The shift in focus has changed the nature of the Project in a way which we hadn't expected and didn't really notice until this revision. Back in the late 1980s, we started the project as a "work around" for a situation that we found personally frustrating. We believed that widely-held beliefs about Mead's ideas were misinterpretations. But his published statements were often difficult to obtain. It was easier for scholars to rely from the secondary literature about Mead than (...) to consult primary sources. As a result, those frustrating misinterpretations persisted. Our solution: republish as much of Mead as possible in machine-readable form to make distribution, familiarity, and study easier. When the Web was established, we abandon plans for a CD and prepared the documents for the new medium. George's Page was born. (shrink)
Mead is an exceptional case amongst sociological classics in that, until now, there has been no comprehensive reader of his work. As the first one-volume, comprehensive edited collection of Mead’s published and unpublished writing, this book fills this gap. It is the first to critically assess all of Mead's writings and draw out the aspects that are central to his system of thought. The book is divided into three parts (social psychology, science and epistemology, and democratic politics), (...) comprising a total of 30 chapters - a third of which are published here for the first time. (shrink)
The only collection of Mead's writings published during his lifetime, these essays have heretofore been virtually inaccessible. Reck has collected twenty-five essays representing the full range and depth of Mead's thought. This penetrating volume will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology, and social psychology. "The editor's well-organized introduction supplies an excellent outline of this system in its development. In view of the scattered sources from which these writings are gathered, it is a great service that this (...) volume renders not only to students of Mead, but to historians."--H. W. Schneider, Journal of the History of Philosophy. (shrink)
George H. Mead and Alfred Schutz proposed foundations for an interpretative sociology from opposite standpoints. Mead accepted the objective meaning structure a priori. His problem became therefore the explanation of the individuality and creativity of human actors in his social behavioristic approach. In contrast, Schutz started from the subjective consciousness of an isolated actor as a result of a phenomenological reduction. He was concerned with the problem of explaining the possibility of this isolated actor’s perceiving other actors in (...) their existence, their concreteness, and the motives for their behavior. I treat these two approaches and their associated problems as equally relevant. My evaluation is based on their success in solving their specific problems. The aim is to decide which of the two approaches provides the more adequate foundation for an interpretative sociology. (shrink)
G. H. Mead developed an alternative "metaphysics" of selfhood and agency that underlies, but is seldom made explicit in discussions of, his social developmental psychology. This is an alternative metaphysics that rejects any pregiven, fixed foundations for being and knowing. It assumes the emergence of social psychological phenomena such as mind, self, and deliberative agency through the activity of human actors and interactors within their biophysical and sociocultural world. Of central importance to the emergence of self-consciousness and deliberative forms (...) of human agency is the ability of developing individuals to take the perspectives of others within their own conduct. However, precisely what is involved in this process, and whether or not it assumes the preexistence of exactly those forms of selfhood and agency, the emergence of which it seeks to explain, have been much disputed. In this essay, recent reinterpretations of Mead's "metaphysics" are used to argue that his overall theoretical program contains resources necessary to overcome charges of ontological and epistemological circularity. In particular, once his interactionism, perspectivism, emergentism, and compatibilism are explicated, it is possible to see that Mead's "taking the perspective of the other" is not primarily a process of internalization that requires a preexisting "internalizer," but a process of participation with others within conventionalized sequences of interactivity. This participatory process enables the development of prereflective forms of perspective taking and self-other differentiation that serve as necessary conditions for the further emergence of more reflective forms of perspective taking, self-consciousness, and deliberative agency. Compatibilist interpretations of deliberative agency, thus understood, also are discussed. (shrink)
The following analysis demonstrates that G.H. Mead's understanding of human speech (what Mead often referred to as “the vocal gesture”) is remarkably consistent with today's interdisciplinary field that studies speech as a natural behavior with an evolutionary history. Mead seems to have captured major empirical and theoretical insights more than half a century before the contemporary field began to take shape. In that field the framework known as “Tinbergen's Four Questions,” developed in ecology to study naturally occurring (...) behavior in nonhuman animals, has been an effective organizing framework for research on human speech. It is used in this paper to organize the comparison of Mead with contemporary scholars. The analysis concludes that Mead was, in a sense, “beyond” the Four Questions by recognizing the limitations of reductionist methods in understanding the nature of conscious phenomena, especially language. Mead's socially situated model of the nature of human speech makes him relevant to today's field where some see an undervaluation of the treatment of language as a social process. (shrink)
George Herbert Mead's early lectures at the University of Chicago are more important to understanding the genesis of his views in social psychology than some commentators, such as Hans Joas, have emphasized. Mead's lecture series "The Evolution of the Psychical Element," preserved through the notes of student H. Heath Bawden, demonstrate his devotion to Hegelianism as a method of thinking and how this influenced his non-reductionistic approach to functional psychology. In addition, Mead's breadth of historical knowledge as (...) well as his commitments in the natural and social sciences are on display here, culminating in the Darwinian observation that human animals only achieve the degree of control they have over their environment by the achievement of social organization. (shrink)
