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)

G. H. Mead left the following heretofore unpublished material in his desk at the University of Chicago, and it was first discovered by Charles W. Morris in the Summer of 1931. Mr. Morris, who was one of Mead's students in the 1920's, had been teaching at Rice University, but was appointed as a full-time staff member in the department of philosophy at Chicago in 1931; he was given the same office that Mead had occupied for many years prior to his (...) death in April of that year. Due to severely strained relations between the then newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and the regular staff members in the philosophy department, several of the latter left Chicago and were employed elsewhere in the fall of 1931. Consequently it seemed appropriate that Mr. Morris and some of Mead's other students should deal with the many unpublished typewritten conjectures that Mead left in his office. The entire book, The Philosophy of the Act, is a collection of items found by Mr. Morris, and the following material is from the same source. It came to my hands twenty-seven years ago because I was one of the collaborators in editing The Philosophy of the Act. If there is a slight over-lapping of the following material and subjects discussed in The Philosophy of the Act, it is for the sake of continuity and clarity. I have corrected the material for spelling and punctuation, and I have tried to give it a systematic arrangement. (shrink)

While rooted in careful study of Mead’s original writings and transcribed lectures and the historical context in which that work was carried out, the papers in this volume have brought Mead’s work to bear on contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy.

It has often been suggested that a resolution of issues generated by the sociological study of ideas might be reached through a synthesis of specific insights to be found in the works of Karl Marx and George Herbert Mead. The present study originated in an investigation of this hypothesis, particularly as it bears on the central issue of sociological relativism. The author began by delineating the specific problems such a synthesis might resolve, and in the process became aware that the (...) nature and depth of differences separating the sociology of knowledge and its critics have never been fully analysed or understood. This volume therefore opens with a clarification of these differences, a clarification which leads to considerable redefinition of the problem as it has traditionally been understood by critics and proponents of the discipline alike. The author points out in particular that it is less a debate than a thorough-going contradiction which characterizes the literature dealing with the inadequacies of various formulations of the sociology of knowledge. In consequence, the study of Marx and Mead presented here is not simply yet another effort to discover a perspective which will satisfy the particular demands of the critics. Rather, it argues that an adequate perspective fully consistent with the central insight of the discipline - that knowledge is radically social in character - is to be found in a synthesis of elements in the perspectives of Marx and Mead. (shrink)

The three essays reprinted in this book were first published in 1963 as individual chapters of a psychiatric treatise entitled Psychiatrie der Gegen wart (Psychiatry of the Present Day). The editors, W. H. GRUHLE (Bonn), R. JUNG (Freiburg/Br. ), W. MAYER-GROSS (Birmingham, England), M. MUL LER (Bern, Switzerland), had not planned an encyclopedic presentation; they did not intend to present a "handbook" which would be as complete as possible in details and bibliographic reference. Their intention was to "raze the walls" (...) separating Continental and Anglo-Saxon psychiatries and to offer a synopsis of developments in psychiatry during the last decades on an international basis. The editors requested, therefore, cooperation of scholars from many foreign countries, large and small, on both sides of the Atlantic. A section entitled "Borderlands of Psychiatry", in which MARGARET MEAD (New York) discusses the relation of "Psychiatry and Ethnology", HANS HEIMAN (Bern), the relation of "Religion und Psychiatrie", and ROBERT VOLMER (Paris), "Art et Psychiatrie", is a good illustration of the trilingual character of the whole work. Two of the editors, GRUHLE and MAYER-GROSS, died before the publi cation had been completed. In a kind of posthumous eulogy, Professor JUNG and Professor MULLER praised the initiative and accomplishments of MAYER-GROSS, "who during the last five years of his life had given a great deal of his time to this work. He had set his mind on a synthesis of German and Anglo-Saxon psychiatry. (shrink)

For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with twoproblems: the development of a general theory of signs, and thedevelopment of a general theory of value. He approached both problemsin terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This bookbrings together these two lines of development. For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with two problems: the development of a general theory of signs, and the development of a general theory of value. He approached both problems in terms (...) of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This book brings together these two lines of development. In many languages there is a term like the English "meaning" which has two poles: that which something signifies and the value or significance of what is signified. The nature of signification and significance, as well as their relations within human behavior, is the subject matter of this book. This book is addressed to philosophers and to students of the behavioral sciences, but it will also appeal to anyone seriously interested in the study of human communication. (shrink)

