Reading :: Mind, Self, and Society

Mind, Self, and Society

By George Herbert Mead

I read this book (Kindle edition, so I refer to locations rather than pages) quite a while ago, but have not gotten around to reviewing it until now. As with most of my other reading over the last few years, this one relates to Vygotsky, who read and was influenced by Mead. I don't think Vygotsky read this specific book—it was put together posthumously by Mead's students after he died in 1934, the same year Vygotsky died—but I can see how their lines of thought paralleled.

"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," Mead begins (loc. 11). And "Social psychology studies the activity or behavior of the individual as it lies within the social process; the behavior of an individual can be understood only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member, since his individual acts are involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group" (loc.75). Thus "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. The social act is not explained by building it up out of stimulus plus response; it must be taken as a dynamic whole-as something going on-no part of which can be considered or understood by itself-a complex organic process implied by each individual stimulus and response involved in it" (loc. 88)

In Chapter 3, in a discussion of gestures, Mead argues that language works within a complex of conditioned reflexes—in fact, language gives us control over the organization of our actions around a referent (loc.176 — compare this characterization to Vygotsky's early formulation of consciousness as a reflex of reflexes). Mead saw language as emerging from social behavior rather than being a prrequisite (loc. 240). Later, in Ch.7, he argues, "Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience-not communication through mind" (loc. 691). 

Consequently, as he argues in Ch.11, "objects are in a genuine sense constituted within the social process of experience, by the communication and mutual adjustment of behavior among the individual organisms which are involved in that process and which carry it on. just as in fencing the parry is an interpretation of the thrust, so, in the social act, the adjustive response of one organism to the gesture of another is the interpretation of that gesture by that organism-it is the meaning of that gesture" (loc. 1108). And here he sounds quite externalist:

The basis of meaning is thus objectively there in social conduct, or in nature in its relation to such conduct. Meaning is a content of an object which is dependent upon the relation of an organism or group of organisms to it. It is not essentially or primarily a psychical content (a content of mind or consciousness), for it need not be conscious at all, and is not in fact until significant symbols are evolved in the process of human social experience. Only when it becomes identified with such symbols does meaning become conscious. The meaning of a gesture on the part of one organism is the adjustive response of another organism to it, as indicating the resultant of the social act it initiates, the adjustive response of the second organism being itself directed toward or related to the completion of that act. In other words, meaning involves a reference of the gesture of one organism to the resultant of the social act it indicates or initiates, as adjustively responded to in this reference by another organism; and the adjustive response of the other organism is the meaning of the gesture (loc. 1132). 

In Ch.13, Mead refers to the executive function of voluntary attention, though not by that name: "Man is distinguished by that power of analysis of the field of stimulation which enables him to pick out one stimulus rather than another and so to hold on to the response that belongs to that stimulus, picking it out from others, and recombining it with others" (loc. 1327).

This brings us to this great quote from Ch.16: "The whole process is not a mental product and you cannot put it inside of the brain. Mentality is that relationship of the organism to the situation which is mediated by sets of symbols" (loc.1780). 

He continues this line of thought in Ch.17, in which he sounds a bit like Vygotsky and a bit like Bateson: "The organism, then, is in a sense responsible for its environment. And since organism and environment determine each other and are mutually dependent for their existence, it follows that the life-process, to be adequately understood, must be considered in terms of their interrelations" (loc. 1849). And:

The processes of experience which the human brain makes possible are made possible only for a group of interacting individuals: only for individual organisms which are members of a society; not for the individual organism in isolation from other individual organisms.

Mind arises in the social process only when that process as a whole enters into, or is present in, the experience of any one of the given individuals involved in that process. When this occurs the individual becomes self-conscious and has a mind; he becomes aware of his relations to that process as a whole, and to the other individuals participating in it with him; he becomes aware of that process as modified by the reactions and interactions of the individuals-including himself-who are carrying it on. The evolutionary appearance of mind or intelligence takes place when the whole social process of experience and behavior is brought within the experience of any one of the separate individuals implicated therein, and when the individual's adjustment to the process is modified and refined by the awareness or consciousness which he thus has of it. It is by means of reflexiveness-the turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself-that the whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means, which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other toward himself, that the individual is able consciously to adjust himself to that process, and to modify the resultant of that process in any given social act in terms of his adjustment to it. Reflexiveness, then, is the essential condition, within the social process, for the development of mind. (loc. 1906)

And let's stop there. As I mentioned, Mead's thought clearly parallels Vygotsky's in terms of a social, sign-mediated mind. On the other hand, he is not working under (some might say burdened with) a dialectical materialist framework, and consequently he sounds a bit more like Bakhtin in some places and Bateson in others. Overall, fascinating—and I really ought to read more Mead.