Glenda B. Claborne
Sociology 500b
Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press.
Explain to me as specifically and exactly as you can the precise step-by-step process whereby consciousness/mind is explained as part of the social process.
Mead used the terms "mind" and "consciousness" to refer neither to experience in general nor to private experience as opposed to social experience. Neither does mind/consciousness mean simply mental or conscious states. For Mead, mind/consciousness always refers to certain contents that have reference to objects, organisms and relationships that are common to the experience of others. According to Mead, mind/consciousness emerges from an ongoing social process by which the relationships of human beings to their environments (physiological, social and natural) are brought within the control of human action/conduct through the mechanism of language. To unpack the mechanisms through which mind/consciousness emerges from the social process, we must first look at Mead's presupposition of this social process and of the nature of the organism and environment interacting within that process.
The Social Process.
Mead's presupposition of an antecedently existent social process from which minds and selves emerge is in contrast to other views which presuppose already existent minds and selves to get the social process going. Mead argued that mind/consciousness appears within and must stay within the social process. The social process, stated simply, refers to the interactivity of organism and environment in evolutionary dimensions of time and space. Mead describes this interactivity fully in terms of social experiences and behavior. In doing so, Mead sought to expand the behavioristic framework beyond the subcutaneous Watsonian behaviorism. What goes on in the organism's brain and under its skin can be brought out into relationships with objects and other organisms interacting in a social environment.
While Mead presupposed a dynamic social environment existent before minds and selves, he also implicitly presupposed an external world- the natural world of objects and organisms - that has an objective existence apart from the observer's construction of it (p. 131, footnote 35). Furthermore, while rejecting the mechanistic Watsonian approach to the organism's physiological makeup, Mead nevertheless implicitly presupposed an organization of possible combinations of stimuli and responses within the neurons of the central nervous system (p. 127). However, Mead's presupposition of environments, that are external and internal to the observer and that have objective reality apart from the subjective experience of the observer, does not undermine his argument that minds and selves are social constructions within an evolving social process. For Mead, the social process, through the basic unit of the social act, is the process by which the logical structures of the nature of organisms, things and their relationships (p. 132) can be mapped out and brought into the conscious, subjective, social experiences and behaviors of humans.
The Social Act.
The social act is the basic unit in the social process. It has three basic elements which includes a gesture, adjustive response to the gesture, and the resultant of the given social act. The meanings of objects or the objective contents of objects are brought into and constituted by the interaction of organisms within that triadic structure of the social act. The social act also has phases or stages which develop over time and in space. It begins with an impulse, attitude or readiness, which guides the perception of stimuli, which leads to the manipulation of the stimulus, which leads to the consummation of the original impulse. To understand how vocal gestures become the primary tools by which humans acquire minds within the social process, we will look at the social act in its most primitive form.
The Conversation of Gestures.
For lower forms, Mead uses the example of the dog -fight in which one dog attacks and the other dog changes its position or attitude in response to the attack. This adjustive response in turn causes the first dog to readjust its initial position or attitude. In humans, Mead gives the example of the infant whose cry causes its mother to respond in a protective manner. The adjustments of the dog to each other and of the infant and the mother to each other are what Mead calls the "conversation of gestures." Gestures in this sense are instinctive and enacted without deliberation. The attacking dog does not pause to reflect on its anger before it snarls nor does the other dog deliberate its responses of fight or flight. Gestures in the primitive form of the social act are considered unreflective, unconscious, and nonsignificant.
Gestures become significant, reflective and conscious when they reach a situation where they become symbols that signify meanings in an individual's social experience and can arouse the same meaning in another individual. Mead does not consider the conversation of gestures in the dog-fight as having the possibility of becoming ideas or symbols in the dogs' "minds." However, Mead considers the infant-mother adjustive responses to each other as having the possibility of reaching that situation where the gestures become significant symbols. Here, Mead sees gestures as beginnings or just parts of social acts that have the ultimate function of carrying through the processes which are essential to the survival of the species to which they belong. This is different from seeing gestures as expressions of emotions as Darwin and Wundt saw gestures. Darwin's and Wundt's view of gestures implies that gestures are already constituted ideas, already existing in the organism's mind. In Mead's view, gestures can be enacted without any idea in the observer's or the actor's mind. And yet, at some point in the evolution of language through social conduct, these gestures can become constituted ideas or significant symbols in the individual's mind.
Significant Symbols.
Mead considered the problem of how certain sounds come to arouse the same ideas or symbols in two or more people. Wundt tried to solve the problem by means of association by which certain sights, odors and sounds become associated over time with certain ideas in individuals' minds. However, there still remained for Mead the problem of certain sounds having different meanings to different people. He then proceeds to determine a particular stimulus "which has a certain psychical content calling out the same stimulus in another form, and so the same content" (p. 57). Mead saw in the reproduction by the sparrow of the canary's song the beginnings of an imitative process, which might explain how sounds and ideas become associated in the human mind. Mead broke down the mechanism of sound imitation as a process involving the selection and reinforcement of stimuli common in the interactants' repertoire of sounds. With the canary and the sparrow, Mead speculates that there must be a note, common to both the canary's and the sparrow's repertoire of sounds, which they pick out and subsequently reinforce in the process of the sparrow reproducing the song of the canary.
However, Mead notes that the vocalizations of the sparrow and the canary do not become significant in the sense that they hold images or symbols in their heads that have the same meaning for both of them. The two birds have to be within hearing range of each other in order for the sparrow to reproduce the song of the canary. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to hold images or symbols in their heads even in the absence of the objects, organisms or events around them. But these symbols do not suddenly appear in human brains, they are the result of a process of constituting a whole through the interaction of humans with their environment. Mead considers vocal gestures as the primary tools through which significant symbols arise due to their capacity of arousing in the individual making the sound the same meaning that is aroused in the individual spoken to. Mead does not, however, explicitly say how the phonetic sounds in words are constituted in human social interaction so that these sounds come to indicate certain objects or experiences common to two or more people. But, Mead discusses the capacity of humans to give attention to certain stimuli in their environment. We can speculate that just as the sparrow and the canary picked out certain notes and reinforced them as they went along, humans were able to select certain characteristics of objects or events and were able to constitute a whole image or symbol of such objects and relationships through their common social experiences. We can speculate that the constitution of sounds to make up words went parallel with the constitution of images and symbols in the cooperative, common experiences of humans.
The emergence of vocal gestures implies the emergence of a mind or consciousness. Through vocal gestures, an individual can arouse in himself the same response that he calls out in others. The significance and consciousness of symbols lie in their ability to arouse the same meaning in the individuals participating in a conversation. In conscious or significant conversation of gestures, the participants are conscious of the meanings of their vocalizations. The participants are constantly responding to themselves even as they speak to the others. One acquires a mind when one can think in terms of symbols or words that can arouse the same meaning in one's self as one expects from others. With a mind/consciousness, one can take the role of others into one's conduct and be able to participate, in one's mind, in a cooperative social process in which one's self and others are implicated. In this sense, one can control one's conduct with reference to others.