In the preface to this work, Thayer explains that his purpose is to present "the classic writings of pragmatism" defined as "the original and formative expressions of this philosophy articulated by its most eminent spokesmen." The selections are from Peirce, James, and Dewey as well as brief readings from Mead and C. I. Lewis. Each selection is accompanied by a brief introduction. In addition to these selectional introductions, there is also a two-part general introduction. The first part is a short (...) historical piece by Thayer situating pragmatism in the context of western thought. The second part is a 1931 article by Dewey outlining the development of pragmatism in Peirce and James. These informative introductions should be of value to the philosophical novice who finds himself in many anthologies afloat on the sea of primary sources without the aid of the historical context necessary to fix his position. The individual selections have been carefully chosen and well coordinated. Insofar as they cluster about the central theme of the epistemological nature of pragmatism, they avoid the pitfall of attempting to elucidate the entire philosophy of many thinkers in one volume. The Peirce section includes in addition to the usual articles, "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," selections from Peirce's later writings including the 1905 article, "What Pragmatism Is" in which he differentiates his pragmatism from that of James. The section on James incorporates important sections from The Principles of Psychology together with the famous essay "The Will to Believe" and two lectures on the pragmatic concept of meaning and truth from Pragmatism. The Dewey selection provides a judicious collection of his writings from the 1896 article on the "Reflex Arc Concept" advocating the integration of organism and action to the general analysis of intelligent action in his 1938 book, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Also included is a chapter from The Quest for Certainty describing the application of pragmatic method to the realm of moral value. The contents of this volume are rounded out with a piece by Mead on social consciousness and the social self and an article by C. I. Lewis on the pragmatic conception of the a priori. Thayer has produced an excellent anthology of pragmatic philosophy well suited to any course in classical American philosophy emphasizing an epistemological approach.--W. J. L. (shrink)

Erving Goffman's distinctive contribution to an understanding of others was grounded in his information control and ritual models of the interaction process. This contribution centered on the forms of the interaction order rather than self-other relations as traditionally conceived in phenomenology. Goffman came to phenomenology as a sympathetic but critical outsider who sought resources for the sociological mining of the interaction order. His engagement with phenomenological thinkers (principally Gustav Ichheiser, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Schutz) has to be understood in these (...) terms. The article traces basic differences in analytical focus through a range of phenomenological critiques of Goffman and a comparison of salient aspects of Schutz's and Goffman's writings. While the contrasts have perhaps been overplayed, I conclude that Goffman's thinking about others probably owed more to his pragmatist roots than to his later encounters with phenomenology. (shrink)

To push the edges of the known, to look at the accepted in novel ways, is indeed to stand at the frontiers of a field. In Frontiers in American Philosophy thirty-five contemporary scholars explore classical American thought in bold new ways. An extraordinary range of issues and thinkers is represented in these pages--from such core themes as metaphysics and social philosophy, which receive primary attention, to some consideration of American philosophers' technical accomplishments in mathematical logic and philosophical analysis. The authors (...) also offer new perspectives on the work of the leading American philosophers, including George Herbert Mead, William James, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Emma Goldman. Not surprisingly perhaps, a great deal of the discussion revolves, either directly or indirectly, around that great axis of intellectual issues commonly known as the "realism/idealism" controversy. It seems fitting that so much attention is devoted to the possibility of some sort of middle position between "external realism" and its antipode in some form of relativistic subjectivism. For, in the last analysis, such a middle position is for the American philosophers the core meaning of "pragmatism.”. (shrink)

With this work, the author terminates his trilogy on nationally prominent philosophers in Germany, France, and the United States, respectively. In all three works a deliberate attempt is made to counter the current trend towards linguistic analysis and deal with philosophy in its classical meaning as a body of general truths about the universe as a whole, which the author believes leads to some important consequences of present day relevance. The style of the work, to say the least, is unusual (...) in that it is cast in the form of a series of letters, fourteen in number, of a father to his daughter. Since he admits there are no German, French, or American "philosophies," properly speaking, each letter deals with a particular North American philosopher, beginning with Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine in Revolutionary days, continuing with Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead as 19th century representatives, and Whitehead, Santayana, and Carnap for the first half of the twentieth. The work concludes with Hans Kelsen and Marcuse, who like Carnap, came to the United States as the result of Hitler’s antisemitism. The tenor of the work lays stress on problems of cultural and political life and, thereby, on the ties of this sort that bind the United States and Europe. The work reads well, and although its tone is more biographical than philosophical, more expository than critical, it could well serve as supplementary reading for a seminar on American philosophy.—A.B.W. (shrink)

