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Symposia
Pragmatism and Anthropology

The Scope of Mind in Nature

Charles W. Morris’ Early Theory of Symbolism and Critical Reading of G. H. Mead
Etienne Raduly

Abstract

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.

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Author's notes

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Jean Markert for kindly accepting to read over this paper and for his thorough corrections of stylistic flaws in my English writing. I also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, whose suggestions have helped me improve significantly the final version of this article.

Full text

1. Introduction

  • 1 See e.g. Huebner (2014: 147).

1The notoriety of Charles W. Morris (1903-1979) in contemporary scholarship rests essentially on his division of the “dimensions” of meaning into syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. Among his contemporaries, however, Morris was known chiefly as a disciple, editor, and exponent of the thought of George H. Mead. Morris’ editorial work was part of a more general and constant effort to present Mead as “a thinker of the magnitude and importance of Peirce, James, and Dewey” (quoted in Huebner 2014: 298, n. 26), and to include him among the original founders of the pragmatist tradition. Mead himself spoke very highly of Morris throughout his lifetime, and regarded him as his natural successor at the University of Chicago.1

  • 2 Hereafter noted SR.
  • 3 Hereafter noted MSS.

2While the importance of Mead’s influence on Morris cannot be overemphasized, in this article I wish to bring attention to a subtle yet significant criticism of Mead by Morris in his early writings on the “symbolic” theory of mind. As yet, this first period of his career has received very little attention in the secondary literature, although Morris’ 1925 PhD dissertation, Symbolism and Reality (1925/1993),2 has been made available in 1993. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to point out some noteworthy aspects of the early theory of symbolism, as I believe it deserves to be studied for itself (and not only as a prefiguration of Morris’ later and more mature philosophy); second, to identify some points of dissent between Morris and Mead on some key ideas that were to be found in Mead’s posthumous and arguably most influential book, Mind, Self, and Society (1934/2015),3 edited by Morris between 1931 and 1934.

  • 4 See e.g., for the field of pragmatics, the criticism of its “monomodal” character by Gu (2019: 218 (...)

3These two lines of exposition go hand in hand, since Morris’ own views are very closely linked to his critical understanding of Mead. In particular, he appears to have identified, as early as 1927, some questionable points in Mead’s definition of the symbol, thus anticipating by some seventy years the heated argument – which originated in the 1990s – on Mead’s alleged “anthropocentric” conception of the symbol, the mind, and the self. As I will not attempt to give a definite answer to this argument, I intend rather to reconstruct Morris’ reservations and criticisms toward the ideas of his mentor, through a summary of the main goals and concepts of his symbolism, and a survey of some controversies in the field of comparative psychology at the turn of the 20th century. Morris’ critical reading of Mead has two main consequences: first, his symbolism proposes a continuous, non-dualistic view of biological evolution, in which the decisive role of the symbol in his definition of mind enables him to conceive of a form of animal symbolism and mentality; second, with respect to the development of Morris’ own thought, such a definition of the symbol allows us to understand the later stages of his semiotics, where language is viewed only as a particular instance of sign-use, thus giving its study a larger scope than that of a number of “mainstream,” language-based 20th-century approaches.4 Morris’ symbolism thus outlines an alternative form of pragmatist anthropology, which ought to be conceived in the larger, natural setting of biological evolution: the human use of symbols – especially in its evolution into linguistic forms – only represents a difference in degree with respect to animal symbolism. In this sense, Morris seems to have attempted to bridge what he perceived as a chasm opened by Mead between animality and humanity, because of an overly restrictive communicational and linguistic criterion in the definition of mind.

2. Symbolism as a Metaphilosophical Program

  • 5 For a historical and sociological overview of absolute idealism, see Watson 1981.
  • 6 This is especially true of his “scientific empiricism,” devised in the second half of the 1930s as (...)

4Morris’ symbolic theory of mind can be regarded as an expression of the wave of “new eclecticism” in the 1920s and 30s (Richardson 2003: 4), which emerged subsequent to the decline of absolute idealism.5 Many contemporaries, such as Ralph B. Perry, rejoiced at the signs of “a confluence of currents which have hitherto run in separate channels,” so that “we are (and I am glad, as well as convinced, that it is so) less inclined than formerly to pride ourselves on partisan loyalties and polemical victories” (Perry 1930: 200). This intellectual evolution also reflects a sociological one: the 1920s mark the emergence of philosophy “as a narrowly defined discipline within a modern university setting” (Brodrick 2015: 45), as well as of a generalized belief in the idea of philosophical “progress,” which ought to follow the example set by the experimental sciences. The movement of philosophical “professionalization” (Campbell 2006: 35-7) is thus closely connected, from the beginning, with the metaphilosophical program of rendering the discipline scientific, by adopting a mode of inquiry aiming at “collaborative efforts and progress” in order to “move philosophy away from an endless repetition of competing systems that led nowhere” (Kuklick 2001: 201). This conception had a profound and lasting influence on Morris, whose most characteristic intellectual traits throughout his philosophical career were his constant opposition to dualistic modes of thinking and his philosophical syncretism.6

5As such, Morris regarded his symbolism as a contribution to the construction of a scientific philosophy. Since this transformation involves the strengthening of its transdisciplinary ties, the problem of mind is “undoubtedly the central philosophical problem” (SR: 2), as it has immediate consequences upon the fields of psychology, biology, anthropology, or sociology, as well as logic and the philosophy of mathematics: “philosophy and science are again drawing much closer together, and the topic of mind furnishes a fruitful point of cooperation” (Morris 1929: 155). This close interdependence of a synthetic, or “eclectic” spirit, and a scientific one, is also apparent in the list of “criteria” proposed by Morris in order for his theory to be “comprehensive in its scope and fertile in its implications” (ibid.: 157):

[The] theory of mind must be neither so general nor so limited in character that it fails to clarify the philosophical discussions of mind; it must be in harmony with whatever material the various psychological points of view can offer; it must harmonize with the general theory of the development of animal intelligence; it must be applicable to the study of the mind of primitive man; it must throw light upon the relation of logic and mathematics to mental phenomena; and finally, it must not be […] a “silly theory,” that is a theory which one hotly defends before his colleagues but would hesitate to mention to one of his friends of good common sense. (Ibid.)

