## 1. Life and Influences



George Herbert Mead was born on February 27, 1863, in South Hadley,
Massachusetts. His father, Hiram Mead, a minister in the
Congregational Church, moved his family from Massachusetts to Ohio in
1869 in order to join the faculty of The Oberlin Theological Seminary.
At Oberlin he taught homiletics and held the chair in Sacred Rhetoric
and Pastoral Theology. Mead would attend Oberlin College from
1879-1883, and matriculate at Harvard from 1887-1888. At
Harvard he studied with Josiah Royce, a philosopher deeply indebted to
G.W.F. Hegel, who also left a lasting impression on Mead. (Mead met
William James at Harvard, although he did not study with him. Almost
immediately after graduation, Mead resided in William James's
summer home tutoring his son Harry.) Mead's mother, Elizabeth
Storrs Billings, was a devoutly religious woman, who taught at Oberlin
for two years after the death of her husband in 1881, and served as
president of Mount Holyoke College from 1890-1900. After his
college years, Mead became a committed naturalist and non-believer,
but he had struggled for years with the religious convictions that he
had inherited from his family and community. For a period of time
after college he even considered Christian Social Work as a career,
but 1884 he explained in a letter to his friend Henry Castle why this
career path would be problematic.



> 
> I shall have to let persons understand that I have some belief in
> Christianity and my praying be interpreted as a belief in God, whereas
> I have no doubt that now the most reasonable system of the universe
> can be formed to myself without a God. But notwithstanding all this I
> cannot go out with the world and not work for men. The spirit of a
> minister is strong with me and I come fairly by it. (Shalin 1988,
> 920-921)
> 



Mead did indeed move away from his earlier religious roots, but the
activist spirit remained with him. Mead marched in support of
women's suffrage, served as a treasurer for the Settlement House
movement, immersed himself in civic matters in Chicago, and generally
supported progressive causes. Jane Addams was a close friend. In terms
of his transformation into a naturalist, no doubt Darwin played a
significant role. As a matter of fact, one can understand much of
Mead's work as an attempt to synthesize Darwin, Hegel,
Dewey's functionalist turn in psychology, and insights gleaned
from James. Mead taught with Dewey at the University of Michigan from
1891-1894, and when Dewey was made chair at the University of
Chicago in 1894, he requested that Mead receive an appointment. Mead
spent the rest of his career at Chicago. But before he began teaching
at Michigan, Mead was directly exposed to major currents of European
thought when he studied in Germany from 1888-1891, taking two
courses from Wilhelm Dilthey and immersing himself in Wilhelm
Wundt's research.


## 2. Language and Mind



Dewey and Mead were not only very close friends, they shared similar
intellectual trajectories. Both went through a period in which Hegel
was the most significant philosophical figure for them, and both
democratized and de-essentialized Hegelian ideas about the self and
community. Nevertheless, neo-hegelian organic metaphors and notions of
negation and conflict, reinterpreted as the problematic situation,
remain central to their positions. The teleological also remains
important in their thought, but it is reduced in scale from the world
historical and localized in terms of anticipatory experiences and goal
oriented activities.



For Mead, the development of the self is intimately tied to the
development of language. To demonstrate this connection, Mead begins
by articulating what he learned about the gesture from Wundt. Gestures
are to be understood in terms of the behavioral responses of animals
to stimuli from other organisms. For example, a dog barks, and a
second dog either barks back or runs away. The "meaning"
of the "barking gesture" is found in the response of the
second organism to the first. But dogs do not understand the
"meaning" of their gestures. They simply respond, that is,
they use symbols without what Mead refers to as
"significance." For a gesture to have significance, it
must call out in a second organism a response that is functionally
identical to the response that the first organism anticipates. In
other words, for a gesture to be significant it must
"mean" the same thing to both organisms, and
"meaning" involves the capacity to consciously anticipate
how other organisms will respond to symbols or gestures. How does this
capacity arise? It does so through the vocal gesture.



A vocal gesture can be thought of as a word or phrase. When a vocal
gesture is used the individual making the gesture responds
(implicitly) in the same manner as the individual hearing it. If you
are about to walk across a busy street during rush hour, I might shout
out, "Don't walk!" As I shout, I hear my gesture the
way in which you hear it, that is, I hear the same words, and I might
feel myself pulling back, stopping in my tracks because I hear these
words. But, of course, I don't hear them exactly as you do,
because I am aware of directing them to you. According to Mead,
"Gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse
in the individual making them the same responses which the explicitly
arouse, or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals" (MSS,
47). He also tells us that, "the critical importance of language
in the development of human experience lies in this fact that the
stimulus is one that can react upon the speaking individual as it
reacts upon the other" (MSS, 69).



As noted, Mead was indebted to Hegel's work, and the notion of
reflexivity plays a fundamental role in Mead's theory of mind.
Vocal gestures--which depend on sufficiently sophisticated
nervous systems to process them--allow individuals to hear their
own gestures in the way that others hear them. If I shout
"Boo" at you, I might not only scare you, I might scare
myself. Or, to put this in other terms, vocal gestures allow one to
speak to oneself when others are not present. I make certain vocal
gestures and anticipate how they would be responded to by others, even
when they are not present. The responses of others have been
internalized and have become part of an accessible repertoire. (Mead
would agree with Ludwig Wittgenstein that there are no private
languages. Language is social all the way down.) According to Mead,
through the use of vocal gestures one can turn
"experience" back on itself through the loop of speaking
and hearing at relatively the same instant. And when one is part of a
complex network of language users, Mead argues that this reflexivity,
the "turning back" of experience on itself, allows mind to
develop.



