucial time" or a turning-point in individual existence:
negatively, it is a threat to the individual's continuity in and with his
world; positively, it is an opportunity to redefine, broaden, and deepen the
individual's sense of self and of the world to which the self is ontologically
related.
Thus, it
would appear that crises may in fact undermine the sense of freedom of choice;
and yet, it is also true that crises constitute opportunities for the exercise
of freedom since such "breaks" or discontinuities in our experience
demand that we make decisions as to what we are "going to do now." In
this way, break-downs might be viewed as break-throughs. Freedom
denied on one level of experience is rediscovered at another. One must lose
oneself in order to find oneself.
Back to Table of Contents
5. Perception and Reflection: Mead's Theory of Perspectives
Mead's concept of sociality, as we have seen, implies a vision of reality as
situational, or perspectival. A perspective is "the world in its
relationship to the individual and the individual in his relationship to the
world" (The Philosophy of the Act 115). A perspective, then, is a
situation in which a percipient event (or individual) exists with reference to
a consentient set (or environment) and in which a consentient set exists with
reference to a percipient event. There are, obviously, many such situations (or
perspectives). These are not, in Mead's view, imperfect representations of "an
absolute reality" that transcends all particular situations. On the
contrary, "these situations are the reality" which is the world (The
Philosophy of the Act 215).
Distance Experience
For Mead, perceptual objects arise within the act and are instrumental in
the consummation of the act. At the perceptual stage of the act, these objects
are distant from the perceiving individual: they are "over
there;" they are "not here" and "not now." The
distance is both spatial and temporal. Such objects invite the perceiving
individual to act with reference to them, to "make contact" with
them. Thus, Mead speaks of perceptual objects as "plans of action"
that "control" the "action of the individual" (The
Philosophy of the Present 176 and The Philosophy of the Act 262).
Distance experience implies contact experience. Perception leads on to
manipulation.
The readiness of the individual to make contact with distant objects is what
Mead calls a "terminal attitude." Terminal attitudes "are
beginnings of the contact response that will be made to the object when the
object is reached" (The Philosophy of the Act 161). Such attitudes
"are those which, if carried out into overt action, would lead to
movements which, if persevered in, would overcome the distances and bring the
objects into the manipulatory sphere" (The Philosophy of the Act
171). A terminal attitude, then, is an implicit manipulation of a distant
object; it stands at the beginning of the act and is an
intellectual-and-emotional posture in terms of which the individual encounters
the world. As present in the beginning of the act, the terminal attitude
contains the later stages of the act in the sense that perception implies
manipulation and in the sense that manipulation is aimed at the resolution of a
problem. In terminal attitudes, all stages of the act interpenetrate.
Within the act, then, there is a tendency on the part of the perceiving
individual to approach distant objects in terms of the "values of the
manipulatory sphere." Distant objects are perceived "with the dimensions
they would have if they were brought within the field in which we could both
handle and see them" (The Philosophy of the Act 170-171). For
example, a distant shape is seen as being palpable, as having a certain
size and weight, as having such and such a texture, and so forth. In
perception, the manipulatory area is extended, and the distant object becomes
hypothetically a contact object.
In immediate perceptual experience, the distant object is in the future.
Contact with the distant object is implicit, i.e., anticipated.
"The percept," according to Mead, "is there as a promise" (The
Philosophy of the Act 103). In so far as the act of perception involves
terminal attitudes, the promise (or futurity) of the distant object is
"collapsed" into a hypothetical "now" in which the
perceiving individual and the perceptual object exist simultaneously. The
temporal distance between individual and object is thus suspended; this
suspension of time permits alternative (and perhaps conflicting) contact
reactions to the object to be "tested" in imagination. Thus, the act
may be "completed" in abstraction before it is completed in fact. In
this sense, "the percept is a collapsed act" (The Philosophy of
the Act 128).
The contemporaneity of individual and distant object is an abstraction
within the act. In the collapsed act, time is abstracted from space "for
the purposes of our conduct" (The Philosophy of the Present 177).