6Above all, for Morris, such a theory ought to be “metaphysically neutral” and capable of being “harmonized with any one of the typical philosophical doctrines” (ibid.: 238).

3. The “Total Self-Inclusive View” of Mind

  • 7 In the omitted part of this quotation, Perry mentions the opposition between “religion and science” (...)

7“Metaphysical neutrality,” however, does not amount to accepting any and all metaphysical doctrines of mind, but rather to neutralizing, as it were, their detrimental effects with respect to a science-oriented (meta)philosophical project. Therefore, Morris’ theoretical starting point is not philosophical, but is found in psychological research. More specifically, in this context, behaviorism appears as a preferential reference for leading the “revolt against the dominance of the concept of consciousness as meaning some psychical entity or process revealed by a unique method of observation, or which, along with other drives or entities or urges is invoked to explain the observable process of active organisms in a world itself observable” (SR: 2). The particular significance of behaviorism thus lies in its opposition to the mind-matter metaphysical dualisms inherited from the “Galilean-Cartesian-Newtonian” tradition (Morris 1927b: 253; 1929: 172), and in its attempt to “give a concrete meaning to intelligence and thought in terms of the interaction of the animal and its world” (SR: 2). As such, the most apparent metaphilosophical implication of Morris’ approach is one of simplification and unification: by casting aside all concepts and observational devices pointing to the existence of a separate ontological realm, and by adhering to a behavioral conception of mind (a conception that he would consistently defend throughout his career), Morris was able to devise his own positive contribution to the philosophical “hope” of the 1920s, that of “healing the breach between mind and matter, soul and body, […]7 teleology and mechanism, or substance and attribute” (Perry 1930: 200).

  • 8 For an explicit reference to Hegel, see e.g. Morris’ history of the “speculation concerning mind” ( (...)

8Despite its importance for overcoming the substantial view of mind, however, behaviorism can only be a moment in a more general and inclusive attempt to produce a scientific approach to mental phenomena in philosophy. The allusion to Hegel is not gratuitous or accidental here:8 in virtue of his anti-dualism, Morris often attempts to reconcile conflicting theoretical positions, which are not without their merits, but which, taken in and for themselves, inevitably lead to unacceptable consequences. It is such a philosophical Aufhebung that is attempted by Morris in his interpretation of behaviorism. As such, despite the fruitfulness of the stimulus-response relation, as well as of the notion of substitute stimulus (or conditioned response), in the explanation of certain learning processes in animal and human organisms, the behaviorist’s interpretation is unable to satisfactorily account for mental and symbolic phenomena.

9At first sight, the concept of substitute stimulus contains all the characteristics of symbolic phenomena, since it elicits the same behavioral reactions as the original stimulus it is a substitute for: e.g., the perception of smoke, viewed as a substitute stimulus for a fire, elicits the same responses as the perception of the fire itself would.

Primarily the learning process is one of continually effecting a co-ordination of behavior and of connecting behavior with new aspects of the environment by the process of the substitution of stimuli. A stimulus present along with another stimulus that releases a certain act may in time acquire the function of releasing the same act. The possibility of learning is dependent upon the ability of making such substitutions. (Morris 1927a: 259)

  • 9 “A consistent behaviorism cannot admit any accurate direct knowledge of reality, since, if reaction (...)
  • 10 “For me, ‘I am observing’, only means ‘I am responding’; and ‘I am experiencing’ also means ‘I am r (...)

10The problem, however, lies in the behaviorists’ unilateral focus – in the study of conditioned behavior – on the organism’s response. More precisely, by identifying the response with the object, or rather by reducing the latter to the former, they face insurmountable difficulties, which ultimately make them defend a “silly theory”: despite their intention to develop a purely scientific study of mind, their method paradoxically prevents them from taking seriously the reality of the external world, and leads them to share “the same philosophical bed” as the “subjective solipsist,” insofar as they “practically [admit] that there is no logical reason why the external cosmos cannot be regarded as an episode in man just as well as man can be regarded as an episode in the cosmos” (Morris 1927b: 254). Indeed, this conclusion is found verbatim in the writings of psychologists like Karl S. Lashley9 or Albert P. Weiss10 – the latter goes as far as characterizing his position as a form of “behavioristic solipsism,” and rejects “the fiction of an external world of stimuli” (quoted in Morris 1927b: 254). The reduction of mental processes to reactions to substitute stimuli leads to casting aside the object referred to, and by extension external reality itself.

The behavioristic emphasis on the response obscures the reference of the symbol to experienced events, and so confuses “substitutable for” with “standing for” or “being a symbol of.” Merely because a secondary stimulus arouses the response which a primary stimulus aroused does not make this secondary stimulus a symbol of the primary stimulus. Behaviorism, then, is able to bring in the dynamic and responsive side of the symbol and thought which introspectionism fails to do, but is unable on the basis of its chosen perspective to distinguish the symbol from the substitute stimulus. (Ibid.: 261-2)

11Thus, while the behavioral approach to mind is fully valid inasmuch as it wipes out the “ivory tower view of mind” (ibid.: 253; 1929: 211) and helps to “heal the breach” between matter and mind by replacing the latter in a “naturalistic” (Morris 1932: 17) setting, it needs to be amended and transformed into what we may call a “referential” or “semantic behaviorism,” which will be able to account for the object’s reality and its function in symbolic phenomena.

