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A Collapsed Act

Fite, Warner 1907. The Exaggeration of the Social. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 4(15): 393-396. [JSTOR]

Since Hegel developed his theory of the state, and Spencer his conception of the social organism, it has seemed that nothing is significant which is not 'social.' Morality has been resolved into 'social well-being,' the development of thought into a 'social process,' language has become a 'social institution,' which beauty and causality are 'social conceptions.' (Fite 1907: 393)

Not yet familiar with Hegel's theory of the state (see Britannica's summary). Morality resolving into social well-being familiar enough from Soviet philosophers. Language as a social institution in Whiteley and de Saussure.

In the chapter on 'The Social Aspect of the Higher Forms of Docility' in his 'Psychology,' Professor Royce shows how the development of language, of general ideas, of the processes of judgment and reasoning, and of self-consciousness, is due to social intercourse. I do not understand him to say that this is the sole factor, but clearly he treats it as a peculiar factor, - that is, as a special sort of process occurring under certain special conditions, - and he leaves it practically unrelated to any other factors in mental development. (Fite 1907: 393)

Not wrong. Language, ideas, judgment, reasoning, and self-consciousness are all influenced by communication with other people.

Suppose Robinson to have been a native of his island, and thus deprived from the beginning of social intercourse. Still he would not have lacked the conditions for a mental development of the same kind, though of minor degree, as we now possess. In making use of the various natural objects - the same object at different times and for different purposes - he would be compelled to develop a language and a system of ideas. (Fite 1907: 393)

Presuming him to have survived into adulthood, had he been left on an uninhabited island in infancy.

In a word, then, the comparison of my own thoughts at different times furnishes precisely the same conditions of contrast and identity as the comparison of my own thought with my neighbor's, while the relations between miself and natural objects are, though far less intimate, precisely the same in kind as my relation to my neighbor. (Fite 1907: 394)

The trope of "my own thoughts at different times" is familiar from Peirce, and probably originates from Plato (I'm feeling increasing pressure to read Theaetetus). The argument itself sounds like bull. It is not as easy to compare one's own thoughts with another's.

We have all heard the vague statement that 'all morality is social' and we are familiar with the point of view which reduces all vice to selfishness. This means, of course, that morality lies always between individuals and never within the individual. According to this view, Robinson on his island would be beyond the range of moral judgment, since he would be deprived of the delicious possibility of 'doing good to others.' What such a view amounts to is simply a false way of stating the now generally adopted utilitarian principle that any particular good is to be estimated in relation to other goods, which may be my own or my neighbor's. And here, [|] once more, the emphasis upon the 'social' tends to obscure a more fundamental character. For the essential feature of moral action is simply that of acting from a point of view broader than the present, i.e., it must be in some degree objective. This objective standpoint will consider my own future good as well as the good of others. It will be in some degree moral if it never reaches others. (Fite 1907: 394-395)

Is this that famous duty before the self? I reap what I sow, even if there is no-one else around? How about an example? This must involve the material environment somehow, i.e. ruining the use of something for oneself. A mundane modern example would be smashing one's keyboard or screen in anger, and realizing "I'm such an idiot" soon after, having to go out and buy replacements. I have no idea what an example might be in this hypothetical wunderkind Robinson Crusoe scenario.

The point is well illustrated in the now popular tendency to regard the individual as the product of society, - or as a differentiation, and possibly an evil differentiation, from an original social unity. Historically this may be regarded as a reaction from the individualistic theories of the eighteenth century, which conceived the individual as a self-contained and complete reality anterior to the organization of society. When now it was seen that the individual could not be defined apart from society, what was more natural than to say that if society is not the product of the individual the individual must be the product of society? And yet if the individual can not be defined apart from society, neither can society be defined apart from the individual. (Fite 1907: 395)

An analogue of the chicken and egg paradox, with a similarly simplistic solution: it is very likely that the ancestors of the human species were "social" long before it yielded homo sapiens.

It is therefore a misnomer to describe as 'social' that condition of mankind which preceded (or which, relatively speaking, marked the primitive stages of) social organization, for it is just as much, and just as little, a state of individual independence. It is not even, strictly speaking, to be called 'gregarious,' for any consciousness of belonging to one group rather than another must involve some sense of individuality. The point is indeed a very simple one and has been frequently made clear: what is correlative can not also be prior; there can be no degree of social order without a corresponding degree of individual distinctness. Yet we hear daily of the individual as the product of the social order and only now and then of society as the product of the individuals composing it. (Fite 1907: 395)

I was not aware that "gregariousness" had something to do with group differentiation (sense of belonging, etc.). Naturally it does but besides Trotter I can't think of anyone who operates with the term "gregariousness" with any considerable extent. As to society being the product of individuals composing it, we do "now and then" hear of it, e.g. from Margaret Thatcher: "They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." - In other words, the state is not there to "give" you something (financial aid), only to "take" from you (taxes). In that case, why even have a state? Why become a prime minister instead of looking out for oneself only?