Prior to actual manipulation, the perceiving individual anticipates a variety
of ways in which a given object might be manipulated. This implicit
testing of alternative responses to the distant object is the essence of
reflective conduct. The actual futurity of the distant object is suspended, and
the object is treated as though it were present in the manipulatory
area. The time of the collapsed act, therefore, is an abstracted time that
involves "the experience of inhibited action in which the goal is present
as achieved through the individual assuming the attitude of contact response,
and thus leaving the events that should elapse between the beginning and the
end of the act present only in their abstracted character as passing" (The
Philosophy of the Act 232).
Thus, in the abstracted time of the collapsed act, "certain objects cease
to be events, cease to pass as they are in reality passing and in their
permanence become the conditions of our action, and events take place with
reference to them" (The Philosophy of the Present 177). The
perceiving individual's terminal attitudes constitute an anticipatory contact
experience in which the futurity of distant objects is reduced to an abstract
contemporaneity. This reduction of futurity, we have seen, is instrumental in
the reflective conduct of the acting individual.
In perception, then, distant objects are reduced to the manipulatory area
and become (hypothetically) contact objects. "The fundamentals of
perception are the spatio-temporal distances of objects lying outside the
manipulatory area and the readiness of the organism to act toward them as they
will be if they come within the manipulatory area" (The Philosophy of
the Act 104). Perception involves the assumption of contact qualities in
the distant object. The object is removed from its actual temporal position and
is incorporated in a "permanent" space which is actually the space
"of the manipulatory area, hypothetically extended" (The
Philosophy of the Act 185). The object, which is actually spatio-temporally
distant, becomes, hypothetically and for the purposes of reflective conduct,
spatio-temporally present: it is, in the perceiving individual's
assumption of the contact attitude, both "here" and "now."
Perspectives
Early modern accounts of perception, in an attempt to ground the theories
and methods of modern science in a philosophical framework, made a distinction
between the "primary" and "secondary" qualities of objects.
Galileo articulated the latter distinction as follows:
I feel myself impelled by the necessity, as soon
as I conceive a piece of matter or corporeal substance, of conceiving that in
its own nature it is bounded and figured in such and such a figure, that in
relation to others it is either large or small, that it is in this or that
place, in this or that time, that it is in motion or remains at rest . . . ,
that it is single, few or many; in short by no imagination can a body be
separated from such conditions: but that it must be white or red, bitter or
sweet, sounding or mute, of a pleasant or unpleasant odour, I do not perceive
my mind forced to acknowledge it necessarily accompanied by such conditions; so
if the senses are not the escorts, perhaps the reason or the imagination by
itself would never have arrived at them. Hence I think that these tastes,
odours, colors, etc., on the side of the object in which they seem to exist,
are nothing but mere names, but hold their residence solely in the sensitive
body; so that if the animal were removed, every such quality would be abolished
and annihilated (quoted by E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Physical Science [Doubleday, 1932], 85-86).
Another way of putting this is to say that the primary qualities of
an object are those which are subject to precise mathematical calculation,
whereas the secondary qualities of the object are those which are rooted
in the sensibility of the perceiving organism and which are therefore not
"objectively" quantifiable. The primary qualities (number, position,
extension, bulk, and so forth) are there in the object, but the
secondary qualities are subjective reactions to the object on the part
of the sensitive organism. A corollary of this doctrine is that the primary
qualities, because they are objective, are more "knowable" than are
the subjective secondary qualities.
A serious breakdown in the theory of primary and secondary qualities
appeared in the critical epistemology of George Berkeley. According to
Berkeley, whatever we know of objects, we know on the basis of perception. The
primary as well as the secondary qualities of objects are apprehended in sensation.
Moreover, primary qualities are never perceived except in conjunction with
secondary qualities. Both primary and secondary qualities, therefore, are
derived from perception and are ideas "in the mind." When we
"know" the primary qualities of an object, what we "know"
are "our own ideas and sensations." Thus, Berkeley calls into
question the "objectivity" of the primary qualities; these qualities,
it would appear, are as dependent upon a perceiving organism as are secondary
qualities. The outcome of Berkeley's radical subjectivism (which reaches its
apogee in the skepticism of Hume) is an epistemological crisis in which the
"knowability" of the external world is rendered problematic.