> 
> 
> 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.... It is absurd to
> look at the mind simply from the standpoint of the individual human
> organism; for, although it has its focus there, it is essentially a
> social phenomenon; even its biological functions are primarily social.
> (MSS, 132-133)
> 
> 
> 
> 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. (MSS, 134)
> 
> 
> 



Mind is developed not only through the use of vocal gestures, but
through the taking of roles, which will be addressed below. Here it is
worth noting that although we often employ our capacity for
reflexivity to engage in reflection or deliberation, both Dewey and
Mead argue that habitual, non-deliberative, experience constitutes the
most common way that we engage the world. The habitual involves a host
of background beliefs and assumptions that are not raised to the level
of (self) conscious reflection unless problems occur that warrant
addressing. For Dewey, this background is described as "funded
experience." For Mead, it is *the world that this there*
and the "biologic individual."



> 
> The immediate experience which is reality, and which is the final test
> of the reality of scientific hypotheses as well as the test of the
> truth of all our ideas and suppositions, is the experience of what I
> have called the "biologic individual."...[This] term
> lays emphasis on the living reality which may be distinguished from
> reflection.... Actual experience did not take place in this form
> but in the form of unsophisticated reality. (MSS, 352-353)
> 


## 3. Roles, the Self, and the Generalized Other



One of the most noteworthy features of Mead's account of the
significant symbol is that it assumes that anticipatory experiences
are fundamental to the development of language. We have the ability to
place ourselves in the positions of others--that is, to
anticipate their responses--with regard to our linguistic
gestures. This ability is also crucial for the development of the self
and self-consciousness. For Mead, as for Hegel, the self is
fundamentally social and cognitive. It should be distinguished from
the individual, who also has non-cognitive attributes. The self, then,
is not identical to the individual and is linked to
self-consciousness. It begins to develop when individuals interact
with others and play roles. What are roles? They are constellations of
behaviors that are responses to sets of behaviors of other human
beings. The notions of role-taking and role playing are familiar from
sociological and social-psychological literature. For example, the
child plays at being a doctor by having another child play at being a
patient. To play at being a doctor, however, requires being able to
anticipate what a patient might say, and vice versa. Role playing
involves taking the attitudes or perspectives of others. It is worth
noting in this context that while Mead studied physiological
psychology, his work on role-taking can be viewed as combining
features of the work of the Scottish sympathy theorists (which James
appealed to in *The* *Principles of Psychology*), with
Hegel's dialectic of self and other. As we will discover
shortly, perspective-taking is associated not only with roles, but
with far more complex behaviors.



For Mead, if we were simply to take the roles of others, we would
never develop selves or self-consciousness. We would have a nascent
form of self-consciousness that parallels the sort of reflexive
awareness that is required for the use of significant symbols. A
role-taking (self) consciousness of this sort makes possible what
might be called a proto-self, but not a self, because it doesn't
have the complexity necessary to give rise to a self. How then does a
self arise? Here Mead introduces his well-known neologism,
*the* *generalized other*. When children or adults take
roles, they can be said to be playing these roles in dyads. However,
this sort of exchange is quite different from the more complex sets of
behaviors that are required to participate in games. In the latter, we
are required to learn not only the responses of specific others, but
behaviors associated with every position on the field. These can be
internalized, and when we succeed in doing so we come to
"view" our own behaviors from the perspective of the game
as a whole, which is a system of organized actions.



> 
> 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. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a
> ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it
> enters--as an organized process or social activity--into the
> experience of any one of the individual members of it. (MSS, 154)
> 



For Mead, although these communities can take different forms, they
should be thought of as systems; for example, a family can be thought
of systemically and can therefore give rise to a generalized other and
a self that corresponds to it. Generalized others can also be found
in



> 
> concrete social classes or subgroups, such as political parties,
> clubs, corporations, which are all actually functional social units,
> in terms of which their individual members are directly related to one
> another. The others are abstract social classes or subgroups, such as
> the class of debtors and the class of creditors, in terms of which
> their individual members are related to one another only more or less
> indirectly. (MSS, 157)
> 



In his *Principles of Psychology*, a book Mead knew well,
William James discusses various types of empirical selves, namely, the
material, the social, and the spiritual. In addressing the social
self, James notes how it is possible to have multiple selves.



