George Herbert Mead
Mind, Self and Society, from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist
Part 1: Social Psychology and Behaviorism
1.
Social psychology and behaviorism
2. The behavioristic significance of attitudes
3.
The behavioristic significance of gestures
4.
Rise of parallelism in psychology
5. Parallelism and the ambiguity of "consciousness"
6. The program of behaviorism
Part 2: The Mind
7.
Wundt and the concept of the gesture
8. Imitation and the origin of language
9. The vocal gesture and the significant symbol
10. Thought, communication, and the significant symbol
11. Meaning
12. Universality
13.
The nature of reflective intelligence
14. Behaviorism, Watsonism, and reflection
15. Behaviorism and psychological parallelism
16. Mind and the symbol
17. The relation of mind to response and environment
Part 3: The Self
18.
The self and the organism
19.
The background of the genesis of the self
20. Play, the game, and the generalized other
21. The self and the subjective
22. The "I" and the "Me"
23. Social attitudes and the physical world
24. Mind as the individual importation of the social process
25. The "I" and the "me" as phases of the self
26. The realization of the self in the social situation
27. The contributions of the "me" and the "I"
28. The social creativity of the emergent self
29. A contrast of individualistic and social theories of the self
Part 4: Society
30. The basis of human society: man and the insects
31. The basis of human society: man and the vertebrates
32. Organism, community, and environment
33. The social foundations and functions of thought and communication
34. The community and the
institution
35. The fusion of the "I" and the me" in social activities
36. Democracy and universality in society
37. Further consideration of religious and economic attitudes
38. The nature of sympathy
39. Conflict and integration
40. The functions of personality and reason in social organisation
41. Obstacles and promises in the development of the ideal society
42. Summary and conclusion
1. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORISM
...
There are, then, certain phases of psychology which are interested in
studying the relation of the individual organism to the social group to
which it belongs, and these phases constitute social psychology as a branch
of general psychology.
3. THE BEHAVIORISTIC SIGNIFICANCE OF GESTURES
par. 3.1]
The behaviorist of the Watsonian type has been prone to carry his
principle
of conditioning over into the field of language. By a conditioning of
reflexes the horse has become associeated with the word "horse." and this
in turn releases the set of responses. We use the word, and the response
may be that of mounting, buying, selling or trading. We are ready to do all
these different things. This statement, however, lacks the recognition that
these different processes which the behaviorist says are identified with
the word "horse" must be worked into the act itself, or the group of acts,
which gather about the horse. They go to make up that object in our
experience, and the function of the word is a function which has its place
in that organisation; but it is not, however, the whole process.
This is also true of the lower animals. 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. Here is a process out of which language might arise, that is, a
certain attitude of one individual that calls out a response in the other,
which in turn calls out a different approach and a different response, and
so on indefinitely. [See
Darwin -
Wundt]
In fact, as we shall see, language does arise in just such a process as
that.
We are too prone... to approach language... from the standpoint of the
symbol that is used. We analyze that symbol and find out what is the intent
in the mind of the individual in using that symbol...
if we are going to broaden the concept of language in the sense I have
spoken of, so that it takes in the underlying attitudes, we can see that
the so-called intent, the idea we are talking about, is one that is
involved in the gesture or attitudes which we are using. The offering of a
chair to a person who comes into the room is in itself a courteous act. We
do not have to assume that a person says to himself that this person wants
a chair. The offering of a chair by a person of good manners is something
which is almost instinctive. This is the very attitude of the individual.
From the point of view of the observer it is a gesture. Such early stages
of social acts precede the symbol proper, and deliberate communication.
One of the important documents in the history of modern psychology,
particularly for the psychology of language, is
Darwin's
Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals.
Here Darwin carried over
his theory
of
evolution
into the field of what we call "conscious experience." What
Darwin did was to show that there was a whole series of acts or
beginnings
of acts [See 7.5
and 7.12]
which called out certain responses that do express emotions. If one
animal attacks another, or is on the point of attacking, or of taking the
bone of another dog, that action calls out violent responses which express
the anger of the second dog. There we have a set of attitudes which express
the emotional attitude of dogs; and we can carry this analysis into the
human expression of emotion.
The part of our organism that most vividly and readily expresses the
emotions is the face, and Darwin studied the face from this point of view.
He took, naturally, the actor, the man whose business it is to express the
emotions by the movements of the countenance, and studied the muscles
themselves; and in studying them he undertook to show what the value of
these changes of the face might be in the actual act. We speak of such
expressions as those of anger, and note the way in which the blood may
suffuse the face at one stage and then leave it at another. Darwin studied
the blood flow in fear and in terror. In these emotions one can find
changes taking place in the blood flow itself. These changes have their
value. They represent, of course, changes in the circulation of blood in
the acts. These actions are generally actions which are rapid and can only
take place if the blood is flowing rapidly. There must be a change in the
rhythm of circulation and this generally registers itself in the
countenance.
Many of our acts of hostility exhibit themselves in attitudes of the face
similar to animals which attack with their teeth. The attitude, or in a
more generalized term, the gesture, has been preserved after the value of
the act has disappeared.
The title
of Darwin's work indicates his point of
approach. He was dealing with these gestures, these attitudes, as
expressive of emotions... That attitude has been preserved, on
this view, after the value of the act has disappeared. This gesture seems
to remain for the purpose of expressing emotions...
