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Mind, Self and Society (Mead, 1934)
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from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist
 
 
JLJ - The mind from a practical rather than theoretical point of view - exactly what you need when considering the concept of a machine playing a game. The value lies in the common sense approach - everything Mead says is self-evident. Tremendous value here. We have a powerful intellect examining the concept of the self and obvious applications to game theory.
 
The introduction to this work is a great summary and should not be skipped.

v The following pages present the larger outlines of George H. Mead's system of social psychology.
 
v-vi The present volume... provides the natural entrance into the intellectual world of George H. Mead. None of the material here used has been previously published. The volume is in the main composed of two sets of excellent student notes on the course, together with excerpts from other such notes and selections from unpublished manuscripts left by Mr. Mead. A stenographic copy of the 1927 course in social psychology has been taken as basic... Mr. Mead's lectures (always delivered without notes)... it is certainly as adequate and as faithful a record as has been left of a great thinker's last years.
 
xiv Mead's endeavor is to show that mind and the self are without residue social emergents; and that language, in the form of the vocal gesture, provides the mechanism for their emergence.
 
xxiv The person here has not merely assumed the role of a specific other, but of any other participating in the common activity; he has generalized the attitude of role-taking. In one of Mead's happiest terms and most fertile concepts he has taken the attitude or role of the "generalized other."
 
xxx The emergent and temporalistic aspects of the pragmatic position are not at odds with whatever constancy the world as experienced does in fact reveal, nor with whatever formalism logic and mathematics are able to obtain. Pragmatism merely wishes to avoid fanaticism in these matters. It counsels sanity toward the mutual principles of being and becoming
 
xxxi Mead, in common with all pragmatists since James, held an interest theory of value: that is good which satisfies an interest or impulse.
 
xxxv George H. Mead's extraordinarily fertile ideas have not merely given him a secure place among the creators of social psychology, led to social and ethical theories of interest, and provided a matrix for a significant expansion of pragmatism in the form of "the philosophy of the act," but they give every indication of having within themselves the power to enrich the concepts of the social sciences, to suggest new avenues of empirical investigation, and to open new horizons for philosophical interpretation. -Charles W. Morris
 
p.15 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.

p.46 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 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

p.47 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

p.47-48 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.

p.50  Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience... communication is fundamental to the nature of what we term "mind"

p.63 To illustrate this further let us go back to the conversation of gestures in the dog-fight. There the stimulus which one dog gets from the other is to a response which is different from the response of the stimulating form. One dog is attacking the other, and is ready to spring at the other dog's throat; the reply on the part of the second dog is to change its position, perhaps to spring at the throat of the first dog. There is a conversation of gestures, a reciprocal shifting of the dogs' positions and attitudes.
 
p.80 The logical structure of meaning, we have seen, is to be found in the threefold relationship of gesture to adjustive response and to the resultant of the given social act. Response on the part of the second organism to the gesture of the first is the interpretation - and brings out the meaning - of that gesture, as indicating the resultant of the social act which it initiates, and in which both organisms are thus involved. This threefold or triadic relation between gesture, adjustive response, and resultant of the social act which the gesture initiates is the basis of meaning; for the existence of meaning depends upon the fact that the adjustive response of the second organism is directed toward the resultant of the given social act as initiated and indicated by the gesture of the first organism.
 
p.80-81 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.

p.88 Thinking takes place in terms of universals, and a universal is an entity that is distinguishable from the object by means of which we think it.

p.94-95 consciousness accompanies only the sensory process and not the motor process. We can directly control the sensory but not the motor processes; we can give our attention to a particular element in the field and by giving such attention and so holding on to the stimulus we can get control of the response. That is the way we get control of our action; we do not directly control our response through the motor paths themselves.

p.96 voluntary attention is dependent upon indication of some character in the field of stimulation.