Mead's account of distance experience offers a description of the experiential
basis of the separation of primary and secondary qualities. In the exigencies
of action, we have seen, there is a tendency on the part of the acting
individual to reduce distant objects to the contact area. "It is this
collapsing of the act," according to Mead, "which is responsible for
the so- called subjective nature of the secondary qualities . . . [of]
objects" (The Philosophy of the Act 121). The contact characters of
the object become the main focus within the act, while the distance characters
are bracketed out (i.e., held in suspension or ignored for the time being). For
the purposes of conduct, "the reality of what we see is what we can
handle" (The Philosophy of the Act 105). In Mead's analysis of
perception, the distinction between distance and contact characters is roughly
equivalent to the traditional distinction between secondary and primary
qualities, respectively. For Mead, however, the distance characters of an
object are not "subjective," but are as objective as the contact
characters. Distance characters (such as color, sound, odor, and taste) are there
in the act; they appear in the transition from impulse to perception and are
present even in manipulation: "In the manipulatory area one actually
handles the colored, odorous, sounding, sapid object. The distance characters
seem to be no longer distant, and the object answers to a collapsed act" (The
Philosophy of the Act 121).
Mead's theory of perspectives is, in effect, an attempt to make clear the
objective intentionality of perceptual experience. In Mead's relational
conception of biological existence, there is a mutual determination of organism
and environment; the character of the organism determines the environment, just
as the character of the environment determines the organism.
In his opposition to outright environmental determinism, Mead points out
that the sensitivity, selectivity, and organizational capacities of organisms
are sources of the control of the environment by the form. On the human level,
for example, we find the phenomenon of attention. The human being
selects her stimuli and thereby organizes the field within which she acts.
Attention, then, is characterized by its selectivity and organizing tendency.
"Here we have the organism as acting and deter mining its environment. It
is not simply a set of passive senses played upon by the stimuli that come from
without. The organism goes out and determines what it is going to respond to,
and organizes the world" (Mind, Self and Society 25). Attention is
the foundation of human intelligence; it is the capacity of attention that
gives us control over our experience and conduct. Attention is one of the
elements of human freedom.
The relation between organism and environment is, in a word, interactive.
The perceptual object arises within this interactive matrix and is
"determined by its reference to some percipient event, or individual, in a
consentient set" (The Philosophy of the Act 166). In other words,
perceptual objects are perspectively determined, and perspectives are determined
by perceiving individuals.
Even when we consider only sense data, the object
is clearly a function of the whole situation whose perspective is determined by
the individual. There are peculiarities in the objects which depend upon the
individual as an organism and the spatio-temporal position of the individual.
It is one of the important results of the modern doctrine of relativity that we
are forced to recognize that we cannot account for these peculiarities by
stating the individual in terms of his environment. (The Philosophy of the
Act 224).
The perceiving individual cannot be explained in terms of the so-called
external world, since that individual is a necessary condition of the
appearance of that world.
Mead thus abandons, on the basis of his interpretation of relativity theory,
the object of Newtonian physics. But in addition to denying the concrete
existence of independent objects, he also denies the existence of the
independent psyche. There is nothing subjective about perceptual experience. If
objects exist with reference to the perceiving individual, it is also true that
the perceiving individual exists with reference to objects. The qualities of
objects (distance as well as contact qualities) exist in the relation between
the perceiving individual and the world. The so-called secondary sensuous
qualities, therefore, are objectively present in the individual-world matrix;
sensuous characters are there in a given perspective on reality.
In actual perceptual experience, the object is objectively present in
relation to the individual. Whereas the relation between the world and the
perceiving individual led Berkeley to a radical subjectification of experience,
Mead's relationism leads him to an equally radical objectification of
experience.
Perspectives, in Mead's view, are objectively real. Perspectives are
"there in nature," and natural reality is the overall
"organization of perspectives." There is, so far as we can directly know,
no natural reality beyond the organization of perspectives, no noumena, no
independent "world of physical particles in absolute space and time"
(The Philosophy of the Present 163). The cosmos is nature stratified
into a multiplicity of perspectives, all of which are interrelated.