One could apply the doctrine of the survival
of the fittest here... these gestures or attitudes had lost the value which
they had in the original acts, and yet had survived... they had
survived because they served... valuable functions.. the expression of the
emotions.
[This assumes]
that
these acts had a reason for existence because they expressed something in
the mind of the individual... They assume that language existed for the
purpose of conveying certain ideas, certain feelings.
... this is a false approach. It is quite
impossible to assume that animals do undertake to express their emotions.
They certainly do not undertake to express them for the benefit of other
animals. The most that can be said is that the "expressions" did set free a
certain emotion in the individual, an escape valve, so to speak, an
emotional attitude which the animal needed, in some sense, to get rid of.
They certainly could not exist in these lower animals as means of
expressing emotions; we cannot approach them from the point of view of
expressing a content in the mind of the individual. We can, of course, see
how, for the actor, they may become definitely a language. An actor, for
example, may undertake to express his rage, and he may do it by an
expression of the countenance, and so convey to the audience the emotion he
intended. However, he is not expressing his own emotion but simply
conveying to the audience the evidence of anger, and if he is successful he
may do it more effectively, as far as the audience is concerned, than a
person who is in reality angered. There we have these gestures serving the
purpose of expression of the emotions, but we cannot conceive that they
arose as such a language in order to express emotion. Language, then, has
to be studied from the point of view of the gestural type of conduct within
which it existed without being as such a definite language. And we have to
see how the communicative function could have arisen out of that prior sort
of conduct.
The psychology of Darwin assumed that emotion was a psychological state, a
state of consciousness, and that this state could not itself be formulated
in terms of the attitude or the behavior of the form. It was assumed that
the emotion is there and that certain movements might give evidence of it.
The evidence would be received and acted upon by other forms that were
fashioned like itself. That is, it presupposed the conscious state over
against the biological organism. The conscious state was that which was to
be expressed in the gesture or the attitude. It was to be expressed in
behavior and to be recognized in some fashion as existent in the
consciousness of the other form through this medium of expression. Such was
the general psychological attitude which Darwin accepted.
Contrary to Darwin, however, we find no evidence for the prior existence of
consciousness as something which brings about behavior on the part of one
organism that is of such a sort as to call forth an adjustive response on
the part of another organism, without itself being dependent on such
behavior. We are rather forced to conclude that consciousness is an
emergent from such behavior; that so far from being a precondition of the
social act, the social act is the precondition of it. The mechanism of the
social act can be traced out without introducing into it the conception of
consciousness as a separable element within that act; hence the social act,
in its more elementary stages or forms, is possible without, or apart from,
some form of consciousness.
...
...
The particular field of social science with which we are concerned is one
which was opened up through the work of
Darwin
and the more elaborate
presentation of
Wundt.
When we take Wundt's parallelistic
statement
we get a point of view from
which we can approach the problem of social experience. Wundt undertook to
show the parallelism between what goes on in the body as represented by
processes of the central nervous system, and what goes on in those
experiences which the individual recognizes as his own. He had to find that
which was common to these two fields-what in the psychical experience could
be referred to in physical terms.
Wundt isolated a very valuable conception of the gesture as that which
becomes later a symbol, but which is to be found in its earlier stages as a
part of a social act. It is that part of the social act which serves as
a stimulus to other forms involved in the same social act.
I have given the
illustration of
the dog-fight
as a method of presenting the gesture. The
act of each dog becomes the stimulus to the other dog for his response.
... 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,
What does take place is an actual change in his own position due to
the direction of the approach of the other dog.
We find a similar situation in boxing and in fencing, as in the feint and
the parry that is initiated on the part of the other. And then the first
one of the two in turn changes his attack; there may be considerable play
back and forth before actually a stroke results. This is the same situation
as in the dog-fight. If the individual is successful a great deal of his
attack and defense must be not considered, it must take place immediately.
He must adjust himself "instinctively" to the attitude of the other
individual. He may, of course, think it out. He may deliberately feint in
order to open up a place of attack. But a great deal has to be without
deliberation.
In this case we have a situation in which certain parts of the act become a
stimulus to the other form to adjust itself to those responses; and that
adjustment in turn becomes a stimulus to the first form to change his own
act and start on a different one.
There are a series of attitudes,
movements, on the part of these forms which belong to the
beginnings of acts that are the stimuli for the responses that
take place. The beginning
of a response becomes the stimulus to the first form to change his
attitude, to adopt a different act. The term "gesture" may be identified
with these beginnings of social acts which are stimuli for the response of
other forms.
Darwin was interested in such gestures because they expressed
emotions, and he dealt with them very largely as if this were their sole
function. He looked at them as serving the function with reference to the
other forms which they served with reference to his own observation. The
gestures expressed emotions of the animal to Darwin; he saw in the attitude
of the dog the joy with which he accompanied his master in taking a walk.
And he left his treatment of the gestures largely in these terms.
It was easy for Wundt to show that this was not a legitimate point of
attack on the problem of these gestures. They did not at bottom serve the
function of expression of the emotions: that was not the reason why they
were stimuli, but rather because they were parts of complex acts in which
different forms were involved. They became the tools through which the
other forms responded. When they did give rise to a certain response, they
were themselves changed in response to the change which took place in the
other form. They are part of the organisation of the social act, and highly
important elements in that organisation. To the human observer they are
expressions of emotion, and that function of expressing emotion can
legitimately become the field of the work of the artist and of the actor.