> 
> Properly speaking*, a man has as many social selves as there are
> individuals who recognize him* and carry an image of him in their
> mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him. But as the
> individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may
> practically say that he has as many different social selves as there
> are distinct *groups* of persons about whose opinion he cares.
> He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these
> different groups. (James 1890, 294)
> 



From Mead's vantage point, James was on the right track.
However, the notion of audience is left undeveloped in James, as is
the manner in which language is utilized in the genesis of the self
and self-consciousness. For Mead, James's audiences should be
thought of in terms of systemically organized groups, such as we find
in certain games, which give rise to generalized others. Further, we
need an account of how we come to view ourselves from the perspective
of these groups that goes beyond the concept of "sympathetic
attachments." Such an account involves reflexivity, which
originates with the vocal gesture and is essential to taking roles and
the perspective of the generalized other. In addition, reflexivity
helps make possible the capacity to "see" ourselves from
ever wider or more "universal" communities. Mead relates
the latter capacity to cosmopolitan political and cultural
orientations. It's worth noting that for Mead a full account of
the self should address the phylogenetic as well as the
ontogenetic.


## 4. The "I" and the "Me"



One of Mead's most significant contributions to social
psychology is his distinction between the "I" and the
"Me." It's worth emphasizing that while this
distinction is utilized in sociological circles, it is grounded
philosophically for Mead. His target, in part, is no less than the
idea of the transcendental ego, especially in its Kantian incarnation.
It is also important to note that the "I" and
"Me" are functional distinctions for Mead, not
metaphysical ones. He refers to them as phases of the self (MSS 178,
200), although he more typically uses the word self to refer to the
"Me" (Aboulafia 2016).



The self that arises in relationship to a specific generalized other
is referred to as the "Me." The "Me" is a
cognitive object, which is only known retrospectively, that is, on
reflection. When we act in habitual ways we are not typically
self-conscious. We are engaged in actions at a non-reflective level.
However, when we take the perspective of the generalized other, we are
both "watching" and forming a self in relationship to the
system of behaviors that constitute this generalized other. So, for
example, if I am playing second base, I may reflect on my position as
a second baseman, but to do so I have to be able to think of
"myself" in relationship to the whole game, namely, the
other actors and the rules of the game. We might refer to this
cognitive object as my (second baseman) baseball self or
"Me." Perhaps a better example might be to think of the
self in relationship to one's family of origin. In this
situation, one views oneself from the perspective of the various sets
of behaviors that constitute the family system.



To return to the baseball example, one may have a self, a
"Me," that corresponds to a particular position that one
plays, which is nested within the game as an organized totality. This
self, however, doesn't tell us how any particular play may be
made. When a ball is grounded to a second baseman, how he or she
reacts is not predetermined. He reacts, and how he reacts is always to
some degree different from how he has reacted in the past. These
reactions or actions of the individual, whether in response to others
or self-initiated, fall within the "sphere" of the
"I." Every response that the "I" makes is
somewhat novel. Its responses may differ only in small ways from
previous responses, making them functionally equivalent, but they will
never be exactly the same. No catch in a ball game is ever identical
to a previous catch. Mead declares that, "The 'I'
gives the sense of freedom, of initiative. The situation is there for
us to act in a self-conscious fashion. We are aware of ourselves, and
of what the situation is, but exactly how we will act never gets into
experience until after the action takes place" (MSS,
177-178). The "I" is a "source" of both
spontaneity and creativity. For Mead, however, the "I" is
not a noumenal ego. Nor is it a substance. It is a way of designating
a locus of activity.



The responses of the "I" are non-reflective. How the
"I" reacts is known only on reflection, that is, after we
retrospect.



> 
> If you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the
> "I" comes in, the answer is that it comes in as a
> historical figure. It is what you were a second ago that is the
> "I" of the "me." It is another
> "me" that has to take that role. You cannot get the
> immediate response of the "I" in the process. (MSS, 174)
> 



In other words, once the actions of the "I" have become
objectified and known, by definition they have become a
"Me." The status of the "I" is interesting in
Mead. In trying to differentiate it from the empirical, knowable,
"Me," he states, "The 'I' is the
transcendental self of Kant, the soul that James conceived behind the
scene holding on to the skirts of an idea to give it an added
increment of emphasis" (MSC in SW, 141). However, this statement
should not to be interpreted as endorsing the notion of a
transcendental ego. Mead is seeking to emphasize that the
"I" is not available to us in our acts, that is, it is
only knowable in its objectified form as a "Me." This
point is clarified by a remark that directly follows the statement
just cited. "The self-conscious, actual self in social
intercourse is the objective 'me' or
'me's' with the process of response continually
going on and implying a fictitious 'I' always out of sight
of himself" (MSC in SW, 141). A transcendental ego is not
fictitious. But for Mead, since we are dealing with a functional
distinction here, it is quite acceptable to refer to the
"I" as fictitious in a metaphysical sense.



Why, then, do we seem to experience what Mead refers to as a
"running current of awareness," that is, an ego that
appears to be aware of itself as it acts and thinks, if the
"I" is not immediately aware of itself (SS in SW, 144)?
William James sought to explain this phenomenon in terms of
proprioception and the relationship between "parts" of the
stream of consciousness. (James 1890, 296-307; James 1904,
169-183; James 1905, 184-194). Mead developed a unique
explanation based on the relationship of the "I" to the
"Me." As we have seen, the "I" reacts and
initiates action, but the actions taken are comprehended, objectified,
as a "Me." However, the "Me" is not simply
confined to the objectifications of the immediate actions of the
"I." The "Me" carries with it internalized
responses that serve as a commentary on the "I's"
actions. Mead states, "The action with reference to the others
calls out responses in the individual himself--there is then
another 'me' criticizing, approving, and suggesting, and
consciously planning, i.e., the reflective self" (SS in SW,
145). The running current of awareness, then, is not due to the
"I" being immediately aware of itself. It is due to the
running commentary of the "Me" on the actions of the
"I." The "Me" follows the "I" so
closely in time that it appears as if the "I" is the
source of the "running current of awareness."



