Blackwell Reference Online

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In common parlance, mind means cognitive intelligence, self-consciousness, mentality, or reason, all of which were once considered unique to humans. While some animal forms exhibit these capacities to some extent, only in humans are they developed as primary adaptive mechanisms. In more academic circles, the use of the term mind rather than its other synonyms recalls its place in broader debates in western theories of knowledge. This is especially true in social psychology since the philosophically trained George Herbert Mead demonstrated the dependency of individual mind on society and behavior. Mind had been previously understood purely mentally, as a self-enclosed, enduring entity in the head rather than an episodic biosocial, behavior-dependent process. The broad outline of Mead's theory of mind remains important for a thoroughly social rendition of human mentality. Mead's theory and some current continuities and refinements from neuroscience are presented below. Through his school of social behaviorism Mead transcended the futile debates between the idealists, rationalists, and empirical realists of the Enlightenment era. Rather than viewing the primary link between mind and world as the rationalist's reason or the realist's senses , Mead saw the primary link as behavior . The world became known actively through the way it responded to our actions upon it, rather than by ... log in or subscribe to read full text