Perspectival stratifications of nature "are not only there in nature but
they are the only forms of nature that are there" (The Philosophy of
the Present 171).
The Scientific Object
Mead distinguishes two main types of perspective: (1) the perceptual
perspective and (2) the reflective perspective. A perceptual perspective
is rooted in the space-time world in which action is unreflective. This is the
world of immediate perceptual experience. A reflective perspective is a
response to the world of perceptual perspectives. The perspectives of fig trees
and wasps are, from the standpoint of the trees and wasps (hypothetically
considered), perceptually independent, except for certain points of
intersection (i.e., actual contacts). "But in the reflective perspective
of the man who plants the fig trees and insures the presence of the wasps, both
life-histories run their courses, and their intersection provides a dimension
from which their interconnection maintains their species" (The
Philosophy of the Act 185). Reflectively, the fig tree perspective and the
wasp perspective form a single perspective "that includes the perspectives
of both" (The Philosophy of the Act 184). The world of reflective
perspectives is the world of reflective thought and action, the world of
distance experience and the world of scientific inquiry. It is within the
reflective perspective that the hypothetical objects of the collapsed act
arise. Since Mead's conception of distance experience has been discussed
earlier, the present analysis will concentrate on the emergence of the scientific
object in reflective experience.
Corresponding to the two types of perspective outlined above are two
attitudes toward the perceptual objects which arise in experience. There is,
first, and corresponding to the perceptual perspective, "the attitude of
immediate experience," which is grounded in "the world that is
there" (The Philosophy of the Act 14). The world that is there
(a phrase Mead uses over and over again) includes our own acts, our own bodies,
and our own psychological responses to the things that emerge in our ongoing
activity. Perceptual objects, in the world that is there, are what they
appear to be in their relation to the perceiving individual.
The second attitude toward perceptual objects is that of "reflective
analysis," which attempts to set forth the preconditions of perceptual
experience. This attitude corresponds to the reflective perspective. It is
through reflective analysis of perceptual objects that scientific objects are
constructed. Examples of scientific objects are the Newtonian notions of
absolute space and absolute time, the concept of the world at an instant
(absolute simultaneity), the notion of "ultimate elements" (atoms,
electrons, particles), and so on. Such objects, according to Mead, are
hypothetical abstractions which arise in the scientific attempt to explain the
world of immediate experience. "The whole tendency of the natural
sciences, as exhibited especially in physics and chemistry, is to replace the
objects of immediate experience by hypothetical objects which lie beyond the
range of possible experience" (The Philosophy of the Act 291).
Scientific objects are not objects of experience. Science accounts for the
perceptible in terms of the non- perceptible (and often the imperceptible).
There is a danger in the reflective analysis of the world that is there,
namely, the reification of scientific objects and the subjectification of
perceptual objects. That is, it is possible to conceive of the perceptual world
as a product of organic sensitivity (including human consciousness) while the
world of scientific objects is "conceived of as entirely independent of
perceiving individuals" (The Philosophy of the Act 284- 285).
According to Mead, this formulation of the relation between scientific objects
and perceptual objects is "entirely uncritical" (The Philosophy of
the Act 19). The alleged separation of scientific and perceptual objects
leads to a "bifurcated nature" in which experience is cut off from
reality through the dualism of primary and secondary qualities. Mead's critique
of the latter doctrine, discussed above, reveals that "the organism is a
part of the physical world we are explaining" (The Philosophy of the
Act 21). and that the perceptual object, with all of its qualities, is
objectively there in the relation between organism and world. The scientific
object, moreover, has ultimate reference to the perceptual world. The act of
reflective analysis within which the scientific object arises presupposes the
world that is there in perceptual experience. Scientific objects are
abstractions within the reflective act and are, in effect, attempts to account
for the objects of perceptual experience. And it is to the world that is
there that the scientist must go to confirm or disconfirm the hypothetical
objects of scientific theory.
