Journal of the History of Philosophy

238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY W. Kang. G. H. Mead's Concept of Rationali~: A Study of the Use of Symbols and Other Implements. The Hague: Mouton, 1976. Pp. 219. Professor Kang speaks of "Mead's unfinished, unsystematized works" (p. 25); and certainly the assessment of Mead's accomplishment is made more difficult by the fact that he published relatively little of his major research and that much of what he left was in incomplete form. On the other hand, so far as I know, the bulk of his production, with the exception of a few manuscripts still in private hands, is readily available to scholars. Hence we have the basic materials for whatever use we can make of his philosophical endeavors. Mead is not likely to receive anything like the attention accorded so prolific a writer as Dewey, as evidenced by the monumental Dewey Project at Southern Illinois University. Nor is he likely to inspire the kind of intensive research the voluminous papers of Peirce have attracted and that is being promoted currently by the Peirce projects at Texas Tech University and Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. But the publications of David Miller's recent book on Mead I and now of Kang's study mark the continuing importance of Mead's thought for contemporary philosophical problems. The present volume is an interpretation of Mead's work as an anthropological theory of reason, stated in the language and style of contemporary semiotics. Instead of viewing Mead as a social psychologist in terms of mind, self, and society, Kang presents him as a philosopher of science in terms of scientific method, actual situation, and social behaviorism, thereby moving the explication in the direction of a language of process rather than one of entities. The author summarizes the intent of his shift of focus on pages 50-51: The re-interpretation of his works given in this study shows that his theory of symbolic process in terms of the concept of "generalized other" explains what may be regarded as the "necessary" condition of rationality, while his theory of implemental process in terms of the generalized concept of scientific method explains what may be regarded as its "sufficient" condition. The three theses Kang selects as basic to Mead's theory of rationality are exhibited first in his analysis of implementation and then in that of symbolic process. He points out that Mead distinguishes human behavior by the evolved necessity for mediation between biological impulses and fulfillment in consummatory ends. Implementation is therefore both physiological (impulses) and social (objects). Culture emerges as mediate phases of acts are preserved in prefabricated implements . Some forms of premediation become widespread and, as inherited patterns of responses , are what we call institutions. Other mediations are perpetuated in less pervasive, more flexible forms as what Mead calls method. Functional implementation exists as serviceable institutions or as methodic processes which serve to unify problematic situations and to generalize solutions. Functional method is the method of science in a generalized perspective, and a central theme in this book is that rationality is the practice of scientific method in the whole range of human behavior. Symbolic implemental processes are, of course, basic in Mead's philosophy as essential to the unification and generalization attained by rationality; and Kang discusses Mead's behavioral theory of symbols in relation to meaning interpreted as denotation (common objects) and connotation (common responses) and in relation to function as reflexive and regulative. Reflexive function corresponds to Mead's "taking the role of the other," and regulative function to his "taking the role of the generalized other." For Kang, an important consideration in this connection is that unity or generality of judgment or perception within Mead's framework is a problem of the reflexi GeorgeHerbert Mead: Self, Language, and the Worm(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). BOOK REVIEWS 239 ive and regulative processes, not one of an ego or self. And rationality, on this view, is a matter of social acts of premediate implementation (institutions) and of social acts of methodic process (inquiries). The act situation which Kang asserts as the ground of Mead's realism involves the context within which problems arise and are resolved...