The three essays reprinted in this book were first published in 1963 as individual chapters of a psychiatric treatise entitled Psychiatrie der Gegen wart (Psychiatry of the Present Day). The editors, W. H. GRUHLE (Bonn), R. JUNG (Freiburg/Br. ), W. MAYER-GROSS (Birmingham, England), M. MUL LER (Bern, Switzerland), had not planned an encyclopedic presentation; they did not intend to present a "handbook" which would be as complete as possible in details and bibliographic reference. Their intention was to "raze the walls" (...) separating Continental and Anglo-Saxon psychiatries and to offer a synopsis of developments in psychiatry during the last decades on an international basis. The editors requested, therefore, cooperation of scholars from many foreign countries, large and small, on both sides of the Atlantic. A section entitled "Borderlands of Psychiatry", in which MARGARET MEAD (New York) discusses the relation of "Psychiatry and Ethnology", HANS HEIMAN (Bern), the relation of "Religion und Psychiatrie", and ROBERT VOLMER (Paris), "Art et Psychiatrie", is a good illustration of the trilingual character of the whole work. Two of the editors, GRUHLE and MAYER-GROSS, died before the publi cation had been completed. In a kind of posthumous eulogy, Professor JUNG and Professor MULLER praised the initiative and accomplishments of MAYER-GROSS, "who during the last five years of his life had given a great deal of his time to this work. He had set his mind on a synthesis of German and Anglo-Saxon psychiatry. (shrink)

The question to be answered is why do different cultures respond to the land differently? The question is born in the tension between Native American and the Anglo macroculture valuing of the land. Using the philosophy of George Herbert Mead, it is argued that the land is seen as a social being ,in the same way that an individual sees another person. Mead's philosophy of the development of the individual begins with the relation of the developing self and a social (...) other. That relationship defines acts acceptable within the society, including the acts of observation and reflective thought. Thus, the very process of development becomes bound by the society. As the individual grows, according to Mead, the social other (and the relation between the other and the self) become generalized to include objects of the environment, such as the land. The acts toward others now become acts toward the land. As the acts toward others have value within the society, so the acts toward the land take on the same values. The individual mind is never an exact duplicate of the culture, but is limited by the culture, which results in specific tensions as two cultures come together. Again, using Mead, it is shown that the morality of our response to the land is dependent upon the growth of the individual, and that that growth can be provided by the very conflict of the acculturation. (shrink)

Romantic Motives explores a topic that has been underemphasized in the historiography of anthropology. Tracking the Romantic strains in the the writings of Rousseau, Herder, Cushing, Sapir, Benedict, Redfield, Mead, Lévi-Strauss, and others, these essays show Romanticism as a permanent and recurrent tendency within the anthropological tradition.

ABSTRACTThe paper compares Mead’s and Quine’s behaviouristic theories of meaning and language, focusing in particular on Mead’s notion of sympathy and Quine’s notion of empathy. On the one hand, Quine seems to resort to an explanation similar to Mead’s notion of sympathy, referring to ‘empathy’ in order to justify the human ability to project ourselves into the witness’s position; on the other hand, Quine’s reference to the notion of empathy paves the way to a more insightful comparison between Mead’s behaviourism (...) and an explanation of the emergence of the linguistic from pre-linguistic communication based on empathic identification processes. However, Mead is less ambiguous than Quine in his use of the notion of sympathy finds a fecund parallel in the current neuroscientific and neuro-phenomenological hypothesis on ‘empathy’. The article contends that the ambiguity in Quine’s account of empathy is due to the exigency of trying to elucidate the link between the rules of language in a cultural context and... (shrink)

De la psychologie sociale aux Théories critiques de J Habermas et A Honneth, en passant par l'interactionnisme symbolique ou la sociologie pragmatiste héritière de l'école de Chicago, l'oeuvre de GH Mead (1863-1931) constitue une source majeure de la théorie sociale. Cet ouvrage invite à la (re)découvrir. Tout en examinant les sources de la pensée de Mead et en discutant ses concepts fondamentaux, il propose de mettre en lumière le potentiel critique et créateur des perspectives qu'elle ouvre pour la théorie sociale. (...) Il montre comment ses développements consacrés au self, à l'Autrui généralisé, à l'interaction, au contrôle social, etc., ainsi que son traitement des problèmes liés, notamment, à la conscience de soi, à la communication, à la reconnaissance ou aux institutions peuvent être mis en dialogue et en confrontation avec les analyses de A Smith, GWF Hegel, W James, G Simmel, J Dewey, RE Park, E Goffman, H Blumer, A Schütz, H Garfinkel, J Habermas, A Honneth, R Collins. Il propose des traductions inédites de textes de GH Mead qui permettent de saisir le processus d'élaboration et la richesse de sa psychologie sociale. A la fois introduction, examen critique et mise en perspective de la pensée de Mead, ce livre s'adresse aux philosophes, sociologues et psychologues, étudiants ou chercheurs, intéressés par l'auteur et, plus généralement, par la théorie sociale d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. (shrink)