The priority of the social plays a conspicuous part in our 'social psychology.' Professor Royce gives utterance to it both in his 'Psychology' and, though merely casually, in his 'The World and the Individual.' Imitation, the social factor, precedes 'love of opposition,' the individual factor; and consciousness of others antedates consciousness [|] of self, - or at least this is 'nearer the truth' than the reverse order. But if the child knows himself only in contrast with others, he must, I think, know others only in contrast with himself. (Fite 1907: 395-396)

That is generally how George H. Mead and others work it out in studies of mental development in the child. Here I cannat help but notice the complementarity of distinctions with Kant's: love - imitation - social versus respect - opposition - individual.

Professor Royce says that "in order to contrast oneself with one's social environment it is necessary, in general, first to learn how to do something that has social significance. I can not oppose you by my speech unless I already understand music. I can not endeavor to gget the better of a political rival unless I already understand politics. But speech and music and politics have to be learned by imitation." But (the italics are mine) why first and already? One might as well say that a triangle can not have three angles unless it first has three sides. Granted that the child has nothing of his own to say until he learns to talk, it is none the less true that he does not learn to talk until he has something of his own to say. (Fite 1907: 396)

Royce's "social significance" very likely the model for Mead's "significant gesture". As to the argument, I'd ask if the talking bird "has something of his own to say"?

Hess, M. Whitcomb 1929. Kantor's Language Behavior. The Journal of Philosophy 26(13): 354-356. [JSTOR]

No one can doubt that language is behavior. But we wonder whether making a point of this obvious fact is going to change the attitude toward language as symbolism. Words are the response - the response without any conscious use of symbolism - from the viewpoint of the persons involved and from that of any others whose interest is primarily in content rather than in method. (Hess 1929: 254)

Speech is behavior, the use of language. Language itself is an abstract system. Are behaviorists the ultimate materialists?

First of all Professor Kantor dismisses from his consideration of language as behavior all the stuff of books and printing or writing of any kind. Verbal signs are confined to written or printed characters, though why the intelligence should be the word when it is spoken, and be in a symbol when it is written is not stated. Not in these terms, that is. Symbology applies best to language, we are told, when language is removed from behavior. But how does writing remove language from behavior? (Hess 1929: 254)

Having real difficulties with the distinction between behavior and the products of behavior. Writing removes behavior from language, leaves traces of behavior.

Nothing is said of the lecturer or the radio talker in the account of language as behavior. But how should their words be classified - as living language or symbols? Language is apparently limited by the behaviorist to conversation à duo, because of the importance given the hearing reaction response. This response seems to be taken as an integral part of the linguistic situation, which, if expressed in groups of many more than two, would result rather disastrously for understanding. (Hess 1929: 354)

The opposite problem is found in structural-functionalism: in Jakobson's scheme of linguistic functions (mistakenly called a "communication model") the exchange of roles is an afterthought, his theory is best suited for the lecturer or the radio talker (ideally, a poem).

The intimate adjustmental acts of psychological language can not be mere signifiers, Professor Kantor tells us. Where the lantern or the word stand for something else [something else!] we do not have language, but "some other sort of psychological performance." Just what sort is not clear in spite of much mention of implied relations. The lantern and the landmark are signifiers or significants according to one's degree of conscious reflection. On these terms a spoken word may be a symbol as well as a written one. But the reason given for the landmark's failure as psychological language is its past behavior tense: "Where in this whole situation," demands Professor Kantor, "is there that living interaction in which someone speaks to someone or tells him where to go?" Still, what was happening when the landmark was being placed? We have read in the first footnote that living language may be gestural and non-articulate, and, for all we see, setting up a warning must have the same status in language behavior as shaking one's fist. The sole difference is that with the first sort of behavior the gesture has a wider significance and application. (Hess 1929: 355)

This is a problem I have taken to calling "communicationalization", i.e. the tendency to view any use of signs (even warnings and road signs) as a sort of extended communication situation. Going by the (Jakobsonian) motto that intercommunication bridges space and autocommunication bridges time, it may be mused that noticing a danger sign is almost as if a special case of self-communication, a "psychological performance" (semiosis) in which input from other conscious beings is taken into account even if they are not present and one is a "virtual" addressee of the message (the road-sign communicates with "everyone" who cares to take notice, as opposed to the "living interaction", in which the communicants are co-present and unambiguously directing their messages towards each other). Keep in mind that this is the same Kantor who was very adverse to semiotics (cf. Sebeok 1991: 140).

