> ......, can somebody be "out of their mind," or "not in their
> right mind?" How can this conception of mind be compared to
> the psychological ideas of "personality" and "consciousness."
I think if you really want to understand Mead's concepts of mind you
have to first get a grasp of Kant's views of inner intution and outer
experience. Kant's influence on Mead was second to maybe only Dewey.
Larry Reynolds certainly opens that comment up to debate by noting
Kant's view of an "unalterable structure of mind." However, when Kant's
view of time and space as inner and outer senses are recognized as a sort of
relationship between "self" and the "other". The correlation of organism
and environment that Mead is said to have derived from Spencer and Darwin
can also be found in the relationsip of inner and outer as employed by
Kant. Furthermore, through the Kantian manifold one can recognize that
this inner-outer concept permits a distinction between intuitive and
empirical knowledge. The point here is not to get lost in a critique of
Kant, but merely to suggest that Mead's problem with "impulses" for
describing mind is not much different than Kant's problem with looking
for the substance of intution. The same issue seems to be implied in
your question. Minded behavior, makes objects, constructs the world for
us and by us. Mind is a process of perception. It would seem that when
asking whether some one can be out of their mind that you are asking if
someone can be out of tune with the process of perception. This would
require a detachment not only from outter experience, but also from inner
intuition which I am am not sure is possible. It is clear that we can
mis-perceive and misinterpret or misprocess sensible observations.
>
> 2) Human action is essentially the end result of "minded behavior."
> How does the process work? The concepts you should be able to use here are:
> mind, actor, action, and Meads four stages of the act (impulse,
> perception, manipulation, and consummation).
Same response. Without Kant, Mead makes no sense.
> 3)Herbert Blumer once said "society is symbolic interaction."
> What the hell does that mean?
Bernard Meltzer in 1959 questioned the order in which we generally refer
to mind, self, and society. Meltzer asserted that it should be society,
self, and mind. If taken in that order, there should be no problem with
Blumer's statement.
> > Have a ball! > Jon >
I did have fun.
ps. these are revised response to questions I addressed in a paper for
Larry Reynolds a few years ago in a theory class taught by him. I was so
bold as to think that I could critique his critique of Symbolic
Interactionism. My processes of perception weren't exactly in order - or
I was oout of mind, if you prefer to think of it that way. In any case
the responses here are revised to include some of the corrections made on
to that paper. The title - "Clusters of Discovery: The Moral Order of
Symbolic Interactionism"
Richard