社会行動論と自我の問題 : 自我の倫理学研究ノート(三)

It is well known that G. H. Mead is a so-called 'social behaviorist.' However, it is important to consider the true meaning of his 'behaviorism,' because we think it is misleading to understand his thought on the human mind and the self under this term. Therefore, in this paper, we intend to examine his methodological point of view and to clarify his basic concepts and the propositions according to which his theory of the self is to be understood. Indeed, Mead's theory can be called 'behaviorist' insofar as he regards human experiences as examples of human conduct. However, he definitely criticizes Watsonian behaviorism, which neglects the consciousness or inner experiences of humans. He asserts, as a 'behaviorist in the wider sense,' that we should acknowledge the 'inner' side of human experiences - namely, the phenomena of 'consciousness,' to which only the individual himself has experiential access. One of the most distinguished characteristics of his behaviorism is a belief in methodological holism. He understands the behavior of an individual only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member. That is why we may call Mead a 'social behaviorist.' He concludes that consciousness is an emergent of social behavior - that, so far from it being a prerequisite to social behavior, the social act is, in truth, the precondition of that. Another feature of Meadian behaviorism is his positive recognition of psychological 'parallelism,' which we usually regard as a Cartesian dualistic theory of mind. His unique parallelism is, of course, not a simple-minded dualism. His theory is certainly dualistic insofar as it distinguishes individual or personal aspects of human experiences from their physical or physiological sides. However, it attaches importance to the correlation between the world which is peculiar to the individual and that which is common to all participants in the situation. This means that we should treat individuals as parts of a 'common whole.' Therefore, we think that his th

eory can be called a dynamic or holistic parallelism. Last, but not least, is the Meadian conception of the 'mind.' To him, the 'mind' is never a substance, but the reality which is a precondition of the self. In short, he defines this 'very ambiguous term' as the 'reflective intelligence' of human animals, saying that man, to be an intelligent being, should have the ability to isolate the important characteristics of an object from its environment. Therefore, he thinks, this ability is just what we generally mean when we speak of a human being having a mind. Indeed, we get here a behavioral definition of the concept of mind. However, Mead thinks that this should be supplemented with another explanation - namely, that, from the sociological point of view, the mind is 'essentially a social phenomenon.' He concludes that we must regard mind as arising and developing within a social process, within an empirical matrix of social interactions. Now that we have clarified the meaning of Meadian 'social behaviorism,' we are ready to proceed to consider our main subject - namely, the problems of the self.