"The knowing," says Professor Kantor, "which accompanies referential adjustment is no more response to a symbol than the responding to a conditioning stimulus objet." Nor is the knowing of symbol as symbol. The bell to the dog is not a symbol of food-presence because to the dog there is no separation of the independent objects, bell and food. But in the case of the lantern and the landmark the objects are used and accepted as signifiers though, as we have suggested, the use and acceptance as such is not always conscious. Perhaps we should say that it is not usually conscious. (Hess 1929: 355)

I was not aware that one of the conditions of symbols is the conscious separation of its "objects". Also, how do we know the inner workings of the dog's mind?

de Laguna, Grace A. 1928. Linguistics and the Psychology of Speech. The Journal of Philosophy 25(3): 75-78. [JSTOR]

Two things may be expected in a review of a new book: first, some indication of its scope and purpose, and, secondly, a critical estimate of the value of the performance. In his recent review of my book, Speech: Its Function and Development, Prof. Louis H. Gray has performed the latter office by a sweeping condemnation of the entire work; but the reader will look in vain for any adequate idea of the subject-matter with which the book deals. (de Laguna 1928: 75)

Something to keep in mind for writing reviews.

But first it is to be remarked by way of general explanation that the book, as its title was intended to indicate, is a psychological study of the activity of speech: it is not a study of language, nor even of the psychology of language as that term would generally be understood. The historical changes in known languages, the widely differing instrumentalities employed in them for the expression of thought, the part played by accent and intonation, present many interesting problems to the psychologist, and their investigation might cast much light upon psychological difficulties. But such topics lie wholly outside the scope of my enterprise. (de Laguna 1928: 75)

Likewise with Malinowski, whose treatment is properly a social psychological study of the activity of speech.

My concern was with speech, as a distinctively human trait: how, on the one hand, its origin from the animal cry was connected with social conditions peculiar to the human group; and how, on the toher hand, it is related [|] to such other human activities as conception, purpose, belief, and thought. To the solution of these problems linguistic data can, I believe, contribute little. (de Laguna 1928: 75-76)

It looks like de Laguna's book should be considered in conjunction with La Barre's treatment of this subject.

How far the reviewer is from appreciating the nature of my undertaking or the bearing of my arguments will be evident from an example of his criticism. I had discussed the various "proclamatory" aspects of animal cries as they serve to orient the hearer with reference to some present object or situation or to some act which the animal uttering the cry has just performed or is about to perform; and I had asserted that the differentiation of the "proclamation" from the "command" was essential to the emergence of speech (pp. 56, 77). (de Laguna 1928: 76)

I expect similar conceptual difficulties with "the claims of one's self" (Ross 1920: 113), which can be interpreted as a kind of command, e.g. I'm Mr. Meeseeks, look at me!

It was inevitable that the reviewer should find the terms "proclamation" and "command" obscure, when he tried to identify them with specific grammatical forms. I chose these terms precisely to avoid grammatical connotations. When it is recalled that the classification in question applies primarily to animal cries, it should be easy to see how much pertinence there is in the criticism. (de Laguna 1928: 76)

A familiar issue: is "phatic" a grammatical category? Or, worse yet, phonological? In Malinowski it is clearly a mode of discourse, whereas after Jakobson it has been reduced to "discourse markers", i.e. it has gone from overall intention to hemming and hawing and such.

That speech had its origin in animal cries is truly an essential postulate of my treatment; that is to say, it is assumed that speaking man has descended from animals which uttered cries, and that speech arose through the extension of the social function already performed by cries. The reviewer, incredible as it may appear, has taken this to mean that the vocabularies of existing languages have been derived from animal cries in the same sense in which the vocabulary of French or Spanish has been derived from Latin. (de Laguna 1928: 77)

Which is why La Barre, too, looks at the functions carried by animal cries and extrapolates from there unto what nonlinguistic vocal expressions persist in humans and what they do.

But the confusion in the reviewer's thought does not stop here. For he continues: "Again, it is matter of common knowledge that, generally speaking, the more 'primitive' a language is, the greater its complexity, a condition which seems scarcely to square with a theory of such simplicity." If by "primitive" is meant, as the reviewer states in his first paragraph, "spoken by backward peoples," it is hard to see what the alleged fact cited has to do with the origin of speech, for there is no reason to suppose that the language of such peoples more nearly resembles an original type than does ours. (de Laguna 1928: 77)

That is odd, one would think quite the opposite that the "first" language should be simpler.