12Paradoxically, Morris’ attempt to “save the object” entails a reference to introspective psychology. More precisely, he seeks to find a middle ground between the “self-exclusive view” (i.e. behaviorism) and the “partial self-inclusive view” (i.e. introspectionism). This alternative is the “total self-inclusive view,” which combines the respective merits of the other two. It should be noted, however, that this third view is not the result of a synthesis, but, on the contrary, is revealed as the original and comprehensive conception (1929: 227), the “common perspective for the adult human being” (1927b: 257) – behaviorism and introspectionism being only partial subdivisions of it, on a narrower scope. The total self-inclusive view of mind takes into account “the focal organism, tactual objects, and non-tactual objects” (1929: 227), thus simultaneously allowing the observation of (1) the observer’s private experiences, of (2) the relation of their organism to other organisms, and of (3) the relation of organisms to one another. Admittedly, the private experiences of other organisms remain out of reach; nevertheless, “the observer’s own experience is observed […] in an unbroken continuum with such material as the behaviorist deals with” (1927b: 257), so that the separation between private content and overt behavior is far from being as clear-cut as the behaviorist supposes it is.

  • 11 While the material of the chapter itself is drawn from student notes taken in 1928 and 1930, it can (...)

13Morris’ position certainly owes much to Mead’s reading of behaviorism, although, since a significant part of Mead’s thought was not available in published form during his lifetime, the “ideas” (see e.g. SR: 64) Morris refers to in his early writings are seldom referenced precisely, and correspond, for the most part, to the views held in Mind, Self, and Society. There is, in particular, a very close resemblance between Morris’ total self-inclusive view and Mead’s “behavioristic” brand of social psychology, which attempts to work “from the outside to the inside,” while recognizing “the inner experience of the individual” (MSS: 7-8), as it appears in the course of “Advanced Social Psychology,” which makes up the first chapter.11 At the same time, Morris’ own theoretical interests in the late 1920s and early 1930s were no doubt an important factor in the invention of the phrase “social behaviorism,” which, though never used by Mead, eventually became the subtitle of the 1934 volume, in order to highlight the singularity of his position, as well as its significance for the development of a non-dualistic approach to mind.

14Morris’ starting point is therefore the same as that of the founder of behaviorism (and his fellow student of Mead in Chicago), John B. Watson: any change in an organism (i.e. any form of action or reaction) ought to be explained as a response to a stimulus caused by the environment of the organism or by another organism (see e.g. Watson 1913). The concept of the substitute stimulus is also fundamental to account for an organism’s learning processes and the development of its “freedom,” i.e. the ability to extend the scope of its environment by responding to parts of it which are not immediately given and perceived: “control by absent stimuli means freedom from present stimuli” (SR: 36). Such a freedom, however, can only be fully attained through the symbol; yet the substitute stimulus is not necessarily a symbol, although it is a precondition of it. More precisely, if every symbol is (genetically) a substitute stimulus, not every substitute stimulus is a symbol. The substitute stimulus in itself does not attest to the “mental” dimension of behavior (SR: 13): only the symbol does. As such, it must meet an additional condition, i.e. it must “arouse the memory image of the original stimulus” (ibid.). In other words, the symbol must be “connected with the original stimulus and not merely with the original response” (SR: 14). A word, for instance, is a symbol insofar as it is not only “a condition for the action which the tactual object called out, but because it is also the condition for the givenness of some memory image of [it], that is, for the reinstatement of the original stimulus in a non-tactual form” (ibid.). The symbol is thus liable for a semantic or denotative condition, which can only be met by an introspective or “private” interpretation of the psychological phenomenon of reference to an object. That is not to say, however, that the symbol ought to be understood as a private reality or entity; in fact, Morris denies the existence of “psychical phenomena” as belonging to a specific order of reality. Mental phenomena are symbolic phenomena: the field of the latter completely exhausts, and corresponds to, the field of the former.

  • 12 “Thought is not something different from symbols and which uses them; thought is identical with the (...)

15This amounts to saying that the ultimate or complete significance of symbols, and therefore of mind itself, is of an adaptive nature: characterized as a “present-as-absent” (Morris 1932: 300), the symbol points to a portion of experience different from itself, that is, not immediately given to the organism. Symbolic activity ought to be understood in the larger evolutionary process “which has passed from the dealing with objects by touch, to the dealing with distant objects by the development of the distance receptors, and finally to the dealing with absent objects through the functioning of their present symbolic substitutes” (ibid.). The use of symbols, which for Morris is completely synonymous with the term “mind,”12 thus assumes a crucial biological significance, since it increases the plasticity of the “symbolic animals”: their environment is no longer limited to what is given in immediate perception, but is drastically extended by the possibility to respond to certain parts or traits of the immediately given as indicating or referring to something beyond it.

4. Who are the Symbolic Animals? Morris versus Mead

16Morris’ position can be characterized as a resolutely functional approach to mind, which he fully identifies with the use of symbols: for the functional view,

[…] mind would appear to have nothing of its own, drawing its entire content from nature. Mentality resides in the relation which the apprehended Form assumes in the presence of the Form of the apprehending organism. Just as a stone may be a paper weight in a certain situation, so it would seem that an aspect of nature gains the status of mentality by appearing as content for the Form of an apprehending organism. (Morris 1932: 19)

  • 13 See e.g. (MSS: 10-1).