Reflective analysis thus arises within and presupposes an unreflective world
of immediate experience. And it is this immediate world "which is the
final test of the reality of scientific hypotheses as well as the test of the
truth of all our ideas and suppositions" (Mind, Self and Society
352). In Mind, Self and Society, Mead refers to the unreflective world
as the world of the "biologic individual." "The term," he
points out,
refers to the individual in an attitude and at a
moment in which the impulses sustain an unfractured relation with the objects
around him . . . . I have termed it "biologic" because the term lays
emphasis on the living reality which may be distinguished from reflection. A
later reflection turns back upon it and endeavors to present the complete
interrelationship between the world and the individual in terms of physical
stimuli and biological mechanisms [scientific objects]; the actual experience
did not take place in this [hypothetical] form but in the form of unsophisticated
reality (Mind, Self and Society 352, 353, emphasis added).
The world that is there is prior to the reflective world of
scientific theory. The reification of scientific objects at the expense of
perceptual experience is, in Mead's view, the product of an "uncritical
scientific imagination" (The Philosophy of the Act 21).
Mead's analysis of the scientific object is an attempt to establish the
actual relation between reflective analysis and perceptual experience. His aim
is to demonstrate the objective reality of the perceptual world. He does not,
however, deny the reality of scientific objects. Scientific objects are
hypothetical objects which are real in so far as they render the experiential
world intelligible and controllable. Harold N. Lee, in discussing Mead's
philosophy, points out that "the task of science is to understand the
world we live in and to enable us to act intelligently within it; it is not to
construct a new and artificial world except in so far as the artificial picture
aids in understanding and controlling the world we live in. The artificial
picture is not be substituted for the world" (Lee 56, emphasis added).
Scientific knowledge is not final, but hypothetical; and the reality of
scientific objects is, therefore, hypothetical rather than absolute.
Reflective conduct takes place with reference to problems that emerge in the
world that is there, and the construction of scientific objects is aimed at
solving these problems. Problematic situations occur within the world
that is there; it is not the entire world of experience that becomes
problematic, but only aspects of that world. And while the scientific attitude
is "ready to question everything," it does not "question
everything at once" (Selected Writings 200). "The
scientist," according to Mead, "always deals with an actual
problem;" he does not question "the whole world of meaning," but
only that part of the world which has come into conflict with accepted
doctrine. The unquestioned aspects of the world "form the necessary field
without which no conflict can arise." "The possible calling in
question of any content, whatever it may be, means always that there is left a
field of unquestioned reality" (Selected Writings 205). It is to
this field of unquestioned reality that the scientist returns to test his
reconstructed theory. "The world of the scientist is always there as one
in which reconstruction is taking place with continual shifting of problems,
but as a real world within which the problems arise" (Selected
Writings 206, emphasis added).
Back to Table of Contents
6. Philosophy of History
Back to Table of Contents
a. The Nature of History
History, according to Mead,
is the collective time of the social act. Historical thought arises in response
to emergent events (crises, new situations, unexpected disruptions) that are
confronted in community life. Mead's general description of experiential time
holds with reference to the time of historical experience: the continuity of
experience is rendered problematic by the emergent event; present and future
are cut off from each other, and the past (both in terms of its content and of
its meaning) is called into question; the past is reconstructed in such a way
that the emergent event is seen as continuous with the past. In this manner,
the present difficulty becomes intelligible, and the emergent discontinuity of
experience is potentially resolvable. Historical thought is a reconstruction of
a communal past in an attempt to understand the nature and significance of a
communal present and a (potential) communal future. Historical accounts are
never final since historical thought continually restates the past in terms of
newly emergent situations in a present that opens upon a future.
Human life is an ongoing
process that is temporally structured. The existential present, the
"now" within which we act, is dynamic and implies a past and a
future. The notion of the world at an instant (the knife-edge present) is,
according to Mead, an abstraction within the act which may be instrumental in
the pursuit of consummation; but as a description of concrete experience, the
knife-edge present is a specious present. The specious present is not
the actual present of ongoing experience. The present, in Mead's words,
"is something that is happening, going on" (Movements of Thought
in the Nineteenth Century 300). "Our experience is always a passing
experience, and . . . this passing experience always involves an extension into
other experiences. It is what has just happened, what is going on, what is just
appearing in the future, that gives to our experience its peculiar character.