p.98 It is the entrance of the alternative possibilities of future response into the determination of present conduct in any given environmental situation, and their operation, through the mechanism of the central nervous system, as part of the factors or conditions determining present behavior, which decisively contrasts intelligent conduct or behavior with reflex, instinctive, and habitual conduct or behavior--delayed reaction with immediate reaction.

p.99 Delayed reaction is necessary to intelligent conduct. The organization, implicit testing, and final selection by the individual of his overt responses or reactions to the social situations which confront him and which present him with problems of adjustment, would be impossible if his overt responses or reactions could not in such situations be delayed until this process of organizing, implicitly testing, and finally selecting is carried out

p.100 Intelligence is essentially the ability to solve the problems of present behavior in terms of its possible future consequences as implicated on the basis of past experience - the ability, that is, to solve the problems of present behavior in the light of, or by reference to, both the past and the future

p.100 the process of exercising intelligence is the process of delaying, organizing, and selecting a response or reaction to the stimuli of the given environmental situation. The process is made possible by the mechanism of the central nervous system, which permits the individual's taking of the attitude of the other toward himself, and thus becoming an object to himself. This is the most effective means of adjustment to the social environment, and indeed to the environment in general, that the individual has at his disposal.

p.117 the central nervous system provides a mechanism of implicit response which enables the individual to test out implicitly the various possible completions of an already initiated act in advance of the actual completion of the act - and thus to choose for himself, on the basis of this testing, the one which it is most desirable to perform explicitly or carry into overt effect.

p.120 To be able to identify "this as leading to that," and to get some sort of a gesture, vocal or otherwise, which can be used to indicate the implication to others and to himself so as to make possible the control of conduct with reference to it, is the distinctive thing in human intelligence which is not found in animal intelligence... One gets the response into experience before that response is overtly carried out through indicating and emphasizing the stimulus that instigates it.

p.121 The isolation of the symbol, as such, enables one to hold on to these given characters and to isolate them in their relationship to the object, and consequently in their relation to the response. It is that, I think, which characterizes our human intelligence to a peculiar degree... The ability to isolate these important characters in their relationship to the object and to the response which belongs to the object is, I think, what we generally mean when we speak of a human being thinking a thing out, or having a mind.

p.122 What is there in conduct that makes this level of experience possible, this selection of certain characters with their relationship to other characters and to the responses which these call out? My own answer, it is clear, is in terms of such a set of symbols as arise in our social conduct, in the conversation of gestures... When we get into conduct these symbols which indicate certain characters and their relationship to things and to responses, they enable us to pick out these characters and hold them in so far as they determine our conduct.

p.123 These symbols, instead of being a mere conditioning of reflexes, are ways of picking out the stimuli so that the various responses can organize themselves into a form of action.

p.124 the sort of things he will see will be the characters which represent various possibilities of action under the circumstances. The man holds on to these different possibilities of response in terms of the different stimuli which present themselves, and it is his ability to hold them there that constitutes his mind.

p.125 Mentality is that relationship of the organism to the situation which is mediated by sets of symbols.

p.128 To finish one response is to put ourselves in a position where we see other things... it is the sensitizing of the organism to the stimuli which will set free its responses that is responsible for one's living in this sort of an environment rather than in another.
 
p.129 Our world is definitely mapped out for us by the responses which are going to take place.

p.129 There is a definite and necessary structure or gestalt of sensitivity within the organism, which determines selectively and relatively the character of the external object it perceives. What we term consciousness needs to be brought inside just this relation between an organism and its environment.

p.132 Man is able to control the process from the standpoint of his own responses. He gets meanings and so controls his responses... Mentality resides in the ability of the organism to indicate that in the environment which answers to his responses, so that he can control those responses in various ways. That, from the point of view of behavioristic psychology, is what mentality consists in... the human animal is able to indicate to itself and to others what the characters are in the environment which call out these complex, highly organized responses, and by such indication is able to control the responses. The human animal has the ability over and above the adjustment which belongs to the lower animal to pick out and isolate the stimulus... Mentality consists in indicating these values to others and to one's self so that one can control one's responses.
  Mentality on our approach simply comes in when the organism is able to point out meanings to others and to himself. This is the point at which mind appears, or if you like, emerges.