The actor is in the same position as the poet: he is expressing emotions
through his own attitude, his tones of voice, through his gestures, just as
the poet through his poetry is expressing his emotions and arousing that
emotion in others. We get in this way a function which is not found in the
social act of these animals, or in a great deal of our own conduct, such as
that of the boxer and the fencer. We have this interplay going on with the
gestures serving their functions, calling out the responses of the others,
these responses becoming themselves stimuli for readjustment, until the
final social act itself can be carried out. Another illustration of this is
in the relation of parent-form to the infant-the stimulating cry, the
answering tone on the part of the parent-form, and the consequent change in
the cry of the infant-form. Here we have a set of adjustments of the two
forms carrying out a common social act involved in the care of the child.
Thus we have, in all these instances, a social process in which one can
isolate the gesture which has its function in the social process, and which
can become an expression of emotions, or later can become the expression of
a meaning, an idea.
The primitive situation is that of the social act which involves the
interaction of different forms, which involves, therefore, the adjustment
of the conduct of these different forms to each other, in carrying out the
social process. Within that process one can find what we term the gestures,
those phases of the act which bring about the adjustment of the response of
the other form. These phases of the act carry with them the attitude as the
observer recognizes it, and also what we call the inner attitude. The
animal may be angry or afraid. There are such emotional attitudes which lie
back of these acts, but these are only part of the whole process that is
going on. Anger expresses itself in attack; fear expresses itself in
flight. We can see, then that the gestures mean these attitudes on the part
of the form, that is, they have that meaning for us.
We see that an animal
is angry and that he is going to attack. We know that that is in the action
of the animal, and is revealed by the attitude of the animal. We cannot say
the animal means it in the sense that he has a reflective determination to
attack.
A man may strike another before he means it; a man may jump and run
away from a loud sound behind his back before he know what he is doing. If
he has the idea in his mind, then the gesture not only means this to the
observer but it also means the idea which the individual has.
In one case
the observer sees that the attitude of the dog means attack, but he does
not say that it means a conscious determination to attack on the part of
the dog. However, if somebody shakes his fist in your face you assume that
he has not only a hostile attitude but that he has some idea behind it. You
assume that it means not only a possible attack, but that the individual
has an idea in his experience.
When, now, that gesture means this idea behind it and it arouses that idea
in the other individual, then we have a significant symbol. In the case of
the dog-fight
we have a gesture which calls out appropriate response; in
the present case we have a symbol which answers to a meaning in the
experience of the first individual and which also calls out that meaning in
the second individual. Where the gesture reaches that situation it has
become what we call "language." It is now a significant symbol and it
signifies a certain meaning.
The gesture is that phase of the individual act to which adjustment takes
place on the part of other individuals in the social process of behavior.
The vocal gesture becomes a significant symbol (unimportant, as such, on
the merely affective side of experience) when it has the same effect on the
individual making it that it has on the individual to whom it is addressed
or who explicitly responds to it, and thus involves a reference to the self
of the individual making it. The gesture in general, and the vocal gesture
in particular, indicates 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. The function
of the gesture is to make adjustment possible among the individuals
implicated in any given social act with reference to the object or objects
with which that act is concerned; and the significant gesture or
significant symbol affords far greater facilities for such adjustment and
readjustment than does the non-significant gesture, because it calls out in
the individual making it the same attitude toward it (or toward its
meaning) that it calls out in the other individuals participating with him
in the given social act, and thus makes him conscious of their attitude
toward it (as a component of his behavior) and enables him to adjust his
subsequent behavior to theirs in the light of that attitude. In short, the
conscious or significant conversation of gestures is a much more adequate
and effective mechanism of mutual adjustment within the social act-
involving, as it does, the taking, by each of the individuals carrying it
on, of the attitudes of the others toward himself-than is the
unconscious
or non-significant conversation of gestures.
When, in any given social act or situation, one individual indicates by a
gesture to another individual what this other individual is to do, the
first individual is conscious of the meaning of his own gesture-or the
meaning of his gesture appears in his own experience-in so far as he takes
the attitude of the second individual toward that gesture, and tends to
respond to it implicitly in the same way that the second individual
responds to it explicitly. Gestures become significant symbols when they
implicitly arouse in an individual making them the same responses which
they explicitly arouse, or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals,
the individuals to whom they are addressed; and in all
conversations of
gestures within the social process, whether external (between
different
individuals) or internal (between a given individual and himself), the
individual's consciousness of the content and flow of meaning involved
depends on his thus taking the attitude of the other toward his own
gestures. In this way every gesture comes within a given social group or
community to stand for a particular act or response, namely, the act or
response which it calls forth explicitly in the individual to whom it is
addressed, and implicitly in the individual who makes it; and this
particular act or response for which it stands is its meaning as a
significant symbol. 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. The internalization in our experience of the
external
conversations of gestures which we carry on with other
individuals in the
social process is the essence of thinking; and the gestures thus
internalized are significant symbols because they have the same meanings
for all individual members of the given society or social group, i.e., they
respectively arouse the same attitudes in the individuals making them that
they arouse in the individuals responding to them: Otherwise the individual
could not internalize them or be conscious of them and their meanings. As
we shall see, the same procedure which is responsible for the genesis and
existence of mind or consciousness - namely, the taking of the attitude of
the other toward one's self, or toward one's own behavior - also
necessarily involves the genesis and existence at the same time of
significant symbols, or significant gestures.