George Herbert Mead's lectures at the University of Chicago are more important to understanding Mead's views on social psychology than some commentators, such as Hans Joas, have emphasized. Mead's 1898-99 lecture series, preserved through the notes of his student H. Heath Bawden, demonstrate his devotion to Hegelianism as a method of thinking and how this influenced his non-reductive approach to functionalist psychology. In addition, Mead's breadth of historical knowledge and his commitments in the natural and social (...) sciences are on display here, culminating in the Darwinian observation that human animals only achieve the degree of control they have over their environment by the achievement of social organization. (shrink)
G. H. Mead's model of language and mind, while perhaps understandable at the time it was written, now seems inadequate. First, the research evidence strongly suggests that mental operations exist prior to language onset, conversation of gestures, or social interaction. Second, language is not just significant symbols; it requires syntax. Third, syntax seems to be part of our bioinheritance, that is, part of our presocial mind/brain-what Noam Chomsky has called our language faculty. Fourth, this means syntax probably is not (...) learned nor a social construction that is internalized as a cultural template. Fifth, this suggests a basic reversal of the prevailing model of symbolic interaction, mind, language, and perhaps the self as well, although there has not been the time or space to engage that topic here. Therefore, symbolic interaction may turn out to be a more Chomskyan than Meadian process. Given the bioinheritance of our mind/brain we are able to engage in symbolic interaction; it does not appear that symbolic interaction creates our mind or the basic computational algorithms of language. (shrink)
This paper analyses the model of interaction at the heart of Axel Honneth's social philosophy. It argues that interaction in his mature ethics of recognition has been reduced to intercourse between human persons and that the role of nature is now missing from it. The ethics of recognition takes into account neither the material dimensions of individual and social action, nor the normative meaning of non-human persons and natural environments. The loss of nature in the mature ethics of recognition is (...) made visible through a comparison with Honneth's initial formulation of his project. As an anthropology of intersubjectivity combining the teaching of the German philosophical anthropologists and G.H. Mead, his first model sought to ground social theory in the natural preconditions of human action. The last part of the article argues that a return to Mead's theory of practical intersubjectivity informed by Merleau-Ponty's germane theory of intercorporeity provides essential conceptual tools to enable the integration of the natural and the material within the theory of recognition. (shrink)
Metatheoretical codifications of the sociological writings of George H. Mead, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Alfred Schutz highlight the importance of the idea of life and of a commitment to a realist perspective. The authors turn common concern with the life concept in three directions: evolutionary emergence, historical rationality, and phenomenological analysis. In spite of differences, these directions share an empirically grounded starting point in the situated individual and its environment, and end with suggestions for a universalist rationality. Preliminary (...) metatheoretical principles from these authors offer a start toward a vital realist sociology fitted to the universal conditions of social life. (shrink)
A focus on the relation between sensation and the perceptual object in the philosophies of G H Mead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty points toward their shared views of perception as non-reductionistic and holistic, as inextricably tied to the active role of the sensible body, and as involving a new understanding of the nature of immediacy within experience. This essay explores these shared views.
Abstract: A cognitive?developmental approach to the phenomenon of empathy attempts to describe the age related (but not age specific) development of empathic understanding as a function of the development of basic social?cognitive processes and concepts. Recent research indicates that there are developmental levels in the process by which the child comes to know how his own view of self and other relates to the view of other (social perspective?taking) and related levels in conceptions of persons. Drawing upon our own research (...) as well as the theory of J. M. Baldwin, G. H. Mead, and L. Kohlberg, we describe these developing processes and concepts and hypothesize as to the relation of social perspective?taking to each level of developing forms of empathic understanding. (shrink)
With his recent introduction of `posthumanism, " a decentered variant of constructivist sociology of science, Andrew Pickering advertises novel conceptual resources for social theorists. In fact, he tenders nothing less than a fundamental reordering of social thought. By invoking the concept of "material agency, " Pickering seeks to redefine the relationship between "Nature" and "Society," while dismissing the "humanist bias" inherent in sociological inquiry. However, for all its ambition and good intentions, posthumanism delivers only analytical inconsistencies, the consequences of an (...) uneasy synthesis of pragmatist and poststructuralist influences. When translated into the language of conventional sociological theory, these problems surface as an inadequate treatment of human agency. The works of the original pragmatists, particularly C.S. Peirce and G.H. Mead, illustrate how the objectives of posthumanism can be achieved without decentering, suggesting a renewed appreciation of "humanist" sociologies. (shrink)