p.133 the mind... is essentially a social phenomenon... We must regard mind, then, as arising and developing within the social process, within the empirical matrix of social interactions.

p.134  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.

p.136 The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.
 
p.139 in its attacks and defenses, the activities of the physiological organism are social in that the acts begun within the organism require their completion in the actions of others
 
p.140 The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience. After a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself its social experiences, and so we can conceive of an absolutely solitary self. But it is impossible to conceive of a self arising outside of social experience.
 
p.140-141 In the conversation of gestures what we say calls out a certain response in another and that in turn changes our own action, so that we shift from what we started to do because of the reply the other makes... The individual comes to carry on a conversation of gestures with himself. He says something, and that calls out a certain reply in himself which makes him change what he was going to say.
 
p.154 The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called "the generalized other." The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community.
 
p.155-156 In abstract thought the individual takes the attitude of the generalized other toward himself, without reference to its expression in any particular other individuals; and in concrete thought he takes that attitude in so far as it is expressed in the attitudes toward his behavior of those other individuals with whom he is involved in the given social situation or act. But only by taking the attitude of the generalized other toward himself, in one or another of these ways, can he think at all; for only thus can thinking - or the internalized conversation of gestures which constitutes thinking - occur. And only through the taking by individuals of the attitude or attitudes of the generalized other toward themselves is the existence of a universe of discourse, as that system of common or social meanings which thinking presupposes at its context, rendered possible.
 
p.156 The self-conscious human individual, then, takes or assumes the organized social attitudes of the given social group or community (or of some one section thereof to which he belongs) toward the social problems of various kinds which confront that group or community at any given time, and which arise in connection with the correspondingly different social projects or organized cooperative enterprises in which that group or community as such is engaged; and as an individual participant in these social projects or cooperative enterprises, he governs his own conduct accordingly.
 
p.163 what we mean by self-consciousness is an awakening in ourselves of the group of attitudes which we are arousing in others, especially when it is an important set of responses which go to make up the members of the community... self-consciousness refers to the ability to call out in ourselves a set of definite responses which belong to the others of the group.
 
p.164 The individual possesses a self only in relation to the selves of the other members of his social group; and the structure of his self expresses or reflects the general behavior pattern of this social group to which he belongs, just as does the structure of the self of every other individual belonging to this social group.
 
p.174 I talk to my self, and I remember what I said and perhaps the emotional content that went with it. The 'I' of this moment is present in the 'me' of the next moment. There again I cannot turn around quick enough to catch myself. I become a 'me' in so far as remember what I said.
 
p.174  the "I" in memory is there as the spokesman of the self of the second, or minute, or day ago. As given, it is a "me," but it is a "me" which was the "I" at the earlier time.
 
p.174 It is what you were a second ago that is the 'I' of the 'me.'
 
p.189 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.

p.198 This brings out the question as to whether anything novel can appear. Practically, of course, the novel is constantly happening and the recognition of this gets its expression in more general terms in the concept of emergence. Emergence involves a reorganization, but the reorganization brings in something that was not there before.

p.209 I have been undertaking to distinguish between the "I" and the "me" as different phases of the self, the "me" answering to the organized attitudes of the others which we definitely assume and which determine consequently our own conduct so far as it is of a self-conscious character. Now the "me" may be regarded as giving the form of the "I." The novelty comes in the action of the "I," but the structure, the form of the self is one which is conventional.

p.280 The relationship of the "me" to the "I" is the relationship of a situation to the organism. The situation that presents the problem is intelligible to the organism that responds to it, and fusion takes place in the act. One can approach it from the "I" if one knows definitely what he is going to do.