Freud's super-ego could be conscious or unconscious. One might
think of the "Me" as similar to the conscious super-ego in
the commentary that it provides, but one would have to be careful not
to carry this analogy too far. For Mead, the "Me" arises
in relationship to systems of behaviors, generalized others, and,
therefore, is by definition multiple, although the behaviors of
various "Me's" can overlap. Further, Freud's
model assumes a determinism that is not inherent in the relationship
of the "I" to the "Me." Not only does the
"I" initiate novel responses, its new behaviors can become
part of a "Me." In other words, "Me's"
are not static. They are systems that often undergo transformation.
This will become more apparent in the next section when we discuss
Mead's ideas regarding emergence. In this context it is enough
to suggest the following: when a ballplayer makes a catch in a manner
that has never been made before--that is, makes a play that is
significantly different from prior catches--the new play may
become part of the repertoire of the team's behaviors. In other
words, the play may alter the existing generalized other by modifying
existing behavioral patterns. In so doing, it gives rise to a modified
or new self because the game as a whole has been changed. Once again,
this may be easier to see in terms of the transformations that take
place in families when new reactions occur as children and adults
interact over time. New selves are generated as family systems are
transformed.


## 5. Sociality, Emergence, and *The Philosophy of the Present*



We have seen that the "I" introduces novelty in actions
and in the interactions between human beings. For Mead, novelty is not
a phenomenon that can be accounted for in terms of human ignorance, as
it can for a determinist such as Spinoza. In the Spinozistic
framework, even though everything in nature is determined, as finite
modes we must remain ignorant of the totality of causes. In principle,
however, an infinite Mind could predict every event. Mead, following
in the footsteps of Darwin, argues that novelty is in fact an aspect
of the natural world, and that there are events that are not only
unpredictable due to ignorance, but are in principle impossible to
predict. In the latter category, for example, we find mutations that
help to give rise to new species, as well as the creative responses of
baseball players, musicians, composers, dancers, scientists, etc.



In *The Philosophy of the Present*--a compilation based on
the Carus Lectures delivered in late 1930 in Berkeley--Mead
outlines his thoughts on nature and time. Mead did not have the
opportunity to develop his ideas into a book. (He passed away early in
1931.) In spite of the fact that these lectures were hurriedly written
due to obligations that he had as chair of the University of
Chicago's philosophy department, they contain ideas that
illuminate his earlier work and indicate the direction of his thought.
On the first page of the lectures we are told that "reality
exists in a present" and that we do not live in a Parmenidean
cosmos (PP, 1). "For a Parmenidean reality does not exist.
Existence involves non-existence: it does take place. The world is a
world of events" (PP, 1). Our world is one in which change is
real and not merely a subjective, perceptual, phenomenon.



> 
> It seems to me that the extreme mathematization of recent science in
> which the reality of motion is reduced to equations in which change
> disappears in an identity, and in which space and time disappear in a
> four dimensional continuum of indistinguishable events which is
> neither space nor time is a reflection of the treatment of time as
> passage without becoming. (PP, 19)
> 



The universe doesn't just spin its wheels and offer motion
without real novelty. Part of the impetus behind *The Philosophy of
the Present* was to argue against an interpretation of space-time,
such as Hermann Minkowski's, which eliminates the truly novel or
the emergent. Emergence involves not only biological organisms, but
matter and energy; for example, there is a sense in which water can be
spoken of as emerging from the combination of hydrogen and
 oxygen.[1]
 Nevertheless, biological examples appear best suited to Mead's
approach. It's worth noting at this juncture that Mead had
always been keenly interested in science and the scientific method.
However, as a pragmatist, the test of a scientific hypothesis for him
is whether it can illuminate *the world that is there.* He
certainly was never a positivist.



As mentioned, Mead is a systemic thinker who speaks of taking the
perspectives of others and of generalized others. These perspectives
are not "subjective" for Mead. They are
"objective" in the sense that they provide frames of
reference and shared patterns of behavior for members of communities.
(This is not to say that every human community has an equally viable
account of the natural world. This is in part why we have science for
Mead.) However, it is not only human perspectives that are objective
for Mead. While it is true that only human beings share perspectives
in a manner that allows them to be (self) conscious about the
perspectives of others, there is an objective reality to non-human
perspectives. How can a non-human perspective be objective? In order
to answer this question, a few general remarks about Mead's
notion of "perspective" are in order. First, it is
important to note that perspectives are not primarily visual for Mead.
They are ways of speaking about how organisms act and interact in
environments. In the words of David Miller,



