• LECTURE on G.H.

Mead, Mind, Self, Society from the Standpoint of a

Social Behaviorist, ed. Charles Morris (Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1972).
Introduction

In this book, Mead’s central thesis is that “minds and selves are social products.” Mead
was essentially trying to fit the philosophical conception of the mind with the context of the
generally accepted thesis about evolutionary development, in which mind is seen to arise within
the interactivity of the organism and the environment.
Mead’s philosophical commitment was to Pragmatism, the view that sees truth in terms
of what works in the tradition of C.S. Pierce, William James, and John Dewey. For him,
pragmatism represents an advance over the transcendentalism of Christian and other God-
centered doctrines. He emphasized the priority of the experimental method, which, coupled
with the values of democracy, results to a practical philosophy as having a doubled concern with
fact and value.

Definition of Social Psychology

• Mead was aptly described as a “social psychologist.” Social psychology “is interested in
the effect which the social group has in the determination of the experience and conduct
of the individual member” (1). It can be considered as a branch of general psychology.
• Defined, SP is “the study of the experience and behavior of the individual organism or self
in its dependence upon the social group to which it belongs” (ibid.).
• His own position is called a social behaviorism and not an individualistic and
subcutaneous one.
• Influenced by Wilhelm Wundt, he isolated the concept of the gesture by the seeing the
social context in which it functions, instead of being “expressions of emotion” in the
Darwinian sense.
• Mead specifically thinks of gestures in social terms and from them traces the
development of genuine language communication.
• His distinctive contribution consists in answering the following: “How do minds and
selves arose within conduct?”
• He thus criticizes two ideas:
o That there were already minds or selves before the social process happens
o The early social psychologists were not able to isolate the social mechanism
involved in minds and selves were formed.
• For Mead, the mind is socially constituted through a language mechanism by and in
which the self-as-conscious of itself appears as an object.
• Before this a language however, there are physiological prerequisites for developing these
language symbols; humans cannot develop linguistic symbols without being able to
respond to non-linguistic, and so non-social, signs.
• In simple words, minds and selves are generated in a social process which is called
language. This means that without language, humans would not be able to constitute
themselves as thinking beings and as self-conscious subjects or selves. We become aware
of a thinking self only through language; without language, as a medium of social
 communication, we would not be aware that we are the selves that we are, as separate
from other selves.
• The use of the word “I” serves as a linguistic marker that tells us that the self is
constituted precisely through language and through language, by virtue of our social
interactions with other people. Language is essentially a social act that grounds the
genesis of individual minds and selves.
• So for Mead, social psychology means that sociology and psychology are united upon a
common biological basis; social psychology is grounded upon a social behaviorism.
• On this basis, he was able to trace the relation between impulse and rationality, and how
man the rational animal was able to actualize himself as a thinking being capable of
abstract reasoning, purposive behavior, and morality.

The Minded Organism

• The transition from the biologic individual to the minded organism or self takes place
through the medium of language. Language, in turn, presupposes the existence of a
certain society and certain physiological capacities on the part of the individual.
• Through the analysis of gestures, Mead concludes that the behavior of an individual
organism is determined in relation to what the other individual is beginning to do. This
means that the formation of consciousness or the mind, the mental apparatus, only really
begins when there is a situation when the human organism is already in an interactive
context with other individual organisms.
• To give an example, he gives the example of a boxing match (with reference to a dog
fight) in which the behavior of one boxer is determined (beforehand) in relation to what
the other boxer is beginning to do. What this means is that our behavior, which is
determined by what and how we think, is shaped by what others are already doing in
specific contexts.
• Action is therefore a type of communication. What they communicate are certain sets of
responses that the other organism must act or perform as a response to one’s own
gestures. Actions of organisms are therefore symbolic, since they stand for, or indicate,
and cause a specific mode of action to arise in the social interaction.
• Example: when somebody waves his hand to ask to you to come closer, or to say “hi” or
wave “goodbye.”
• At the same time, not only definite responses are expected but also definite objects are
also expected to be involved in the same act or gesture, e.g., hand that shows “to eat” or
“to drink.” Actions have meaning also in reference to the definite sets of objects in the
real world that they solicit.
• These meanings are not only dependent on the private, subjective, or purely mental. On
the contrary, they are objectively there in the social situation.