p.308 Mind, as constructive or reflective or problem-solving thinking, is the socially acquired means or mechanism or apparatus whereby the human individual solves the various problems of environmental adjustment which arise to confront him in the course of experience, and which prevent his conduct from proceeding harmoniously on its way, until they have thus been dealt with. And mind or thinking is also - as possessed by the individual members of human society - the means of mechanism or apparatus whereby social reconstruction is effected or accomplished by these individuals. For it is their possession of minds or powers of thinking which enables human individuals to turn back critically, as it were, upon the organized social structure of the society to which they belong (and from their relations to which their minds are in the first instance derived), and to reorganize or reconstruct or modify that social structure to a greater or less degree, as the exigencies of social evolution from time to time require.

p.332 Very frequently we find that the thing We see and that we suppose answers to the character of an object is not really there; it was an image. The image is there in its relation to the individual who not only has sense organs but who also has certain past experiences. It is the organism that has had such experiences that has such imagery. 

p.332 Consciousness as such refers to both the organism and its environment and cannot be located simply in either.

p.333 What we term "consciousness" is just that relation of organism and environment in which selection takes place. Consciousness arises from the interrelation of the form and the environment, and it involves both of them... When there is that relation between form and environment, then objects can appear which would not have been there otherwise... in this process there appears or emerges something that was not there before.

p.334 What we term "reason" arises when one of the organisms takes into its own response the attitude of the other organisms involved. It is possible for the organism so to assume the attitudes of the group that are involved in its own act within this whole cooperative process. When it does so, it is what we term "a rational being."

p.335 Thinking is simply the reasoning of the individual, the carrying-on of a conversation between what I have termed the "I" and the "me."

In taking the attitude of the group, one has stimulated himself to respond in a certain fashion. His response, the "I," is the way in which he acts. If he acts in that way he is, so to speak, putting something up to the group, and changing the group. His gesture calls out then a gesture which will be slightly different. The self thus arises in the development of the behavior of the social form that is capable of taking the attitude of others involved in the same cooperative activity. The precondition of such behavior is the development of the nervous system which enables the individual to take the attitude of the others. He could not, of course, take the indefinite number of attitudes of others, even if all the nerve paths were present, if there were not an organized social activity going on such that the action of one may reproduce the action of an indefinite number of others doing the same thing. Given, however, such an organized activity, one can take the attitude of anyone in the group.

Supplemental Essay I: The Function of Imagery in Conduct

p.337 Human behavior, or conduct, like the behavior of lower animal forms, springs from impulses. An impulse is a congenital tendency to react in a specific manner to a certain sort of stimulus, under certain organic conditions... It is of importance to emphasize the sensitivity to the appropriate stimuli which call out the impulses. This sensitivity is otherwise referred to as the "selective character of attention," and attention on its active motor side connotes hardly anything beyond this relationship of a preformed tendency to act to the stimulus which sets the impulse free. 

p.338 There is another procedure by which the organism selects the appropriate stimulus, where an impulse is seeking expression. This is found in the relation to imagery. It is most frequently the image which enables the individual to pick out the appropriate stimulus for the impulse which is seeking expression. This imagery is dependent on past experience.

p.341-342 The so-called "selective nature" of consciousness is as necessary for the explanation of association as for that of attention and shows itself in our sensitivity to the stimuli which set free impulses seeking expression, when those stimuli arise from objects in the immediate field of perception or from imagery. The former answer to adjustment of the organism to objects present in space and time, the latter to those which are no longer so present but which are still reflected in the nervous structure of the organism.

p.343 Certain images are there just as are other perceptual contents, and our sensitivity to them serves the same function as does our sensitivity to other perceptual stimulations, namely, that of selecting and building out the objects which will give expression to the impulses.

p.343 Of imagery the only thing that can be said is that it does not take its place among our distant stimuli which build up the surrounding world that is the extension of the manipulatory area.

p.345 The present includes what is disappearing and what is emerging. Toward that which is emerging our action takes us, and what is disappearing provides the conditions of that action.