In Wundt's doctrine, the parallelism between the gesture and the emotion or
the intellectual attitude of the individual, makes it possible to set up a
like parallelism in the other individual. The gesture calls out a gesture
in the other form which will arouse or call out the same emotional attitude
and the same idea. Where this has taken place the individuals have begun to
talk to each other.
What I referred to before was a
conversation of gestures which did not involve significant
symbols or gestures. The dogs
are not talking to each other; there are no ideas in the minds of the dogs;
nor do we assume that the dog is trying to convey an idea to the other dog.
But if the gesture, in the case of the human individual, has parallel with
it a certain psychical state which is the idea of what the person is going
to do, and if this gesture calls out a like gesture in the other individual
and calls out a similar idea, then it becomes a significant gesture. It
stands for the ideas in the minds of both of them.
There is some difficulty in carrying out this analysis if we accept Wundt's
parallelism. When a person shakes his fist in your face, that is a gesture
in the sense in which we use the term, the
beginning of an act that calls
out a response on your part. Your response may vary: it may depend on the
size of the man, it may mean shaking your fist, or it may mean flight. A
whole series of different responses are possible. In order that Wundt's
theory of the origin of language may be carried out, the gesture which the
first individual makes use of must in some sense be reproduced in the
experience of the individual in order that it may arouse the same idea in
his mind. We must not confuse the beginning of language with its later
stages. It is quite true that as soon as we see the attitude of the dog we
say that it means an attack, or that when we see a person looking around
for a chair that it means he would like to sit down. The gesture is one
which means these processes, and that meaning is aroused by what we see.
But we are supposed to be at the beginning of these developments of
language. If we assume that there is a certain psychical state answering to
a physical state how are we going to get to the point where the gesture
will arouse the same gesture in the attitude of the other individual?
In the very beginning the other person's gesture means what you are going
to do about it. It does not mean what he is thinking about or even his
emotion. Supposing his angry attack aroused fear in you, then you are not
going to have anger in your mind, but fear. His gesture means fear as far
as you are concerned.
That is the primitive situation. Where the big dog
attacks the little dog, the little dog puts his tail between his legs and
runs away, but the gesture does not call out in the second individual what
it did in the first.
The response is generally of a different kind from the
stimulus in the social act, a different action is aroused.
13. THE NATURE OF REFLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
If we abandon the conception of a substantive soul endowed with the self of
the individual at birth, then we may regard the development of the
individual's
self, and of his self-
consciousness within the field of his experience, as the social
psychologist's special interest.
...
While minds and selves are essentially social products... the
physiological mechanism underlying experience is ... indispensable -- to
their genesis and existence...
...
The common psychological standpoint which is represented by behaviorism is
found in
John B. Watson. The behaviorism which we shall make use of is
more adequate than that of which Watson makes use. Behaviorism in this
wider sense is simply an approach to the study of the experience of the
individual from the point of view of his conduct, particularly, but not
exclusively, the conduct as it is observable by others.
...
pages 13 -
...
par. 3.2]
Language is part of social behavior. There are an indefinite number of
signs or symbols which may serve the purpose of what we term
language. We are
reading the meaning of the conduct of other people when, perhaps, they are
not aware of it. There is something that reveals to us what the purpose is
-
just the glance of an eye, the
attitude of the body
which leads to the
response. The communication set up in this way between individuals may be
very perfect. Conversation in gestures may be carried on which cannot be
translated into articulate speech. [See discussion]
4. RISE OF PARALLELISM IN PSYCHOLOGY
...
The human animal is an attentive animal, and his attention may be given to
stimuli that are relatively faint. One can pick out sounds at a distance.
Our whole intelligent process seems to lie in the attention which is
selective of certain types of stimuli. Other stimuli which are bombarding
the system are in some fashion shunted off. ... our attention is an
organising process ... Our attention enables us to organise the field in
which we are going to act. Here we have the organism as acting and
determining 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 organises that world.
One organism picks out one thing and another picks out a different one,
since it is going to act in a different way.
7. WUNDT AND THE CONCEPT OF THE GESTURE
"If the animal comes from this
direction he is going to spring at my throat and I will turn in such a
way."
...
... Wundt presupposes selves as antecedent to the social
process in order to explain communication within that process, whereas, on
the contrary, selves must be accounted for in terms of the social process,
and in terms of communication; and individuals must be brought into
essential relation within that process before communication, or the contact
between the minds of different individuals, becomes possible. The body is
not a self, as such; it becomes a self only when it has developed a mind
within the context of social experience.
...
... if, as Wundt does, you presuppose the existence of mind at the start,
as explaining or making possible the social process of experience, then the
origin of minds and the interaction among minds become mysteries. But if,
on the other hand, you regard the social process of experience as prior (in
a rudimentary form) to the existence of mind and explain the origin of
minds in terms of the interaction among individuals within that process,
then not only the origin of minds, but also the interaction among minds
(which is thus seen to be internal to their very nature and presupposed by
their existence or development at all) cease to seem mysterious or
miraculous. Mind arises through communication by a
conversation of gestures
in a social process or context of experience-not communication through
mind...
