Humanness is a social creation

[KillerMuffin]

Hey, I'm studying, thought I'd share.

Cooley, the sociologistic guy, says that our sense of self develops from interaction with others. He had this looking-glass idea which is essentially:

1) We imagine how we appear to those around us.
2) We interpret others' reactions. We come to conclusions about how others evaluate us.
3) We develop a self-concept based on our interpretations of how others react to us, we develop feelings and ideas about ourselves.

Now Some guy named Mead did his own thing way back in the day and he thinks that not only the self, but the human mind is a social product. He thinks that we cannot think without symbols (i.e. language, gestures, things that mean something specific). Symbols, like language, comes from society and only society. Part of this society is our parents and siblings. If we didn't have society to provide language, then we wouldn't be able to think, and then we wouldn't possess what we call a mind. Therefore, the human mind is a product of society.

So, my question is this. Is this guy right? Can we have a mind without social contact? What do you think?

 

[*bratcat*]

 

[riff]

So, my question is this. Is this guy right? Can we have a mind without social contact? What do you think?


I agree with the latter, but this is not to discount the former.

We exist in language (signs and symbols). Is this post headed towards deconstructionism?

 

[Black_Bird]

Now Some guy named Mead did his own thing way back in the day and he thinks that not only the self, but the human mind is a social product. He thinks that we cannot think without symbols (i.e. language, gestures, things that mean something specific). Symbols, like language, comes from society and only society. Part of this society is our parents and siblings. If we didn't have society to provide language, then we wouldn't be able to think, and then we wouldn't possess what we call a mind. Therefore, the human mind is a product of society.

So, my question is this. Is this guy right? Can we have a mind without social contact? What do you think?

... I think the more interaction one has with the world around you, the more intellegent one potentially becomes. It doesn't have to do with social intereaction... thought can exist with out it.

The Ego? I'm not so sure. I think apart of the ego manifests as the flight or fight respose... although it's entirely possible that these are merely building blocks on which the ego is built through social interaction. I don't know... I could just be pulling this shit out my ass. *shrugs*

 

[MunchinMark]

This would be very difficult to prove or disprove empirically. Whether we as people think in terms of symbolism and language or not, we do communicate through it.

You cannot communicate with someone who shares no common behavioural or linguistic common ground. Perhaps this is why so many people treat foreigners as stupid. And even there we have quite a lot of common ground. I don't speak Japanese, but I can guage the mood of a Japanese man with no effort.

Whether this lack of communication means a lack of conscious thought, how could you know?

 

[privy2u]

Sociology and psychology are both tough area to discuss because of all the variables.

Most humans are centristic in nature and their world revolves around them. This causes them to be the single most important thing in their world.
There are also those that are ethnocentristic and their world is consumed with ethnic beliefs. Then there are those that are ecocentristic, etc...etc...etc...

In each of these groups there are bankers, doctors, plumbers and carpenters. I am not sure that a concept of self is entirely based on our environment. There are many other factors which contradict the hypotosis.

But, it is true that if you want to be a better golfer, hang out with great golfers. The same goes for anything and for anyone.

The answer? I haven't a clue!


privy

 

[RisiaSkye]

Hey, I'm studying, thought I'd share.

1) We imagine how we appear to those around us.
2) We interpret others' reactions. We come to conclusions about how others evaluate us.
3) We develop a self-concept based on our interpretations of how others react to us, we develop feelings and ideas about ourselves.

It's not just Cooley and Mead, either. This is part of structuralism and post-structural philosophy, a tradition that's been developing since at least the forties, starting with anthropologists like Levi-Strauss.

In the sixties, Jacques Lacan revived Freudian psychology by taking it as a structure of symbolic language. He suggests that the human child first recognizes itself by seeing themselves in a mirror, and recognizing that they aren't the same entity as the parent. (I'm grossly oversimplifying.) So, without others, no self-awareness.

And philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Deleuze, and others suggest that language has no actual referent, that language means nothing in and of itself. Instead, by a kind of mutually accepted delusion, we agree to speak, in order to be recognized by another and made human by the process of interaction. The meaning we take from words is entirely contingent upon context and exchange; it's an interchange of social gifts, the ultimate of ego trips--recognition that we exist at all.

Personally, I think they're right. It's why I'm a writer. I'm a freaking egomaniac, and I demand constantly that I be recognized as someone with the right to speak and be heard.

Interestingly, you'll find a lot of French names in the philosophical writing in that tradition. This, of course, is why the French confuse us all so much.
Except our darling Nessus, yes?

 

[MunchinMark]

Most humans are centristic in nature and their world revolves around them. This causes them to be the single most important thing in their world.

I thought that Professor of Anthropics was the centre of the universe. He's just letting us all tag along