17As such, Morris’ and Mead’s conceptions are very close to one another.13 However, some important differences with Mead arise in Morris’ classification of the kinds of symbols, where he distinguishes three levels of complexity. (1) On the first level, the “simple symbol” (Morris 1927c: 288) performs a purely substitutive or referential function; in this context, “an organism may utilize symbols as cues to behavior without being conscious of self, and without knowing that it ‘has’ symbols” (ibid.). The production and use of simple symbols remains largely involuntary, and depends for the most part on actually experienced stimuli. According to Morris’ example, when a cat sees a mouse disappear in a hole, subsequent perceptions of the latter will be associated to the appearance of the mouse, and will prompt the appropriate behavior toward it (ibid.). (2) On the second level, the “potential language symbol” (ibid.) includes an identical or highly similar referent for two or more organisms (as when the perception of the whole conjures up the absent mouse for two cats (ibid.)). (3) Finally, on the third level, the “actual or internalized language symbol” (ibid.: 289) involves a social component as a decisive factor in its genesis and functioning. It is closely linked with the development of a “social self” (ibid.) which has “taken within itself the original objective social situation,” and is thus capable of referring to himself as well as to others. The hole would thus be an actual language symbol if the cat could point it out to another cat, “in order to reinstate ‘ratness’ in the other cat’s experience” in this way (ibid.). This third level is identical to Mead’s concept of the “significant symbol,” and is of an essentially social nature:

According to Mead, the symbol, when limited to what he calls the significant symbol, arises in those social situations where one participant can take the role of the other and stimulate himself as the other would stimulate him. Speech makes this possible, for in talking to others one stimulates oneself at the same time and in a way similar to the way one is stimulated when others are talking. In the use of significant symbols the user is anticipating a social situation, that is, anticipating the effects upon others of the symbols to be used. The situation may however be further “internalized,” so that one becomes the other to oneself. Thinking as opposed to overt talking becomes the conversation of the self with the “generalized other.” In moral conflicts, in particular, it is not unusual to be aware of an inner conversation, one member of which is the voice of the desires and urges of the individual, while the other member is the voice of the “generalized other,” the social phases of the self, the social attitudes reflected in the voice of conscience. Whenever a person acts in the light of what “people” will say, the situation which Mead so acutely describes is unmistakable. (Morris 1929: 223-4)

18As this last quotation shows, however, the significant symbol (or, in Morris’ terminology, the language symbol) only allows for a “limited” interpretation of symbolism in general. While the third level certainly corresponds to the highest developmental stage of symbols, so much so that Morris presents it as a quasi-telos of the former ones, the fact remains that, as a basic principle, the “post-behaviorist” criterion of reference is a matter of private experience: “the possibility of the symbol must be found in the mechanisms of the individual” (ibid.: 237). For Mead, the reconciliation of the “inside” and the “outside” is made possible by the social nature of the significant symbol, which involves simultaneously the internalization of the social situation and the ability of “taking the role of the other” when conversing with oneself: “the process is not essentially different in these two cases, that is, of thinking and of talking to somebody else” (Mead 1936: 401). For Morris, however, such a reference to the other is not necessary in all symbolic processes, since the criterion of the symbol in general is, more simply, its ability to recall the original situation. Yet such a “rearousal” (Morris 1929: 241) can only happen in “some private non-tactual form” (Morris 1927c: 284), and thus be observed from the self-inclusive point of view (ibid.: 287). As a result, even though the linguistic phases of the symbol enable a much higher theoretical and practical control of the environment by the organism, the simple symbol is nevertheless genetically prior and is “presupposed in the process” as a whole (ibid.: 290): a given stimulus has to become a symbol for the individual before he can communicate it to others. This entails a significant consequence for Morris’ position, where thought is identified in toto to sequences of symbols, but does not always consist in sequences of linguistic symbols: “the contention is not that thought is impossible without words, but that thought is impossible without symbols” (SR: 19).

19Morris thus refuses the reduction of the symbol to its linguistic, or “social-vocal” dimension (Morris 1929: 237), mainly because it would lead to an overly strict demarcation between animal and human behaviors: yet such a chasm “is not borne out by recent studies on animal behavior” (Morris 1927c: 290). This remark, apparently made in passing in the latter article, has a number of serious consequences and directly refers to the thorny problem of Mead’s attitude toward animal or comparative psychology. It has indeed been argued, especially in the field of human-animal studies (or anthrozoology), that Mead defended a “Cartesian model of animal behavior that has been largely discredited by more recent research” (Alger & Alger 1997: 69), by adhering to the conception of the animal as a “reacting machine […] devoid of self-consciousness” (Konecki 2005: 72-3), and drawing “a clear boundary between the human and animal world […] fixed mainly by a language of symbolic nature,” without any “intermediate levels of development of this language or its equivalents (a non-verbal language, for instance) allowing the rudiments of self-consciousness and self to emerge” (ibid.: 73). According to this view, Mead replaced the “Aristotelian and Cartesian markers of human difference – ‘soul’ or ‘mind’ – [by] a secularized […] version: language behavior” (Myers 2007: 42). The implication of Mead’s linguistic definition of the symbol, and of mind in general, results in an “unnecessarily and unjustifiably phono/lingua-centric and anthropocentric” approach to animal phenomena (Young & Thompson 2013: 470), which are incapable of satisfying to the criteria of “mind-as-internal-conversation,” a perspective both “inadequate and confining” (Sanders 2003: 407) inasmuch as it makes language “the sole vehicle of the self and meaningful behavior,” and thus “overlooks the significance of other forms of communication” (Irvine 2003: 47).