Language as a set of significant gestures or symbols

• Having a definite set of responses to a particular gesture as stimulus, however, is not

language proper. For “mind” to exist, i.e., for a thinking self to emerge, the actions or
gestures must become significant symbols or gestures.
 • “The individual must know what he is about; he himself, and not merely those who
respond to him, must be able to interpret the meaning of his own gesture.”
• This way, the biologic individual can utilize his own gesture and response of the other in
order to control his own further conduct.
• Gestures become significant symbols when man becomes aware of the different roles
that he can use to regulate his conduct. Hence, Mead’s assertion that man is essentially
the “role-taking animal.”
• “The calling out of the same response in both the self and the other gives the common
content necessary for [a] community of meaning.” E.g., When somebody shouts “Fire,”
the vocal gesture becomes a significant symbol: the one who shouts knows what the
gesture is all about and he is expecting others to respond accordingly to the meaning of
that gesture. This is what we call already as genuine language, i.e., when he has begun to
use symbols, he has now acquired a mind.
• The vocal gesture is the fountainhead of all language proper and all derivative forms of
symbolism and so of mind.

Mind

• “Mind is the presence in behavior of significant symbols. It is the internalization within

the individual of the social process of communication in which meaning emerges. It is the
ability to indicate to one’s self the response (and implicated objects) that one’s gesture
indicates to others, and to control the response itself in these terms.”
• In the significant gesture (e.g., shouting “Fire!”), there is the meaning which individual
organisms themselves have already internalized from the earlier stages of non-significant,
stages of gestural communications.
• So, we see here the process how Mead proceeds: from the social process objectively
considered to the individual’s internalization of the meaning of gestures through
symbolic interaction, e.g., voice. “The individual has already taken the social act unto
himself.”
• Mind therefore, is essentially social. This is evident that we cannot even think without
resorting to images or ideas that have not been previously given to us through the
medium of others.
• This is the transition from impulse to rationality. No other animal can do that (although
he does not close himself to the physical, biological possibilities that other animals may
also be able to do that—dogs, parrots, etc.?).

Self

• The distinguishing trait of selfhood resides in the capacity of the minded organism to be
an object to itself. This is what we call self-consciousness.
• Man is not limited to understanding symbolic gestures, but more importantly, he is
capable of understanding himself as the bearer of a self-conscious life.
• This is exhibited in our human capacity for “role-taking” which is grounded in our
capacity for symbolic language.
 • Insofar as we can take the role of the other, we can make ourselves an object for
ourselves. It is thus only in the social process that selves can arise, that is, “selves as
beings who can become conscious of themselves.”

Two stages in the development of the self

o Play – the child simply assumes one role after another of persons and animals that
have in some way or other entered into its life. There is the assumption of attitudes
through gestures.
o Game – one has acquired, as with the others implicated in the common activity,
within one’s self the whole organized activity in order to successfully play one’s own
part. The role assumed is not only that of a specific other, but of any other
participating in the game; he has generalized the attitude of role taking; he has taken
the attitude of the “generalized other.”

The “ME” and “I”

• Is constituted by all the attitudes of the others organized and taken over into oneself.
Here, the self is a reflection of the social structure.
• For Mead, however, the self must not be limited to the “me.”
• The complete self is constituted both by the “I” and “me.” The “I” is the principle of
action and impulse; and in its action it changes the social structure. This means that the
self is more complete as a principle of responsible agency.
• The self, to use John Dewey’s phrase, is a “reconstructive center of society.”

Conclusion

• Through the social process, the biologic individual of proper organic stuff gets a mind
and a self. It is through society that the impulsive animal becomes rational.
• Through the internalization of symbolic communication, man acquires the power for
reflective thought, that is, the ability to properly determine his own course of action
based on foreseen consequences, practically, scientifically, and morally in the world.
• Man is therefore the central principle of social organization, one which is able to effect a
technique or mechanism of social control and eventual transformation.
• From a pragmatic standpoint, Mead’s philosophy of the mind and self can become a
radical springboard for a radical and transformative social action.
• The self is therefore essentially a social being who must act in moral or ethical terms, for
the good of all since it is also for his own good.
• “Moral action is intelligent, socially directed action in which one acts with the interests
of others as well as one’s self in mind. The appeal is not from interest to reason, but from
isolated interests to the interest in the social system of interests in which one’s behavior
is implicated.” – core of Mead’s ethical theory.
• “The right act, as relative to the situation, is nevertheless objective and universal in that
it demands the assent of all rational beings. The right is neither subjective caprice nor a
timeless essence; its universality is a social universality.”
 • Ultimately, this is how Mead would think of a democratic society: it is one on which the
responsibility of one is exercised within a framework of social institutions that all work
for the betterment of all human beings within the society: “each should realize himself
through moral participation in a co-operative process.”
• This is also a model for internationalism. Nations can help one another in a democratic
process that serves the good of all humanity.
• The idea of a moral selfhood applies just as much to nations as it applies to individual
persons.