It is never an experience just at an instant. There is no such thing as the
experience of a bare instant as such" (Movements of Thought in the
Nineteenth Century 299). Human experience is fundamentally dynamic, and
human life is built on a temporal foundation.
The emergent event is the
foundation of novelty in experience. This novelty is characteristic, not only
of the present, but also of the past and future. The future, on the one hand,
lies beyond the emergent present; and the novelty of the future takes the form
of the unexpected. The emergent event creates a future that comes to us as a
surprise. The past, on the other hand, must be reinterpreted in the light of
the emergent event; the result of such reinterpretation is nothing less than a new
past. Consciousness of the past develops in response to emergent events
that alter our sense of temporal relationships.
We
find that each generation has a different history, that it is a part of the
apparatus of each generation to reconstruct its history. A different Caesar
crosses the Rubicon not only with each author but with each generation. That
is, as we look back over the past, it is a different past. The experience is
something like that of a person climbing a mountain. As he looks back over the
terrain he has covered, it presents a continually different picture. So the
past is continually changing as we look at it from the point of view of
different authors, different generations. It is not simply the future [and
present] which is novel, then; the past is also novel (Movements of Thought
in the Nineteenth Century 116-117).
History is the
reconstruction of the past in response to a new present that opens toward a new
future. This emphasis on the novelty of human experience pervades Mead's
thought. Science, according to Mead, thrives on novelty. Scientific inquiry is,
in essence, a response to exceptions to laws. While science, on the one hand,
defines knowledge as "finding uniformities, finding rules, laws" (Movements
of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 270), it also, on the other hand,
seeks to upset all uniformities, rules, and laws through the quest for novelty.
Scientific inquiry arises out of the conflict between what was expected to
happen and what actually happens; contradictions in experience are the
starting- points for the scientific reconstruction of knowledge (Mead, Selected
Writings 188).
Science, for Mead, is a
continual reconstruction of our conception of the world in response to novel
situations. Mead's slogan for science is, "The law is dead; long live the
law!" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 286). Science
is a form of human existence, a way of moving with the changes that emerge
before us. Science is essentially "a method, a way of understanding the
world" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 288).
History is the science of
the human past. Historical inquiry presents the past "on the basis of
actual documents and their interpretation in terms of historical
criticism" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 448).
But the historical past, as we have seen, is not independent of present and
future. Historical inquiry, like scientific inquiry in general, takes place in
a present that has become problematic through the occurrence of an emergent
event. An ancient village is unearthed in Asia Minor, and the rise of human
civilization is suddenly pushed back five thousand years in time; the demand on
the part of African-Americans for liberty and identity leads to a revaluation
of black culture in terms of its historical roots.
In Mead's conception of
historical method, the past is in the present and becomes meaningful in
the present. As Tonness has suggested, the past is not "a metaphysical
reality accessible to present activity," but an "epistemological
reference system" which gives coherence to the emerging present (606).
Historical thought reconstructs the past continually in an attempt to reveal
the cognitive significance of present and future.
It is not only the content
of the past that is subject to change. Past events have meanings that
are also changed as novel events emerge in ongoing experience. The meaning of
past events is determined by the relation of those events to a present. The
elucidation of such meaning is the task of historical thought and inquiry. An
historical account, as we have seen, is true to the extent that the present is
rendered coherent by reference to past events. Historical thought reinterprets
the past in terms of the present. But this reinterpretation is not capricious.
The historical past arises in the reexamination and representation of evidence.
Historical accounts must be documented. No historical account, however,
is final. The meaning of the past is always open to question; any given
interpretation of the past may be criticized from the standpoint of a different
interpretation.
Historical truth, in Mead's
view, is relative truth. The meaning of the past changes as present
slides into present (The Philosophy of the Present 9) and as different
individuals and groups are confronted with new situations that demand a
temporal reintegration of experience. A new present suggests a new future and
demands a new past. This interdependence of past, present, and future is the
essential character of human temporality and of historical consciousness.