  • 14 On this issue, see in particular Huebner (2014: 86-8).
  • 15 For instance, in the oft-quoted passage according to which animals have no personalities, and conse (...)

20As mentioned above, the aim of this article is not to confirm or infirm such an interpretation of Mead, especially since the editorial circumstances leading to the publication of Mind, Self, and Society forbid us from treating it as a direct, transparent, and thoroughly coherent expression of his thought.14 As such, it is equally possible to find some radically anthropocentric contentions,15 as well as some instances in which Mead would seem to attribute a form of mind or self to animals (see e.g. the references given in Wilkie & McKinnon 2013). However, it would be equally dubious to explain away Mead’s views by referring to the contemporary “consensus” in comparative psychology. To say, for instance, that “during Mead’s lifetime, nothing arose in the scientific literature to challenge [the] assertion” that “in the absence of symbolic language, consciousness of self was limited if not impossible” (Gallagher 2016: 162), or that “the sciences of the time, and the accumulated knowledge based on the question of non-human animal minds when Mead was investigating these questions in the first three decades of the 20th century, permitted no other conclusion if mind was defined only in terms of symbolic language” (ibid.: 165), is factually incorrect.

  • 16 “An animal makes combinations, as we say, only by trial and error, and the combination that is succ (...)
  • 17 In the true spirit of the Chicago School, Mead was actively embedded in the experimental work of hi (...)

21As a matter of fact, such a consensus on the question of animal mentality did not exist at the time, and Mead clearly favored hypotheses and experiments defending a negative answer, as illustrated in particular in the work of Edward L. Thorndike, who denied animals any ability to think, or even to associate perceptions to representations (see e.g. 1911: 123). For Thorndike, animal learning can be reduced to a trial-and-error process leading to the formation of “S-R connections which are strengthened or weakened by immediately subsequent events” (Boakes 1984: 75), i.e. by pleasure and pain, or, in his terminology, a “positive reinforcement” or an “aversive event.” This amounts to saying that “an animal learns what to do in a situation without in any sense knowing the consequence of the action. The sole effect of a reward in such a process is to ‘stamp in’ the S-R connection. Such a theory leaves an animal with a very impoverished understanding of its world” (ibid.: 71-2). Some remarks by Mead tend to suggest that he adopted, at least in part, this view of animal behavior,16 including in an experimental context.17 However, it should also be noted that he seems to have adhered to this hypothesis for methodological reasons, and only as a provisional stance, in view of the uncertain state of current comparative psychology. As such, although it is possible to consider that for Mead “humans are unique in comparison to all other life forms” (Deegan 2001: xxxv), it must be noted that his favorable reading of Thorndike was primarily a way for him to criticize the approaches of G.J. Romanes, C.L. Morgan or L.T. Hobhouse, whom he accused of overemphasizing animal intelligence without having developed a satisfactory concept for it (see e.g. Mead 2001: 46-50, 67-72). It would thus appear that, for Mead, animal intelligence or mentality remained an open question, which, to be answered, would require more careful experiments and observations in order to determine the existence (or not) of similarities in animal and human behaviors.

  • 18 Another possibly relevant source on this matter is William James, whose involvement in the “automat (...)

22Morris’ brand of symbolism, however, is precisely intended to account for the new results in animal or comparative psychology, and thus assigns a crucial significance to two experiments carried out and published during Mead’s lifetime,18 namely, the “delayed reaction experiment” by Walter S. Hunter (1913), and Wolfgang Köhler’s observations of chimpanzees recorded in his Mentality of Apes (1917/1921/1925). Both psychologists present decisive evidence revealing some significant shortcomings in Mead’s outlook:

With Mead’s general position we are in essential agreement and it is in large part due to his influence that the present position was developed, but we question the wisdom of defining the symbol in exclusively social terms. If it is so defined, just how does one take the role of the other, and how on this basis can one explain the results of the delayed reaction experiment and of Köhler’s observations on the chimpanzee? (Morris 1927c: 290, n. 21)

23Hunter’s experiment, on the one hand, addressed the issue of mnemonic behavior in animals (rats, raccoons, dogs) and children through a series of tests involving several doors, one of which was placed under a light and led to a reward (food or sweets); after having taught the subject to open the lit door, the experimenter turns the light off before they reach it, at increasingly longer intervals – while they are moving toward it at first, then before they even start moving. For Morris, the animals’ successful behavior in opening the right door was an evidence of the “selective” role played by the “memory of the original stimulus,” which adds a decisive additional “factor” with regard to the mere substitute stimulus (SR: 31): while the latter explains the association of the door with food through a process of positive reinforcement in Thorndike’s sense, it does not account for the answer to the problem regarding which door should be opened. Admittedly, in short intervals, the right choice can be ascribed to the persistence of the external stimulus (through the action of “after-images” or the “retention of bodily orientation” (ibid.)); however, in the case of longer intervals, “something else must be operative, something which utilizes the past experience of the animal for an adjustment to an external situation” (ibid.: 34). In other words, the sole presence of a “continuing reaction” (ibid.), i.e. prompted only by an external stimulus, can only have as a consequence the attempt to open a door, but not to select the previously lit one.

  • 19 Köhler’s research was made available to the English-speaking public with the translation of his Men (...)
  • 20 In this sense, the concept of insight does not refer to a mysterious intuitive ability, but to a un (...)