...
The psychology of
attention
ousted the psychology of
association. An
indefinite number of associations were found which lie in our experience
with reference to anything that comes before us, but associational
psychology never explained why one association rather than another was the
dominant one. It laid down rules that if a certain association had been
intense, recent, and frequent it would be dominant, but often there are in
fact situations in which what seems to be the weakest element in the
situation occupies the mind. It was not until the psychologist took up the
analysis of attention that he was able to deal with
such situations, and to realize that voluntary attention is dependent
upon indication of some character in the field of stimulation. Such
indication makes possible the isolation and recombination of responses.
...
We cannot tell an elephant that he is to take hold of the other elephant's
tail; the stimulus will not indicate the same thing to the elephant as to
ourselves. We can create a situation which is a stimulus to the elephant
but we cannot get the elephant to indicate to itself what this stimulus is
so that he has the response to it in his own system.
| [Perhaps a partial flick forward of the trunk might become a gesture by which elephants told one another to take hold of the next elephant's tail? Then our elephants would gain reflection as they considered whether they wanted to do so and, perhaps, considered alternatives?] |
The gesture provides a process by means of which one does arouse in himself the reaction that might be aroused in another, and this is not a part of his immediate reaction in so far as his immediate physical environment is concerned. When we tell a person to do something the response we have is not the doing of the actual thing, but the beginning of it. Communication gives to us those elements of response which can be held in the mental field. We do not carry them out, but they are there constituting the meanings of these objects which we indicate. Language is a process of indicating certain stimuli and changing the response to them in the system of behavior. Language as a social process has made it possible for us to pick out responses and hold them in the organism of the individual, so that they are there in relation to that which we indicate.
The actual gesture is, within limits, arbitrary. Whether one points with his finger, or points with the glance of the eye, or motion of the head, or the attitude of the body, or by means of a vocal gesture in one language or another, is indifferent, provided it does call out the response that belongs to that thing which is indicated.
That is the essential part of language. The gesture must be one that calls
out the response in the individual, or tends to call out the response in
the individual, which its utilization will bring out in another's response.
Such is the material with which the mind works.
...
I have been trying to point out what this process of communication does in
the way of providing us with the material that exists in our mind. It does
this by furnishing those gestures which in affecting us as they affect
others call out the attitude which the other takes, and that we take in so
far as we assume his
role.
...
14. BEHAVIORISM, WATSONISM, AND REFLECTION
I have been discussing the possibility of bringing the concept or idea into
the range of behavioristic treatment, endeavoring in
this way to relieve behaviorism as presented by
Watson
of what seems to be
an inadequacy.
In carrying back the thinking process to the talking process, Watson seems
to identify thought simply with the word, with the symbol, with the vocal
gesture. He does this by means of the transference of a
reflex
from one
stimulus to another - conditioned reflex is the technical term for the
process.
The psychologist isolates a set of reflexes which answer to
certain specific stimuli, and then allows these reflexes expression under
different conditions so that the stimulus itself is accompanied by other
stimuli. He finds that these reflexes can then be brought about by the new
stimulus even in the absence of that which has been previously the
necessary stimulus.
The typical illustration
is that of a child becoming
afraid of a white rat because it was presented to him several
times at the
moment at which a loud sound was made behind him. The loud noise occasions
fright. The presence of the white rat conditions this reaction of fright so
that the child becomes afraid of the white rat. The fear reactions are then
called out by the white rat even when no sound is made.
The conditioned reflex of the objective psychologists is also used by
Watson to explain the process of thinking. On this view we utilize vocal
gestures in connection with things, and thereby condition our reflexes to
the things in terms of the vocal process. If we have a tendency to sit down
when the chair is there, we condition this reflex by the word "chair".
Originally the chair is a stimulus that sets free this act of sitting, and
by being conditioned the child may come to the point of setting free the
act by the use of the word. No particular limit can be set up to such a
process. The language process is peculiarly adapted to such a conditioning
of reflexes.
We have an indefinite number of responses to objects about us. If we can
condition these responses by the vocal gesture so that whenever a certain
reaction is carried out we at the same time utilize certain phonetic
elements, then we can reach the point at which the response will be called
out whenever this vocal gesture arises.
Thinking would then be nothing but the use of these various vocal elements
together with the responses which they call out. Psychologists would not
need to look for anything more elaborate in the thinking process than the
mere conditioning of reflexes by vocal gestures.
From the point of view of the analysis of the experience involved this
account seems very inadequate.
For certain types of experience it may
perhaps be sufficient. A trained body of troops exhibits a set of
conditioned reflexes. A certain formation is brought about by means of
certain orders. Its success lies in an automatic response when these orders
are given. There, of course, one has action without thought. If the soldier
thinks under the circumstances he very likely will not act; his action is
dependent in a certain sense on the absence of thought.
There must be elaborate thinking done... by the officers higher up.
[Watson's theory] does not do justice to the
thinking that has to be done higher up... [It] fails to bring into
account what is peculiar to planning. Something very definite goes on there
which cannot be stated in terms of conditioned reflexes.