Back to Table of Contents
b. History and Self-Consciousness
In Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Mead offers the
Romantic movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries as an example of the
present and future orientation of human inquiries into the past. Mead's
description of the Romantics' reconstruction of self-consciousness on the basis
of a reconstructed past is a concrete illustration of his conception of
historical consciousness as developing with reference to a problematic present.
The Romantic historians and philosophers, confronted with the disruption of
experience, which was the result of the early modern revolutionary period,
turned to the medieval past in an effort to redefine the historical and
cultural identity of European man. The major characteristic of Romantic
thought, according to Mead, was an attempt to redefine European self-
consciousness through the re-appropriation of the historical past. "It was
the essence of the Romantic movement to return to the past from the point of
view of the self-consciousness of the Romantic period, to become aware of itself
in terms of the past" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century
447- 448). The European had been cut off from his past by the political and
cultural revolutions of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries; and in the
post-revolutionary world of the early 19th century, the Romantic movement
represented the European quest for a reconstructed identity. It was history
that provided the basis for this reconstruction.
The Revolt of Reason Against Authority
The idea of rationality has played a central role in modern social theory.
The revolt against arbitrary authority "came on the basis of a description
of human nature as having in it a rational principle from which authority could
proceed" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 12). Thus,
the aim of modern social theory has been to root social institutions in human
nature rather than in divine providence. The doctrine of the rights of man and
the idea of the social contract, for example, were brought together by Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau in an effort to ground political order in a purely human
world. Society was conceived as a voluntary association of individuals; and the
aim of this association was the preservation of natural rights to such goods as
life, liberty, and property. Social authority, then, was derived from the
individuals who had contracted to live together and to pursue certain human
goals. This analysis of society was at the root of the revolutionary social
criticism of the eighteenth century.
When men came to conceive the order of society as
flowing from the rational character of society itself; when they came to
criticize institutions from the point of view of their immediate function in
preserving order, and criticized that order from the point of view of its
purpose and function; when they approached the study of the state from the
point of view of political science; then, of course, they found themselves in
opposition to the medieval attitude which accepted its institutions as given by
God to the church (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century
13-14).
But the outcome of "the revolution," according to Mead, was not
what the philosophers of the age of reason had expected. The institutions of
the medieval past (e.g., monarchy, theocracy, economic feudalism) were either
eliminated or severely limited in their scope and power. But the new regime
contained reactionary elements of its own. The victorious bourgeoisie began to
build a new class society based on the dialectic of capital and labor; and in
this new society, the rights of man came to be conceived in terms of the
successful struggle for economic power (Movements of Thought in the
Nineteenth Century 223). Each man came to be viewed as "an economic
unit," and the freedom of man became the freedom to compete for profits in
the market (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 217).
The initial effects of the rise of capitalist society were disastrous for
the working classes. "When labor was brought into the factory centers,
there sprang up great cities in which men and women lived in almost impossible
conditions. And there sprang up factories built around the machine in which
men, women, and children worked under ever so hideous conditions" (Movements
of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 206). This situation was rationalized
by an ideology that defined human rights in terms of economic competition and
that "regarded industry as that which provided the morale of a laborer
community" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 207).
Under such conditions, the rights and liberties for which "the
revolution" had been fought became more ideological than real. It was only
after the subsequent rise of the trade union and socialist movements that the
contradiction between ideology and reality began to be transcended.
While "the revolution" was at least partially fulfilled in England
and America, it was, from the standpoint of the early nineteenth century, a
total failure on the European continent. The French Revolution deteriorated
into a period of political terror that laid the foundation for the emergence of
Napoleon's imperialism. The ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity proved
inadequate as bases for a fully rational society.
These ideals, in Mead's view, are politically naive. The concept of freedom
is negative; it is a demand "that the individual shall be free from
restraint" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 22). In
the actual political world, where there is a conflict of wills, the concept of
freedom falls into contradiction with itself. The freedom of one individual or
group often infringes upon the freedom of another individual or group (Movements
of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 22).
The concept of equality, which demands that "each person shall have . .
. the same political [and perhaps economic] standing as every other
person" (Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 23), is
also far removed from the actual conditions of political and economic life.
According to Mead, an | |