24The other attack on Thorndike’s view came from the experiments conducted by Wolfgang Köhler, when he directed the Anthropoid Research Station on the Tenerife Island between 1913 and 1920.19 Köhler’s various tests and observations famously led him to devise the notion of “insight,” conceived as a sudden “perceptual restructuring” (Boakes 1984: 191) enabling the animal to understand the situation as a whole20 in order to solve a specific problem, and resulting in an abrupt and resolute change in behavior. In his book, Köhler criticized the difficulty of Thorndike’s tests (1925: 23), and concluded that they did not provide decisive evidence against animal intelligence. His numerous experiments and observations allowed him to show that, on the contrary, chimpanzees do not behave in a discrete manner, merely reacting to a succession of stimulations, but are capable of solving problems in a “roundabout” way (ibid.: 4):

The genuine achievement takes place as a single continuous occurrence, a unity, as it were, in space as well as in time; in our example, as one continuous run without a second’s stop, right up to the objective. A successful chance solution consists of an agglomeration of separate movements, which start, finish, start again, remain independent of one another in direction and speed, and only in a geometrical summation start at the starting-point, and finish at the objective. (Ibid.: 16-7)

  • 21 References by Mead to Köhler’s work remain, however, very infrequent overall. One noteworthy mentio (...)

25In this way, it can be said that Köhler’s experimental method satisfactorily answered Mead’s expectations:21 an animal’s success or failure to solve a given problem will directly depend on whether the situation makes sense to it – but its ability (depending on biological and individual factors) to grasp the meaning of certain situations cannot be denied.

26For Morris, the contemporary trends in comparative psychology supply sufficient evidence in favor of the animals’ ability to produce and understand symbols, despite the absence of language. Thus, the latter can only be a specific modality of sign-use, and appears as an extremely restrictive criterion for a general and naturalistic theory of symbolism. This entails, in particular, reserving Mead’s account of the significant symbol to human linguistic communication only; however, even then, “it is doubtful if all of the experiences of the adult human being that normally are called symbolic really involve this reference to self and to others. Are not even here many simple symbols found that are utterly devoid of social reference?” (Morris 1927c: 290). According to Morris, Mead’s criterion for the symbol and mind is too demanding, and fails to explain its own constitution. On the contrary, his own classification appears capable of accounting both for (1) the evolution of mind in nature, by overcoming the dualism between animals and men, as well as for (2) the development of the social-linguistic level of symbolization from the natural-private level:

[It] would seem that to imaginatively take the attitude of another organism, certain present experiences must be symbolic of experiences that appeared at one time to the first organism and are now regarded as occurring in the experience of the other organism. How else does one take the role of another? It would seem that the simple symbol is presupposed in the process, that consequently the more social phases of the symbol are genetically related to the simpler processes, and that this may well be recognized by the employment of a generic name. It is unwise, therefore, to limit the term “symbol” to the level of the significant or actual language symbol even though we must grant that the more important and complex phases of the symbol and of the mind are socially conditioned. (Ibid.: 290-1)

5. Conclusion

  • 22 See especially Huebner (2014: 149, and 296-7).
  • 23 See e.g. Morris (1936a: 47; 1936b/1968: 132-5).
  • 24 It must be noted that, while The Philosophy of the Act is, according to Morris himself, his main so (...)

27Though of considerable theoretical importance, Morris’ criticism of Mead remains a minor trend in his writings overall, which raises the question of why he did not attempt to explore its consequences. I can think of at least two reasons: (1) first, the editorial project of Mind, Self, and Society, that Morris saw as an opportunity to promote Mead’s work to a larger audience, particularly in Europe.22 It can be assumed that, with this goal in mind, it would have been “strategically” unwise to undermine some of his mentor’s core theoretical principles – especially given the fact that, in his writings of the mid-1930s leading up to the Foundations of the Theory of Signs, Morris consistently based his attacks on the epistemology of logical empiricism on Mead’s interpretation of meaning as an essentially social phenomenon.23 (2) Second, and perhaps more importantly, Morris was also involved in a second editorial project, namely the publication The Philosophy of the Act (1938), which was set to become his main reference to Mead (rather than MSS)24 in his ulterior writings, especially in Signs, Language, and Behavior (1946) and Signification and Significance (1964). Admittedly, Mead did not draw any new and explicit conclusions with respect to animal mentality in the drafts making up the posthumous 1938 volume. Nevertheless, the configuration of the organic act, by contrast with the behavior of the physical “thing” as a mere inertial volume subject to external influences, allowed him to break with the mechanical S-R model as it appears in Watson and Thorndike: the four stages, or aspects, of the act (impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation), do not make up a causal chain of determinations set off by the stimulus, but rather an integrative process wherein the response is already at play by organizing the “field of stimulation,” through the “field of selective attention” (impulse and perception), in a given way (Mead 1938: 5). This distinction between organism and thing, between movement and action (Blumer 2004: 84), enables us to conceive of the animal organism as a transformative agent, and hence as a member of a widened naturalistic semiotic community, in the terms set out by Mead himself: “Perceptual experience is that in which we control our conduct with reference to spatiotemporally distant stimulation by the promise of contact experience” (Mead 1938: 105; emphasis added).

  • 25 On this topic, see especially Kilpinen (2013: 5, n. 2).
  • 26 She rightfully adds that “this biosemiotic orientation is present from the very beginning of his st (...)