> 
> According to Mead, every perspective is a consequence of an active,
> selecting organism, and no perspective can be built up out of visual
> experiences alone or out of experiences of the so-called secondary
> qualities. A perspective arises out of a relation of an active,
> selective, percipient event and its environment. It determines the
> order of things in the environment that are selected, and it is in
> nature.... We make distinctions among objects in our environment,
> finally, through, contact. (Miller 1973, 213)
> 



Mead has been referred to as a tactile philosopher, as opposed to a
visual one, because of the importance of contact experience in his
thought. Perspectives involve contact and interaction between
organisms and their environments. For example, a fish living in a
certain pond can be thought of as inhabiting an ecosystem. The way in
which it navigates the pond, finds food to eat, captures its food,
etc., can be spoken of as the fish's perspective on the pond,
and it is objective, that is, its interactions are not a matter of the
subjective perceptions of the fish. Its interactions in its
environment shape and give form to its perspective, which is different
from the snail's perspective, although it lives in the same
waters. In other words, organisms stratify environments in different
ways as they seek to meet their needs (Miller 1973, 207-217).
The pond, in fact, is not one system but many systems in the sense
that its inhabitants engage in different, interlaced interactions, and
therefore have different objective perspectives. The fish, of course,
does not comprehend its perspective or localized environment as a
system, but this doesn't make its perspective subjective. Human
beings, given our capacity to discuss systems in language, can
describe the ecology of a pond (or better, the ecologies of a pond
depending on what organisms we are studying). We can describe, with
varying degrees of accuracy, what it is like to be a fish living in a
particular pond, as opposed to a snail. Through study we learn about
the perspectives of other creatures, although we cannot share them as
we can the perspectives of the language bearing members of our own
species.



For Mead, as noted, systems are not static. This is especially evident
in the biological world. New forms of life arise, and some of them are
due to the efforts of human beings, for example, the botanists who
create hybrids. Mead argues that if a new form of life emerges from
another form, then there is a time when the new organism has not fully
developed, and therefore has not yet modified its environmental niche.
In this situation the older order, the old environment, has not
disappeared but neither has the new one been born. Mead refers to this
state of betwixt and between as *sociality*.



> 
> When the new form has established its citizenship the botanist can
> exhibit the mutual adjustments that have taken place. The world has
> become a different world because of the advent, but to identify
> sociality with this result is to identify it with system merely. It is
> rather the stage betwixt and between the old system and the new one
> that I am referring to. If emergence is a feature of reality this
> phase of adjustment, which comes between the ordered universe before
> the emergent has arisen and that after it has come to terms with the
> newcomer, must be a feature also of reality. (PP, 47)
> 



Sociality is a key idea for Mead and it has implications for his
sociology and social psychology. If we think of the "Me"
as a system, then there are times when the "I" initiates
new responses that may or may not be integrated into an existing
"Me." But if they come to be integrated, then there is a
time betwixt and between the old and new "Me" system. What
makes this all the more interesting is that human beings have a
capacity for reflection. We can become aware of changes that are
taking place as we "stand" betwixt and between, which
allows for the possibility of influencing the development of a future
self. We can even set up conditions to promote changes that we believe
may transform us in certain ways. Or to put this in another light, new
problems are bound to arise in the world, and because of our capacity
for sociality, we can get some purchase on the courses of action
available to us as we reflect on the novel problems confronting us. Of
course, because the problems are novel means that we do not have ready
solutions. However, the capacity to stand betwixt and between old and
(possible) new orders, as we do between old and new social roles,
provides us with some opportunity for anticipating alternatives and
integrating new responses. As a matter of fact, Mead links moral
development with our capacity for moving beyond old values, old
selves, in order to integrate new values into our personalities when
new situations call for them.



> 
> To leave the field to the values represented by the old self is
> exactly what we term selfishness. The justification for the term is
> found in the habitual character of conduct with reference to these
> values....Where, however, the problem is objectively considered,
> although the conflict is a social one, it should not resolve itself
> into a struggle between selves, but into such reconstruction of the
> situation that different and *enlarged and more adequate
> personalities may emerge*. (SS in SW, 148) [emphasis added]
> 



It's worth noting here that Mead did not develop an ethics, at
least not one that was systematically presented. But his position
bears a kinship to theorists of moral sentiment, if we understand
"the taking the perspectives of others" as a more
sophisticated statement of sympathetic attachments. It is important to
emphasize that for pragmatic reasons Mead does not think that the idea
of compassion is sufficient for grounding an ethics. He argues for a
notion of obligation that is tied to transforming social conditions
that generate pain and
 suffering.[2]



Returning to Mead's notion of sociality, we can see that he is
seeking to emphasize transitions and change between systems. This
emphasis on change has repercussions for his view of the present,
which is not to be understood as a knife-edge present. In human
experience, the present arises from a past and spreads into the
future. In a manner reminiscent of James's account of the stream
of thought, Mead argues that the present entails duration (James 1890,
237-283). It retains the receding past and anticipates the
imminent future. Yet because reality ultimately exists in the present,
Mead argues that the historical past, insofar as it is capable of
being experienced, is transformed by novel events. History is not
written on an unchanging scroll. Novelty gives lie to this way of
seeing the past. By virtue of its originality, the novel event, the
emergent, can not be explained or understood in terms of prior
interpretations of the past. The past, which by definition can only
exist in the present, changes to accommodate novel events.