... thought which belongs
to the human community is presumably absent in these communities.
The wasp that stores the paralyzed spider as food for larvae that it never
will see and with which it never has come into contact, is not acting in
terms of conscious foresight.
The human community that stores away food in cold storage, and ...
later makes use of it, is doing in a certain sense the same thing that the
wasp is doing, but the important distinction is that the action is now
consciously purposive. The individual arranging for the cold storage is
actually presenting to himself a situation that is going to arise, and
determining his methods of preservation with reference to future uses.
... is it possible to recast
our statement of
behavioristic psychology
that it can do more justice to what we ordinarily
term a consciousness of what we are doing? I have been suggesting that we
could at least give a picture in the central nervous system of what answers
to an idea. That seems to be what is left out of Watson's statement. He
simply attaches a set of responses to certain stimuli and shows that the
mechanism of the organism is able to change those stimuli, substitute one
stimulus for another stimulus; but the ideas that accomplish such a process
are not accounted for simply by this substitution.
In the illustration I gave of offering
a chair and asking a person to sit
down, the asking may take the place of the particular perception of the
chair. One may be occupied entirely with something else, and then the
stimulus is not the stimulus operative in the original reflex; one might
come in and sit down without paying attention to the chair.
But such
substitution does not give to us the picture of the mechanism which in some
sense answers to the chair, or the idea of what the person is asking him to
do. What I suggested was that we have such a mechanism in the central
nervous system that answers to these elaborate reactions, and that the
stimuli which call these out may set up a process there which is not fully
carried out.
We do not actually sit down
when a person asks us to, yet the process is in some sense initiated; we
are ready to sit down but we do not. We prepare for a certain process by
thinking about it, mapping out a campaign of conduct, and then we are ready
to carry out the different steps. The motor impulses which are already
there have stirred up those different paths, and the reactions may take
place more readily and more securely.
We can
conceive of reactions arising with their different responses to these
objects, to what, in other words, we call the meanings of these objects.
The meaning of a chair is sitting down in it, the meaning of the hammer is
to drive a nail-and these responses can be innervated even though not
carried out. The innervation of these processes in the central nervous
system is perhaps necessary for what we call meaning.
18. THE SELF AND THE ORGANISM
Similarly, we normally organise
our memories upon the string of our self. If we date things we always date
them from the point of view of our past experiences. We frequently have
memories that we cannot date, that we cannot place. A picture comes before
us suddenly
and we are at a loss to explain when that experience originally took place.
We remember perfectly distinctly the picture, but we do not have it
definitely placed, and until we can place it in terms of our past
experience we are not satisfied.
The self has the characteristic
that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it
from other objects and from the body.
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...
... the bodily
experiences are for us organised about a self. The foot and hand belong to
the self.
par. 18.3]
It is the characteristic of the self as an object to itself that I want to
bring out. This characteristic is represented in the word "self," which is
a
reflexive, and indicates that which can
be both subject and object.
...
We use [the simple stimulus-response] mechanism to explain the
elaborate instincts of certain organisms [lower animals]. One set of
responses follows
another; the completion of one step brings the form into contact with
certain stimuli which set another free, and so on. Great elaborations of
this process are found, especially in the ants.
...
...
par. 18.1]
the language process is essential for the development of the self. The self
has a character which is different from that of the physiological organism
proper. 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. The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great
deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
...
One must... distinguish between the
experience that immediately takes place and our own organisation of it into
the experience of the self.
...
We do so intimately identify our
experiences... with the self that it
takes a moment... to realize that pain and pleasure can be there
without being the experience of the self.
...
par. 18.2]
We can distinguish very definitely between the self and the body. The body
can be there and can operate in a very intelligent fashion without there
being a self involved in the experience.
...
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...
| take a look at yourself! |
This type of object is essentially different from other objects, and in the past it has been distinguished as conscious, a term which Indicates an experience with, an experience of, one's self. It was assumed that consciousness in some way carried this capacity of being an object to itself.
| Mead is distinguishing between being conscious (which all animals are) and being conscious of self, or self-conscious, which he argues is the characteristic of being human |
In giving a behavioristic statement of consciousness we have to
look for some sort of experience in which the physical organism can become
an object to itself.(1)
19. THE BACKGROUND OF THE GENESIS OF THE SELF
par. 19.11]
... playing with an imaginary companion is only a peculiarly interesting
phase of ordinary play. Play in this sense, especially the stage which
precedes the organised games, is a play at something. A child plays at
being a mother, at being a teacher, at being a policeman; that is, it is
taking different roles, as we say. We have something that suggests this in
what we call the play of animals: a cat will play with her kittens, and
dogs play with each other... But we do not have in such a situation the
dogs taking a definite
role
in the sense that a child deliberately takes the role of another... When
a child does assume a role he has in himself the stimuli which call out
that particular response or group of responses. ... Children get together
to "play Indian." This means that the child has a certain set of stimuli
which call out in itself the responses that they would call out in others,
and which answer to an Indian. In the play period the child utilizes his
own responses to these stimuli which he makes use of in building a self.