This monograph examines the past, present, and potential relationship between American pragmatism and communication research. The contributors provide a bridge between communication studies and philosophy, subjects often developed somewhat in isolation from each other. Addressing topics, such as qualitative and quantitative research, ethics, media research, and feminist studies, the chapters in this volume: *discuss how a pragmatic, Darwinian approach to inquiry has guided and might further guide communication research; *advocate a functional view of communication, based on Dewey's mature notion of (...) transaction; *articulate a pragmatist's aesthetics and connect it to Deweyan democracy; *discuss the similarities and differences between Dewey's notion of inquiry and the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer; *apply accommodation theory, linked to symbolic interactionism and more generally to the social behaviorism of George H. Mead and his followers, to media research; *interpret media-effects evidence in light of pragmatist ideas about inquiry; and *argue that pragmatism theorizes about despair and life's sense of the tragic. This book is written to be readily accessible to students and professional academics within and outside the field of communication studies without extensive training in specialized areas of communication study. (shrink)
G.H. Mead and A.N. Whitehead agree that all causation occurs in a present, that the self is social, and that philosophical description of the new physics of relativity and quantum mechanics is a complicated task. I explore this complexity in relation to the knowledge of events unable to be observed here and now, especially past historical events. The integration of the two philosophers’ views is shown in reference to Whitehead’s criteria of respect for facts and coherence. By reference to (...) the work of Palmyre Oomen I show the inconsistency of Whitehead’s treatment of the prehensibility of God’s consequent nature with his claim thatGod is not an exception to the metaphysical principles. The integration of Mead’s and Whitehead’s views permits plausible talk about past, present, and futureconsisent with our scientific knowledge. (shrink)
The need for a recovery of philosophy, by J. Dewey.--Reformation of logic, by A. W. Moore.--Intelligence and mathematics, by H. C. Brown.--Scientific method and individual thinker, by G. H. Mead.--Consciousness and psychology, by B. H. Bode.--The phases of the economic interest, by H. W. Stuart.--The moral life and the construction of values and standards, by J. H. Tufts.--Value and existence in philosophy, art, and religion, by H. M. Kallen.
Josiah Royce (1855-1916), philosopher of community, taught that social consciousness arises from ego-alter contrasts and is guided by taboos and, before George H. Mead, by reciprocal gestures. A major Roycean contribution was his five conditions for coexperiencing consciousness of genuine community. Related to Freud (via Putnam), Royce did early work on âidentification theoryâ and helped midwife psychotherapy’s birth in America. Contrasting with William James’s basic differentiation of consciousness according to the quality of its contents (feeling, thought, and conduct), Royce (...) preferred a norm of increasing self-agency (shown in sensitivity, docility, and initiative). The temperaments of James as artist and of Royce as rational interpreter differentiated their approaches to psychology. (shrink)
Placing Goodenough and Deacon’s “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality” against the background of the ethical naturalism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British moral theory, Yeager highlights the contribution the authors make to the moral sense tradition as well as indicating the limitations of such accounts of moral agency, judgment, and conduct. Yeager also identifies two strands of the essay that seem to open toward a more comprehensive account than the authors actually give. The first concerns the “interplay between self-interest and (...) pro-sociality,” and the other concerns the ethical implications of coevolution. On the latter point, the work of G. H. Mead is offered as an illuminating contrast. (shrink)
The Foundations of Pragmatism in American Thought Series offers two sets of volumes containing the most significant defenses and critiques of pragmatism written before World War I: the Early Defenders of Pragmatism and Early Critics of Pragmatism . This, the first collection, Early Defenders , provides key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism’s years of greatest vitality. The early defenders were products of pragmatism’s three cradles. H. Heath Bawden was a graduate of the Chicago philosophy department, having studied with (...) John Dewey and George Mead. John E. Boodin and Horace M. Kallen earned their Ph.Ds with William James and Josiah Royce at Harvard. D. L. Murray and Howard V. Knox were independent scholars and writers inspired by F. C. S. Schiller’s humanistic pragmatism at Oxford. This collection brings together the central texts of the movement along with a representative selection of the secondary texts, reviews and responses, they elicited. Each volume features a newly-commissioned introduction by a leading scholar of American pragmatism. --five central texts reproduced in facsimile, accompanied by the main responses and replies, reset in new typography --scattered and scarce works available together for the first time --new introductions to each volume by leading scholars of American pragmatism. (shrink)
Asset egalitarianism is a new agenda but an old idea. At its root is the notion that every citizen should be able to have an individual property stake, and it has recently been revived in Britain and in the U.S. in a number of proposals aimed at countering the huge and growing inequality in the distribution of assets. Such asset egalitarianism is fed from many streams; it has a long history in civic republican thought, beginning with Thomas Paine and Thomas (...) Jefferson, but has also featured in the distributist theories of G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; the guild socialism of G.D.H. Cole and the ethical socialism of R.H. Tawney; the market liberalism of the Ordo Liberals and some of the Austrian School, particularly F.A. Hayek; and more recently the market socialism of James Meade, A.B. Atkinson and Julian Le Grand, and the market egalitarianism of Michael Sherraden, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Richard Freeman and Bruce Ackerman. There are also important links to the proponents of a citizens' income as a different approach to the welfare state (White 2002) as well as to the ideas of stakeholding (Dowding et al. 2003). (shrink)