> 
> It is idle, at least for the purposes of experience, to have recourse
> to a "real" past within which we are making constant
> discoveries; for that past must be set over against a present within
> which the emergent appears, and the past, which must then be looked at
> from the standpoint of the emergent, becomes a different past. The
> emergent when it appears is always found to follow from the past, but
> before it appears it does not, by definition, follow from the past.
> (PP, 2)
> 


## 6. Determinism and Freedom



Mead's account of the "Me" and the generalized other
has often led commentators to assume that he is a determinist. It is
certainly the case that if one were to emphasize Mead's concern
with social systems and the social development of the self, one might
be led to conclude that Mead is a theorist of the processes of
socialization. And the latter, nested as they are within social
systems, are beyond the control of individuals. However, when one
considers the role of the "I" and novelty in his thinking,
it becomes more difficult to view him as a determinist. But his
emphasis on novelty only seems to counter determinism with
spontaneity. This counter to determinism in itself doesn't
supply a notion of autonomy--self-governance and
self-determination--which is often viewed as crucial to the
modern Western notion of the subject. However, Mead was a firm booster
of the scientific method, which he viewed as an activity that was at
its heart democratic. For him, science is tied to the manner in which
human beings have managed from pre-recorded times to solve problems
and transform their worlds. We have just learned to be more methodical
about the ways in which we solve problems in modern science. If one
considers his discussions of science and problem solving behavior,
which entail anticipatory experience, the reflexivity of
consciousness, the sharing of perspectives and their objective
reality, and the creativity of the "I," then one begins to
see how Mead thought that our biological endowments coupled with our
social skills could assist us in shaping our own futures, as well aid
us in making moral decisions. He did not work out the details of this
process, especially with regard to moral autonomy and the
"I's" role in
 it.[3]
 There is, however, little doubt that he thought autonomy possible,
but the condition for its possibility depends on the nature of the
self's genesis and the type of society in which it develops.


## 7. Recent Scholarship and Trends



For the better part of half a century, a resurgence of interest in
pragmatism has led to a steady production of scholarship on the
classical American pragmatists. Countless articles, books, and
conferences have been dedicated to rediscovering and reinventing the
ideas of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Journals devoted to their work are
available in print and online. George Herbert Mead is the curious
exception. For Mead, no eponymous journals exist. Only a handful of
philosophy conferences have been held in his
 honor.[4]
 In comparison to these other pragmatists, the promise of his
contributions remains unfulfilled.



Many of the influential pragmatists of our time proudly accept the
title of inheritors and stewards of the thought of Peirce, James, or
Dewey. While many sociologists have taken up Mead's banner, he
has not received comparable treatment in philosophical circles. Early
reviews of Mead's posthumous publications appraised him as
comparable in genius and stature to Dewey and James (Shalin 2015).
These reviewers anticipated Mead's novel ideas would prompt much
philosophical debate (Shalin 2015). But philosophers who thought
highly of him were often disappointed. Maurice Natanson (1956, 1)
wrote of his dissatisfaction with philosophy scholars' neglect
of Mead, "The work of a truly major American philosopher is
today largely unknown, frequently misunderstood where he is known, and
more often than not, simply ignored." Mead remains frequently
glossed over, even by most scholars of pragmatism. The result has been
a deficit in philosophical Mead scholarship relative to other
classical pragmatists. (This, however, is not to say that there
hasn't been important work done on Mead, for example,
Habermas's *Theory of Communicative Action* is indebted
to Mead.) In this section we will highlight promising recent
scholarship and trends, which may open up avenues for future
research.



Since the posthumous publication of *Mind, Self, and Society*,
commentaries on Mead have often relied heavily on works that he did
not publish, with particular emphasis on those lecture notes and
manuscripts addressing the genesis and development of the mind and
self. However, a systematic analysis of Mead's philosophy
requires an assessment of the whole of his work, including work
published in his lifetime (Cook 1993, xiii-xiv). A relatively recent
methodological trend in Mead scholarship consists of reframing
Mead's legacy from a philosopher who seldom published to one
whose written canon adds up to over 120 items and counting (Carreira
da Silva 2008, 6; 2011, ix-x; Cook 2013, 95; Cote 2015;
Reck in SW, xiii-lxii; Taylor 2019; Throop and Ward 2007). By
utilizing writings in which Mead's authorship is uncontested,
these commentators seek to present Mead in a voice closer to his own.
This trend in research on the "the published Mead" has led
to inventive investigations into Mead's theories of experience,
perception, action, emergence, society, the mind, and social
cognition. Future efforts employing this method have the potential to
highlight Mead's contributions to the philosophies of history,
education, politics, and the social sciences.