The response which he has a tendency to make to these stimuli organises
them. He plays that he is, for instance, offering himself something, and he
buys it; he gives a letter to himself and takes it away; he addresses
himself as a parent, as a teacher; he
arrests himself as a policeman. He has a set of stimuli which call
out in himself the sort of responses they call out in others. He takes this
group of responses and organises them into a certain whole. Such is the
simplest form of being another to one's self. It involves a temporal
situation. The child says something in one character and responds in
another character, and then his responding in another character is a
stimulus to himself in the first character, and so the conversation goes
on. A certain organised structure arises in him and in his other which
replies to it, and these carry on the
conversation of gestures between
themselves. [See discussion]
24. MIND AS THE INDIVIDUAL IMPORTATION OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS
par. 24.1] I have been presenting the self and the mind in terms of a
social process, as the importation of the
conversation of gestures into the
conduct of the individual organism, so that the individual organism takes
these organized attitudes of the others called out by its own attitude, in
the form of its gestures, and in reacting to that response calls out other
organized attitudes in the others in the community to which the individual
belongs. This process can be characterized in a certain sense in terms of
the "I" and the "me," the "me" being that group of organized attitudes to
which the individual responds as an "I."
par. 24.2]
What I want particularly to emphasize is the temporal and logical
preexistence of the social process to the self-conscious individual that
arises in it. The
conversation of gestures is a
part of the social process which is going on. It is not something that the
individual alone makes possible. What the development of language,
especially the significant symbol, has rendered possible is just the taking
over of this external social situation into the conduct of the individual
himself. There follows from this the enormous development which belongs to
human society, the possibility of the prevision of what is going to take
place in the response of other individuals, and a preliminary adjustment to
this by the individual. These, in turn, produce a different social
situation which is again reflected in what I have termed the "me," so that
the individual himself takes a different attitude.
par. 24.7]
The mind is simply the interplay of such gestures in the form of
significant symbols. We must remember that the gesture is there only in its
relationship to the response, to the attitude. One would not have words
unless there were such responses. Language would never have arisen as a set
of bare arbitrary terms which were attached to certain stimuli. Words have
arisen out of a social interrelationship. One of Gulliver's tales was of a
community in which a machine was created into which the letters of the
alphabet could be mechanically fed in an endless number of combinations,
and then the members of the community gathered around to see how the
letters arranged after each rotation, on the theory that they might come in
the form of an Iliad or one of Shakespeare's plays, or some other great
work. The assumption back of this would be that symbols are entirely
independent of what we term their meaning. The assumption is baseless:
there cannot be symbols unless there are responses. There would not be a
call for assistance if there was not a tendency to respond to the cry of
distress. It is such significant symbols, in the sense of a sub-set of
social stimuli initiating a cooperative response, that do in a certain
sense constitute our mind, provided that not only the symbol but also the
responses are in our own nature. What the human being has succeeded in
doing is in organizing the response to a certain symbol which is a part of
the social act, so that he takes the attitude of the other person who
cooperates with him. It is that which gives him a mind.
34 THE
COMMUNITY AND THE
INSTITUTION
par. 34.1]
There are what I have termed "generalized social attitudes" which make an
organized self possible. In the community there are certain ways of
acting under situations which are essentially identical, and these ways of
acting on the part of anyone are those which we excite in others when we
take certain steps. If we assert our rights, we are calling for a definite
response just because they are rights that are universal - a response which
everyone should, and perhaps will, give. Now that response is present in
our own nature; in some degree we are ready to take that same attitude
toward somebody else if he makes the appeal. When we call out that response
in others, we can take the attitude of the other and then adjust our own
conduct to it. There are, then, whole series of such common responses in
the community in which we live, and such responses are what we term
"institutions." The institution represents a common response on the part of
all members of the community to a particular situation. This common
response is one which, of course, varies with the character of the
individual. In the case of theft the response of the sheriff is different
from that of the attorney-general, from that of the judge and the jurors,
and so forth; and yet they all are responses which maintain property, which
involve the recognition of the property right in others. There is a common
response in varied forms. And these variations, as illustrated in the
different officials, have an organization which gives unity to the variety
of the responses. One appeals to the policeman for assistance, one expects
the state's attorney to act, expects the court and its various
functionaries to carry out the process of the trial of the criminal. One
does take the attitude of all of these different officials as involved in
the very maintenance of property; all of them as an organized process are
in some sense found in our own natures. When we arouse such attitudes, we
are taking the attitude of what I have termed a " generalized other." Such
organized sets of response are related to each other; if one calls out one
such set of responses, he is implicitly calling out others as well.
par. 34.2] Thus the institutions of society are organized forms of group or
social activity - forms so organized that the individual members of society
can act adequately and socially by taking the attitudes of others toward
these activities. Oppressive, stereotyped, and ultra-conservative social
institutions - like the church - which by their more or less rigid and
inflexible unprogressiveness crush or blot out individuality, or discourage
any distinctive or original expressions of thought and behavior in the
individual selves or personalities implicated in and subjected to them, are
undesirable but not necessary outcomes of the general social process of
experience and behavior. There is no necessary or inevitable reason why
social institutions should be oppressive or rigidly conservative, or why
they should not rather be, as many are, flexible and progressive, fostering
individuality rather than discouraging it. In any case, without social
institutions of some sort, without the organized social attitudes and
activities by which social institutions are constituted, there could be no
fully mature individual selves or personalities at all; for the individuals
involved in the general social life-process of which social institutions
are organized manifestations can develop and possess fully mature selves or
personalities only in so far as each one of them reflects or prehends in
his individual experience these organized social attitudes and activities
which social institutions embody or represent. Social institutions, like
individual selves, are developments within, or particular and formalized
manifestations of, the social life-process at its human evolutionary level.