28What is particularly noteworthy in Morris’ critical assessment of Mead is that he seems to have noted, as early as 1927, a possible ambiguity, or tension, between a language-based and an act-based philosophy.25 Thus, I do not wish to suggest that Morris’ own theoretical outlook started with a “revolt” against Mead, but rather that it developed in conjunction with a progressive clarification of the thought of his mentor (a process undoubtedly influenced and encouraged by Morris’ editorial and promotional endeavors). Of course, this clarification in turn entailed some substantial additions and revisions to Morris’ own theory of signs, especially in his more mature writings. Nevertheless, these works retain the ambition of an inclusive or “global” semiotics (Sebeok 1997), as evidenced for instance by Morris’ last important book on the subject: thus, in his attempt to delineate the “scope” of the theory of signs, he states that “[it] has for its goal a general theory of signs in all their forms and manifestations, whether in animals or men, whether normal or pathological, whether linguistic or nonlinguistic, whether personal or social” (Morris 1964: 1). It is not surprising, then, that Morris’ approach has deliberately been taken as a fruitful source of inspiration for a research program such as biosemiotics (see Sebeok 2001: 69). As Susan Petrilli puts it, “this is perhaps Morris’s major contribution to semiotics: he broadens the scope of semiotics and develops a totalizing vision while at the same time being sensitive to the specific differences occurring in the semiosic totality” (1999: 83).26 There is no doubt that a careful re-reading of Mead from this perspective would prove considerably profitable in reevaluating his conception of animal mentality and symbolism, and in showing his relevance to contemporary discussions on this matter.

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Alger Janet M. & Steven F. Alger, (1997), “Beyond Mead: Symbolic Interaction between Humans and Felines,” Society and Animals, 5(1), 65-81. Online: https://www.animalsandsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/alger.pdf.

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Boakes Robert, (1984), From Darwin to Behaviourism: Psychology and the Minds of Animals, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Brodrick Michael, (2015), “Philosophical Legacies of the 1920s,” in Richard T. Hull & John R. Shook (eds), Historical Essays in 20th Century American Philosophy: The American Philosophical Association Centennial Series, vol. 11, Tallahassee, RTH Pub., 45-67.

Campbell James, (2006), A Thoughtful Profession: The Early Years of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, Open Court.

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Huebner Daniel R., (2014), Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge, Chicago/London, The University of Chicago Press.

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Hunter Walter S., (1913), The Delayed Reaction in Animals and Children, New York, Henry Holt and Co.

Irvine Leslie, (2003), “George’s Bulldog: What Mead’s Canine Companion Could Have Told Him about the Self,” Sociological Origins, 3(1), 46-9. Online: https://www.academia.edu/35773155/Georges_Bulldog_pdf.

Kilpinen Erkki, (2013), “George H. Mead as an Empirically Responsible Philosopher: The ‘Philosophy of the Act’ Reconsidered,” in F. Thomas Burke & Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (eds), George Herbert Mead in the Twenty-first Century, New York, Lexington Books, 3-20.

Klein Alexander M., (2024), Consciousness is Motor: William James on Mind and Action, New York, Oxford University Press.

Köhler Wolfgang, (1917/1921/1925), The Mentality of Apes, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Company.

Konecki Krzysztof T., (2005), “The Problem of Symbolic Interaction and of Constructing Self,” Qualitative Sociology Review, I(1), 68-89. Online: https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.1.1.05.

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Mead George Herbert, (1934/2015), Mind, Self, and Society: The Definitive Edition, ed. by Charles W. Morris, Daniel R. Huebner & Hans Joas, Chicago/London, The University of Chicago Press. [MSS].

Mead George Herbert, (1936), Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Merritt H. Moore, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Mead George Herbert, (1938), The Philosophy of the Act, ed. by Charles W. Morris, John M. Brewster, Albert M. Dunham & David L. Miller, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press

Mead George Herbert, (2001), Essays in Social Psychology, ed. by Mary Jo Deegan, New Brunswick (US)/London, Transactions Publishers.

Morris Charles W., (1925/1993), Symbolism and Reality: A Study in the Nature of Mind, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. [SR].

Morris Charles W., (1927a), “The Total-Situation Theory of Ethics,” International Journal of Ethics, 37(3) (Apr.), 258-68.

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Morris Charles W., (1927c), “The Concept of the Symbol. II,” The Journal of Philosophy, 24(11) (May 26), 281-91.

Morris Charles W., (1929), “The Nature of Mind”: Three Lectures delivered at the Rice Institute on January 6, 13, and 20, 1929, Rice Institute Pamphlet, 16(44) (Houston), 153-244.

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Richardson Alan W., (2003), “Logical Empiricism, American Pragmatism, and the Fate of Scientific Philosophy in North America,” in Gary L. Hardcastle & Alan W. Richardson (eds), Logical Empiricism in North America: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XVIII, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1-24.

Sanders Clinton R., (2003), “Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Close Relationships between Humans and Non-Human Animals,” Symbolic Interaction, 26(3) (Aug.), 405-26. Online: https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2003.26.3.405.

Sebeok Thomas A., (1997), “Global Semiotics,” in Irmengard Rauch & Gerald F. Carr (eds), Semiotics Around the World: Synthesis in Diversity, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 105-30.

Sebeok Thomas A., (2001), “Biosemiotics: Its Roots, Proliferation, and Prospects,” Semiotica, 134, 61-78. Online: https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2001.014.

Thorndike Edward L., (1911), Animal Intelligence: Experimental Studies, New York, The Macmillan Company.

Watson David, (1981), “Social Theory and National Culture: The Case of British and American Absolute Idealism, 1860-1900,” Social Science History, 5(3), 251-74.

Watson John B., (1913), “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” Psychological Review, 20(2), 158-77. Online: https://www.ufrgs.br/psicoeduc/chasqueweb/edu01011/behaviorist-watson.pdf.

Wilkie Rhoda & Andrew McKinnon, (2013), “George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies,” Sociological Research Online, 18(4). Online: https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.3191.