Mead developed an interest in physiology early in his intellectual
development, and he certainly saw us as embodied organisms, for whom
the sense of touch was uniquely important. But the relationship
between the body and the self has been subject to different
interpretations. Some recent studies on Mead have sought to address
the constitutive role of bodily awareness in the emergence of mind and
self, and rethink what is necessary to articulate a unified embodied
self, given Mead's distinctions between the "I" and
"Me" (see, for example, Cook 2013; McVeigh 2020).
Consequently, two interrelated trajectories in contemporary Mead
scholarship have emerged: 1) investigations into the possibility of a
pre-reflective self, particularly as it pertains to the constitution
of a unified self, and 2) situating Mead among social cognition
theorists, whereby his philosophy serves as a precursor to what is now
viewed as the second wave of cognitive science built upon
action-oriented theories of 4EA cognition (i.e., embedded, embodied,
enactive, extended, and affective).



Several contemporary commentators on Mead assert that within his
theory of the origin and development of the self lies an opportunity
(or a missed opportunity, depending on the degree of criticism) to
account for a pre-reflective bodily self-awareness in humans that
permits a non-linguist, auto-affective, naturalized account of unified
bodily agency, which precedes the development of the social self
(Geniusas 2006; Madzia 2015). Madzia (2015, 82) argues that for a
unifying self (capable of self-reflection) to emerge, we must
presuppose body ownership, that is, a "primal
self-awareness" emanating from a body-mindedness. Similarly,
while invoking Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology, Geniusas (2006,
258) contends that acknowledging a "primordial
self-givenness" generated by auto-affection accounts for the
"mineness of experience" and aids in individuation.
Further, he maintains that the concept of auto-affection dissolves the
problem of delineating a sharp distinction between Mead's
"I" and "Me," because the self would be able
to know the "I" directly (Geniusas 2006). These accounts
are not meant to undermine Mead's social self but to supplement
it as a precondition of human role-taking. Such accounts may be viewed
as addressing the relationship between animal and human intelligence.
Moreover, Madzia (2013; 2015, 83) argues, incorporating a
"primal self-awareness" as a stage in the genesis and
evolution of the self affords Mead the added benefit of making his
theory compatible with pragmatism's principle of continuity.
Nonetheless, Mead might disagree with these approaches and respond to
such commentaries by restating his commitment to the social
constitution of the self: "I do not want to discuss metaphysical
problems, but I want to insist that the self has a sort of structure
that arises in social conduct that is entirely distinguishable from
this so-called subjective experience" (MSS, 166).



To address Mead's apparent failure to provide a comprehensive
account of a unified self, some scholars have taken a different
course. They have attempted to demonstrate how narrative can play a
role in interpreting Mead's work, for example, by providing the
resources necessary to harmonize the multiple selves articulated by
Mead (Aboulafia 2016; Jackson 2010). A turn to narrative can be viewed
as bringing Mead closer to the hermeneutic philosophy of Charles
Taylor and Paul Ricoeur (see, for instance, Ezzy 1998).



Taking up the second trajectory mentioned above, we find studies in
what has been called the pragmatic turn in second generation cognitive
science (Baggio 2021). There are scholars - for example, Guido
Baggio (2021), Roman Madzia (2016a, 2016b, 2017), and Ryan McVeigh
(2016, 2020) - who view Mead's philosophy as a forerunner
to more contemporary physically embodied, socially embedded,
action-oriented theories of social cognition and
 mind.[5]
 These commentators share the belief that Mead's interconnected
theories of emergence, perception, action, and mind provide fertile
areas for critical engagement with contemporary studies of enactive,
extended, and embodied cognition.



Mead and second-generation cognitive theorists share a commitment to
the evolutionary, genetic, and ultimately social development of
cognition. Projects in 4EA cognition have the potential to align with,
or better, respond to Mead's demand that questions of mind and
the self are developed out of an integration of the
"parallel" disciplines of philosophy, social psychology,
and physiology (CP in ESP, 9-18; see also McVeigh 2016, 2020).
For instance, it has been argued that mirror neurons function as the
neurological mechanism that allows for humans to take the attitude of
others (Madzia 2013; McVeigh 2016). Contemporary research in cognitive
science that addresses the perspectival nature and embodied sociality
of such cognitive mechanisms as basic-level cognition and joint
attention has the potential to complement and enrich Mead's
views on the emergence of self, mind, and society (McVeigh 2016;
Cahoone 2013, 2019; see also Tomasello 2020).



Further, the importance for Mead of evolutionary processes and contact
experience in the genesis and development of the self and mind opens
the door to the integration of his philosophy and cognitive science in
such areas as sensorimotor enactivism (Baggio 2021) and the extended
(Madzia 2013) and embodied mind (McVeigh 2020; Madzia 2016). Notably,
the primacy of the hand's role in Mead's theory of
perception lends itself to current cognitive accounts of the embodied
mind and the development of human intelligence and culture (Madzia
2017).