The world or an event? Towards an ontology of war: This paper is an attempt to rethink the ontology of war. Its main object is to determine the ontological status of war and the connection between strategies of armed conflict prevention and the way this status is understood. If to overcome metaphysics we need to reconsider its basis then maybe a similar strategy should be applied in order to overcome war. The source of war is understood here not only in (...) temporal terms, but also as its essence — the ontological basis. The first part of the article invokes several conceptions from the twentieth century, according to which, war was to be overcome by variously understood progress. In those conceptions, as well as in the critical approaches from the beginning of the 21st century, war is treated as an event, a state of affairs. In the next part of my paper, based on Margaret Mead’s anthropological diagnosis, I propound a conception of war as an invention, and therefore — technology. The issue of war is further considered in the context of the twentieth-century philosophy of technology. A thesis is put forward according to which understanding the influence of techne of war over episteme should be the essence of thinking of war prevention. In this study, war is treated as a technology that determines perception. For critical reflection upon war, I use twentieth-century philosophical conceptions linking technology with cognitive processes, especially those formulated by Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the origins of Charles W. Morris’ semiotic anthropology through an analysis of his “symbolism,” a theory of mind wherein the latter is completely identified with the production and use of symbols. Developed in the late 1920s, this theory consists in transforming the behaviorist approach by means of a semantic or referential emphasis, i.e. by underlining the importance of the symbol’s object rather than studying only the responses that it elicits. Considering, however, that the experience of (...) reference is of a private or “self-inclusive” nature, Morris’ conception of the symbol entails a number of significant consequences, not only with respect to classical behaviorist views, but also to Mead’s. By founding his conception of the symbol on a self-inclusive basis, Morris questioned the linguistic and social criteria that governed the outlook of his mentor in Mind, Self, and Society. This critical reading thus implies a rehabilitation of animal symbolism, against a number of remarks by Mead indicating his refusal of the existence of symbolization, and so of mind, in the non-human world. Insofar as Morris’ line of thought was heavily influenced by contemporary research in comparative psychology, it is possible to consider that he anticipated recent discussions of Mead’s alleged “anthropocentrism,” and suggested an evolutionary and continuous view of mind through a generalized symbolism that refuses any difference of nature between human and animal mentalities. (shrink)

Do Quine and Carnap distort the social nature of inquiry by privileging individual epistemic subjects? This objection is at the heart of Donald Davidson’s claim that Quine fails to grasp the significance of the concept of truth. In Carnap’s case, the objection may be detected in Charles Morris’s call to ground scientific philosophy in semiotics, the science of signs, rather than syntax, the formal investigation of languages. Drawing out the challenge from Morris’s proposal requires examining a neglected influence on this (...) neglected philosopher: his advisor George Herbert Mead’s social theory of mind. I argue that Morris and Davidson can both be understood as demanding that scientific philosophers socialize their conception of objectivity. (shrink)

Charles W. Morris' doctoral thesis Symbolism and Reality, written in 1925 at Chicago under George H. Mead, has never before been published. It sets out to prove that thought and mind are not entities, nor even processes involving a psychical substance distinguishable from the rest of reality, but are explicable as the functioning of parts of the experience as symbols to an organism of other parts of experience. Being then the symbolic portion of experience, the psychical or mental can neither (...) be sharply opposed to the rest of experience nor identical with the whole of experience. This edition includes a preface by Achim Eschbach, an extensive bibliography of Morris' works, and indices of names and subjects. (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)

This paper is an extended exploration of Mead's phrase the emergence of the novel. I describe and characterize emergent systems-complex dynamical systems that display behavior that cannot be predicted from a full and complete description of the component units of the system. Emergence has become an influential concept in contemporary cognitive science [A. Clark Being there, Cambridge: MIT Press], complexity theory [W. Bechtel & R.C. Richardson Discovering complexity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], artificial life [R.A. Brooks & P. Maes Artificial (...) life IV, Cambridge: MIT Press; C.G. Langton Artificial life III, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; C.G. Langton et al. Artificial life II, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley), and robotics [S. Forrest Emergent computation, Cambridge: MIT Press]. I propose that novelty is a necessary property of emergent systems, and I'll explore a specific kind of emergent system: an improvisational theater ensemble. This is an example of emergence in a small social group, which I call collaborative emergence to emphasize several important contrasts with other complex systems that manifest emergence, such as connectionist networks and Alife simulations. (shrink)