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Notes

1 See e.g. Huebner (2014: 147).

2 Hereafter noted SR.

3 Hereafter noted MSS.

4 See e.g., for the field of pragmatics, the criticism of its “monomodal” character by Gu (2019: 218 sq.).

5 For a historical and sociological overview of absolute idealism, see Watson 1981.

6 This is especially true of his “scientific empiricism,” devised in the second half of the 1930s as a collaborative program between pragmatism and logical empiricism.

7 In the omitted part of this quotation, Perry mentions the opposition between “religion and science” (ibid.): although a number of Morris’ writings (especially his 1942 book, Paths of Life: Preface to a World of Religion) illustrate such an attempt to overcome it, this issue is far from being a central topic in Symbolism and Reality (wherein Morris mostly exhibits a critical stance toward religious symbolism), and thus lies outside the scope of this article.

8 For an explicit reference to Hegel, see e.g. Morris’ history of the “speculation concerning mind” (1929: 157 sq. and 183 sq.). The sixth and last chapter of Symbolism and Reality, entitled “Philosophy and Civilization,” also bears some striking similarities with a Hegelian view of history in the discussion of the relations between symbols and reality throughout various intellectual and cultural contexts.

9 “A consistent behaviorism cannot admit any accurate direct knowledge of reality, since, if reactions constitute knowledge, the reactions may be to a part only of the total situation and knowledge is, therefore, limited by the reaction capacities of the mechanism” (quoted in Morris 1927b: 254).

10 “For me, ‘I am observing’, only means ‘I am responding’; and ‘I am experiencing’ also means ‘I am responding’” (quoted in Morris 1927b: 262).

11 While the material of the chapter itself is drawn from student notes taken in 1928 and 1930, it can be surmised that Morris himself had heard Mead develop similar ideas, given that the footnotes supplementing the main text are drawn from his personal student notes on the 1924 “Advanced Social Psychology” and “Problems of Consciousness” classes. My exegetic hypothesis is based on the detailed material presented in Huebner (2015: 393-7).

12 “Thought is not something different from symbols and which uses them; thought is identical with the sequences of symbols” (SR: 19).

13 See e.g. (MSS: 10-1).

14 On this issue, see in particular Huebner (2014: 86-8).

15 For instance, in the oft-quoted passage according to which animals have no personalities, and consequently “no rights,” so that “we are at liberty to cut off their lives” (MSS: 183).

16 “An animal makes combinations, as we say, only by trial and error, and the combination that is successful simply maintains itself” (MSS: 95).

17 In the true spirit of the Chicago School, Mead was actively embedded in the experimental work of his colleagues and students, as recalled by Watson (see Huebner 2014: 107). Huebner also uncovered a very interesting remark by Jessie Blount Allen, a student in experimental psychology at Chicago, who wrote in her 1904 dissertation on The Associative Processes of the Guinea Pig that “it was suggested by Mr. G. H. Mead that the reactions of the guinea pig might be direct responses to immediate contact stimuli, and that a distant stimulus, e.g., a recollection of the path, was not responsible for the reaction” (ibid.: 280, n. 48).

18 Another possibly relevant source on this matter is William James, whose involvement in the “automatism controversy” in the 1870s, as well as his analyses of “remote sensations” or “prudential reflection” in non-human organisms, played a major role in the construction of his Principles of Psychology and his theory of consciousness (see especially Klein 2024, chapters 7 and 9). However, although James is a crucial reference throughout SR, there is no textual evidence suggesting that Morris was familiar with his writings on comparative psychology – which he does not use in his criticism of Mead. I am very grateful to Alexander Klein for sharing with me a proof of his yet unpublished book for the preparation of this article.

19 Köhler’s research was made available to the English-speaking public with the translation of his Mentality of Apes in 1925, and he was a visiting lecturer at Clark University the same year (Boakes 1984: 194-5).

20 In this sense, the concept of insight does not refer to a mysterious intuitive ability, but to a unitary perceptual grasp, as suggested by the German term: Ein-sicht.

21 References by Mead to Köhler’s work remain, however, very infrequent overall. One noteworthy mention is a passage of The Philosophy of the Act where Mead discusses “mediation” in experience and perception, but he does not seem to consider Köhler’s experiments of special importance for his own approach: “Existence in the field of experience belongs to mediation, and mediation belongs to percepts […]. The degree to which these things can enter into the experience of apes depends upon the degree of use to which the ape puts the objects of his manipulation. Köhler certainly found certain situations within which the beginnings of things could be located, but even here they must occupy an utterly insignificant part of the ape’s experience” (Mead 1938: 136).

22 See especially Huebner (2014: 149, and 296-7).

23 See e.g. Morris (1936a: 47; 1936b/1968: 132-5).

24 It must be noted that, while The Philosophy of the Act is, according to Morris himself, his main source of inspiration for the behavioral theory of signs developed in Signs, Language, and Behavior, on the other hand the references to MSS are mainly critical (see especially 1946/1971: 119-22, where Morris reiterates his criticisms of 1927, while also pointing out Mead’s problematic use of the notion of consciousness “in his occasional attempts to differentiate the significant symbol from the conditioned reflex”).

25 On this topic, see especially Kilpinen (2013: 5, n. 2).

26 She rightfully adds that “this biosemiotic orientation is present from the very beginning of his studies, which authorizes us to speak of continuity from the beginning to the end of his work” (Petrilli 1999: 99).

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References

Electronic reference

Etienne Raduly, “The Scope of Mind in Nature”European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XVI-2 | 2024, Online since 19 December 2024, connection on 20 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/4146; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/12yvf

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About the author

Etienne Raduly

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, CRISES EA 4424
etienne.raduly[at]ens-lyon.fr

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