We now transition from the philosophy of mind to the impact of
Mead's work in social and political philosophy, and its
relationship to Hegel. Mead's early Hegelianism has been aptly
noted (Cook 1993, 37-47; Joas 1985). Although there are scholars
who argue that Mead shed his Hegelian roots, others recommend that
Mead's mature work be read in light of Hegel (Aboulafia 2010).
Recently, while continuing the methodological project of a systematic
reading of "the published Mead," Jean-Francois
Cote (2015) presents a critical reconstruction of
Mead's concept of society by advancing a genealogical account of
Mead's lifelong engagement with Hegelian themes. Here, the
cogenesis and indefinite co-restructuring of a self-aware society and
selfhood, in its ontogenetic and phylogenetic manifestations,
represent a marriage between Darwin's evolutionary processes and
Hegel's dialectics. Cote (2015) asserts that for
Mead, modern mass democracy -characterized by the political
reforms of his time and the development of what Mead calls
"international-mindedness" - has produced a
self-aware and self-transformative global society. Cote
(2015, 181) notes, however, that the promise of a cosmopolitan society
does not end in mere "globalization." Indebted to the
thought of Mead, Aboulafia's (2010) most recent book examines
self-determination and cosmopolitanism. Among other topics, he
explores the ways in which the social self and a form of transcendence
relate to self-determination and the fashioning of a cosmopolitan
sensibility that is sensitive to the experiences of different groups
and peoples. Aboulafia's and Cote's projects
offer opportunities to develop a Mead-inspired political theory that
emphasizes the transformative efforts of individuals and
institutions.



Over the years comparative analyses of Mead have brought him into
conversation with analytic philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Sellars,
Quine, and Davidson (Baggio 2016a, 2019, 2020; Madzia 2013c), the
Continental thought of Habermas and Arendt (Aboulafia 2001),
phenomenologists such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Levinas,
and Marion (Aboulafia 1986, 2001; Geniusas 2006; Jung 1995; Rosenthal
and Bourgeois 1991), the philosophic hermeneutics and expressivism of
Charles Taylor (Abbott 2020; Fietz 2021), the developmental
psychologist, linguist, and cognitive scientist Michael Tomasello
(Cahoone 2013, 2019; McVeigh 2016; Nungesser 2016; Tomasello 2020),
economic thought, particularly Veblen and Sen (Baggio 2016a, 2016b,
2017; Betz 2013; Green 2013), animal studies (Booth 2016b; Gallagher
2016), and psychoanalytic theory (Cote 2015; Santarelli
2013). Research in pragmatist feminism has revealed the influence of
Mead on philosopher, educator, and activist Grace Lee Boggs
(previously Grace Chin Lee), whose dissertation and first book
presented an early critical introduction to Mead's social
philosophy (Lee 1945; Lake 2020; Varner 2021; see also Huebner 2022,
20).



Of interest, also, are those studies in philosophical hermeneutics
placing Mead in the tradition of Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer
(Cote 2021; Jung 1995; Taylor 2019). In recognizing the
early influence of Dilthey on Mead while a student in Berlin, we can
begin to see how and where their interrelated interests developed
similarities and differences, particularly as they relate to the
natural and social sciences. Returning to their student-teacher
relationship serves as a springboard for contemporary philosophical
debates regarding the primacy of experience and life-processes, the
significance of historical situatedness, and the overcoming of the
traditional separation of theory and praxis (Jung 1995).



Lastly, we arrive at Mead's philosophy of education. Before all
else, Mead was an educator. A "stimulating" orator, James
H. Tufts tells us, for Mead, "the lecture was his medium"
(Huebner 2015, 85). He offered courses in a variety of disciplines
that spanned the history of thought. Prior to holding appointments at
the Universities of Michigan and Chicago, he tried his hand as a
grade-school teacher (Cook
 1993).[6]
 For Mead, the learner does not merely receive meaning, she
industriously incorporates and transforms it. For this reason, he was
actively involved in Dewey's innovative Laboratory School. For
many years he served as editor and contributor to the educational
journals *School Review* and *Elementary School
Teacher*, and publicly spoke on, and published in various other
mediums shorter contributions to, the philosophy of education,
pedagogy, and educational psychology.



It is often argued that Mead was so consumed by his civic commitment
to educational reform in Chicago that he spent little attention to
publishing his ideas. Even more important, then, that it is known that
his longest published piece in his lifetime was *A Report on
Vocational Training in Chicago and in other Cities*, a 1912
coauthored book-length study for the City Club of Chicago comparing
practices of vocational education across cities. In opposition to
segregating trade schools from traditional scholastic programs, he
advocated for practical vocational education as standard in the
curriculum of public education (Huebner 2022, 12). Further, Mead had
intended to publish a book of collected short works, titled *Essays
on Psychology* (see ESP, xii). Of the 18 chapters, 10 had
education as their topic. Moreover, between the years 1905 and 1911,
Mead offered four courses on the philosophy of education at the
University of Chicago (PE, 3). Recognizing the vital importance of
education in Mead's social philosophy, Alfred Stafford Clayton
(1943) published what remains the sole book-length investigation into
Mead's philosophy of
 education.[7]
 Not until 2008 were the lecture notes on Mead's philosophy of
education course made available to the public (PE, 2011). Prior to
this publication, only a few important studies were made on
Mead's contribution to educational theory (Barnes 2002; Biesta
1998, 1999; Deegan 1999; Martin 2007b). Since then, little has been
added to this important discussion.



Throughout his writings, Mead often referred to the gradual
development of a "scientific attitude" in social selves
and their society as a "great," even "splendid
secular adventure" (MT, 63, 85; SM in SW, 265-266).
Perhaps recent trends in Mead scholarship will further clarify why he
was so sanguine about this secular adventure.