As such they are not necessarily subversive of individuality in the
individual members; and they do not necessarily represent or uphold narrow
definitions of certain fixed and specific patterns of acting which in any
given circumstances should characterize the behavior of all intelligent and
socially responsible individuals (in opposition to such unintelligent and
socially irresponsible individuals as morons and imbeciles), as members of
the given community or social group. On the contrary, they need to define
the social, or socially responsible, patterns of individual conduct in only
a very broad and general sense, affording plenty of scope for originality,
flexibility, and variety of such conduct; and as the main formalized
functional aspects or phases of the whole organized structure of the social
life-process at its human level they properly partake of the dynamic and
progressive character of that process.
par. 34.3] There are a great number of institutionalized responses which
are, we often say, arbitrary, such as the manners of a particular
community. Manners in their best sense, of course, cannot be distinguished
from morals, and are nothing but the expression of the courtesy of an
individual toward people about him. They ought to express the natural
courtesy of everyone to everyone else. There should be such an expression,
but of course a great many habits for the expression of courtesy are quite
arbitrary. The ways to greet people are different in different communities;
what is appropriate in one may be an offense in another. The question
arises whether a certain manner which expresses a courteous attitude may be
what we term "conventional." In answer to this we propose to distinguish
between manners and conventions. Conventions are isolated social responses
which would not come into, or go to make up, the nature of the community in
its essential character as this expresses itself in the social reactions. A
source of confusion would lie in identifying manners and morals with
conventions, since the former are not arbitrary in the sense that
conventions are. Thus conservatives identify what is a pure convention with
the essence of a social situation; nothing must be changed. But the very
distinction to which I have referred is one which implies that these
various institutions, as social responses to situations in which
individuals are carrying out social acts, are organically related to each
other in a way which conventions are not.
par. 34.4]
Such interrelation is one of the points which is brought out, for example,
in the economic interpretation of history. It was first presented more or
less as a party doctrine by the Marxian socialists, implying a particular
economic interpretation. It has now passed over into the historian's
technique with a recognition that if he can get hold of the real economic
situation, which is, of course, more accessible than most social
expressions, he can work out from that to the other expressions and
institutions of the community. Medieval economic institutions enable one to
interpret the other institutions of the period. One can get at the economic
situation directly and, following that out, can find what the other
institutions were, or must have been. Institutions, manners, or words,
present in a certain sense the life-habits of the community as such; and
when all individual acts toward others in, say, economic terms, he is
calling out not simply a single response but a whole group of related
responses.
par. 34.5] The same situation prevails in a physiological organism. If the
balance of a person who is standing is disturbed, this calls for a
readjustment which is possible only in so far as the affected parts of the
nervous system lead to certain definite and interconnected responses. The
different parts of the reaction can be isolated, but the organism has to
act as a whole. Now it is true that an individual living in society lives
in a certain sort of organism which reacts toward him as a whole) and he
calls out by his action this more or less organized response. There is
perhaps under his attention only some very minor fraction of this organized
response-he considers, say, only the passage of a certain amount of money.
But that exchange could not take place without the entire economic
organization, and that in turn involves all the other phases of the group
life. The individual can go any time from one phase to the others, since he
has in his own nature the type of response which his action calls for. In
taking any institutionalized attitude he organizes in some degree the whole
social process, in proportion as he is a complete self.
...
par. 19.3]
We sometimes speak as if a person could build up an entire argument in his
mind, and then put it into words to convey it to someone else. Actually,
our thinking always takes place by means of some sort of symbols. It is
possible that one could have the meaning of "chair" in his experience
without there being a symbol, but we would not be thinking about it in that
case. We may sit down in a chair without thinking about what we are doing,
that is, the approach to the chair is presumably already aroused in our
experience, so that the meaning is there. But if one is thinking about the
chair he must have some sort of a symbol for it. It may be the form of the
chair, it may be the attitude that somebody else takes in sitting down, but
it is more apt to be some language symbol that arouses this response. In a
thought process there has to be some sort of a symbol that can refer to
this meaning, that is, tend to call out this response, and also serve this
purpose for other persons as well. It would not be a thought process if
that were not the case.
...
[pages 186- ]
...
par. 24.6]
There has to be a life-process going on in order to have the differentiated
cells; in the same way there has to be a social process going on in order
that there may be individuals. It is just as true in society as it is in
the physiological situation that there could not be the individual if there
was not the process of which he is a part. Given such a social process,
there is the possibility of human intelligence when this social process, in
terms of the
conversation of gestures, is taken over into the conduct of
the individual-and then there arises, of course, a different type of
individual in terms of the responses now possible. There might conceivably
be an individual who simply plays as the child does, without getting into a
social game; but the human individual is possible because there is a social
process in which it can function responsibly. The attitudes are parts of
the social reaction; the cries would not maintain themselves as vocal
gestures unless they did call out certain responses in the others; the
attitude itself could only exist as such in this interplay of gestures.
[pages 260- ]
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