Supplemental Essay III: The Self and the Process of Reflection

p.354 It is in social behavior that the process of reflection itself arises. This process should first of all be stated in its simplest appearance.

p.354 A very large part of human skill gained in playing games, or musical instruments, or in attaining in general muscular adjustments to new situations, is acquired by this trial-and-error procedure.

p.355 The bungling, awkward, hesitating play of the beginner at tennis or on the violin is an instance of the same thing in human conduct; and here we are able to record the player himself as saying that he learns without knowing how he learns. He finds that a new situation appears to him that he has not recognized in the past. The position of his opponent and the angle of the approaching ball suddenly become important to him. These objective situations had not existed for him in the past. He has not built them up on any theory. They are simply there, whereas in the past they had not been in his experience; and introspection shows that he recognizes them by a readiness to a new sort of response. His attention is called to them by his own motor attitudes. He is getting what he calls "form." In fact, "form" is a feel for those motor attitudes by which we sensitize ourselves to the stimuli that call out the responses seeking expression. The whole is an unreflective process in which the impulses and their corresponding objects are there or are not there. The reorganization of the objective field and of conflicting impulses does take place in experience. When it has taken place it is registered in new objects and new attitudes, and for the time being we may postpone the manner in which the reorganization takes place. Current explanations in terms of trial and error, stamping-in of successful reactions and elimination of unsuccessful reactions, and the selective power of the pleasure attending success and the pain attending upon failure have not proved satisfying, but the processes lie outside the field of reflection and need not detain us at present.

p.356 the different suggestions appear as competing hypotheses of the best plan of attack

p.357 If it is to be an evolution within behavior, it must be statable in the way we have conceived behavior to take place in living forms, i.e., every step of the process must be an act in which an impulse finds expression through an object in a perceptual field.

p.357 The direct activities out of which thought grows are social acts, and presumably find their earliest expression in primitive social responses.

p.360-361 Here in the field of behavior we reach a situation in which the individual may affect itself as it affects other individuals, and may therefore respond to this stimulation as it would respond to the stimulation of other individuals; in other words, a situation arises here in which the individual may become an object in its own field of behavior. This would meet the first condition of the appearance of mind. But this response will not take place unless there are reactions answering to these self-stimulations which will advance and reinforce the individual's conduct.

p.365-366 It is evident that out of just such conduct as this, out of addressing one's self and responding with the appropriate response of another, "self-consciousness" arises.

p.367 The most important activity of mind that can be identified in behavior is that of so adjusting conflicting impulses that they can express themselves harmoniously.

p.367 Control over impulse lies only in the shift of attention which brings other objects into the field of stimulation, setting free other impulses, or in such a resetting of the objects that the impulses express themselves on a different time schedule or with additions and subtractions. This shift of attention again finds its explanation in the coming into play of tendencies that before were not immediately in action. These tendencies render us sensitive to stimuli which are not in the field of stimulation.

p.368 The mechanical problem of mind, then, is in securing a type of conduct coming on top of that of the biologic individual that will dissociate the elements of our organized responses. Such a dismemberment of organized habits will bring into the field of perception all the objects that answer to the different impulses that made up the fixed habits.

p.373 I have noted two standpoints from which imagery may be regarded. It is there, as percepts are there; and like percepts, imagery can be stated in terms of its relation to the physiological organism; but while percepts are dominantly an expression of an immediate relation between the organism and its field of objects, imagery represents an adjustment between an organism and an environment that is not there... since an instinctive form cannot reconstruct its congenital habits, images can hardly serve the function which they do in man's mind of reconstructing both objects and habits. This latter function is a development of the function of the image in filling out the object, by putting into that which comes through the distance senses - such as vision and hearing - the content of the contact which actual approach to the object will reveal. Its primal function in reflection is that of determining what course of action shall be pursued, by the presentation of the results of different courses. It is a function that inevitably emphasizes the content of imagery, as the reaction becomes dependent upon the imaged outcome of the process.

p.375-376 In a word, the sympathetic assumption of the attitude of the other brings into play varying impulses which direct the attention to features of the object which are ignored in the attitude of direct response.