Tufts, James H. 1904. The Social Standpoint. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 1(8): 197-200. [JSTOR]

The social standpoint is not wholly a recent discovery. Not to refer to ancient thought, Leibniz constructed a universe on the analogy of a 'kingdom.' Kant, by his transfer of the categories from the sphere of pure ontology to that of validity (Royce0, made an important step in the direction of a social standpoint, for although his 'universality' was not based on the number of observers and reasoners, he did, in the case of esthetic universality at least, distinctly raise the question how an 'allgemeine Sinn' could be formed, and sought an answer in the fact of social conversation. (Tufts 1904: 197)

This must be that famous sensus communis.

We should naturally think also of the British moralists and the German idealists. The 'herding instinct' of Shaftesbury, the 'pliability' assigned by Mandeville as the medium for social influence, the 'sympathy' of Hume and Smith, the 'imitation' of Hartley - all suggest present terminology as well as present problems, although the analytic method of mathematics and physics determined in some cases the mode of approach. (Tufts 1904: 197)

"For my own part, methinks, this herding Principle, and associating Inclination, is seen so natural and strong in most Men, that one might easily affirm, 'twas even from the Violence of this Passion that so much Disorder arose in the general Society of Mankind" (Shaftesbury 1732a: 111). Very interesting lead indeed - if only there were so many hours in a day to read all the Cudworths, Maleblanches, Pufendorfs, and so on.

The German idealists, starting from the problem of freedom, went on to consider the development of the individual mind and of human institutions as the logical moments in the unfolding of complete freedom - of absolute mind; but the social causes of the process were not studied; psychology had not freed itself sufficiently to be able to take up its own problems, nor had the utilitarian and later ethical movements added their content to the conception of social welfare. (Tufts 1904: 197)

Sounds very much like a characterization of Hegel, for whom "the state was the culmination of moral action, where freedom of choice had led to the unity of the rational will, and all parts of society were nourished within the health of the whole" (Britannica).

The present prominence of social problems, social categories and social standards in doubtless due, to a considerable extent, to an increase appreciation of an even more rapidly increasing influence of the social medium, whether of the past through tradition education and the other media of 'social heredity,' or of the present through the greater massing of humanity and through the increased facilities for interchange of persons, goods and ideas. The pressure toward cities is economic as well as gregarious in its motives. (Tufts 1904: 197)

Once again, urbanization and the increase of population. Ross dealt with the gregarious drive towards the city: "the passion of the wealthy for city excitements, amusements, and dissipations seems to grow" (Ross 1920: 22)

Perhaps the present danger is that we take the processes of imitation and social influence too simply, as Locke took his processes of sensation. Is there not to be worked out in detail a theory of apperception in the relation of the individual to the social influences, just as we have gradually worked out such a theory in the case of visual perception? (Tufts 1904: 198)

This was penned only a few years before Tarde's Imitation was translated into English.

An ambiguity in the use of the term social calls for notice. In the looser sense social may be applied to relations between individuals. Any interchange of ideas, any influence of one by another, implies some ultimate community of intelligence, interest or sphere, and may, therefore, be loosely termed social, and studied by 'social psychology.' But in a more restricted sense the term may be limited to the activity of a group as such. The group may be a group of two, and but of momentary duration, but there is for the time some unity of interest or sentiment which makes the group as such a force in the life of each member. (Tufts 1904: 198)

In a looser sense, any influence from other persons is social, in a stricter sense cooperative activities and co-presence is social.

Within the union there is a 'loyalty,' a solidarity, and a genuine self-sacrifice on the part of the naturally capable members, which are entirely comparable to the patriotic devotion of clansman or citizen. The man who seeks to better himself by leaving the union, or who actively or passively interferes with union success, is regarded very much as were the 'tories' and 'copperheads.' (Tufts 1904: 199)

Related to that "consciousness of belonging to one group rather than another" (Fite 1907: 395, above), and which Giddings called "consciousness of kind".

Metaphysics might seem at first blush an unpromising field, but since Kant we have learned that reality, if known at all, must be known through categories; and if certain of these categories which give us a 'world of description' are themselves due to social influence, as Royce has maintained, the theory of knowledge is affected by the social standpoint in a fundamental manner. (Tufts 1904: 200)

Very vague. Could have at least indicated Royce's book and chapter. The man's bibliography consists of some 20 books, after all.

Brown, Harold Chapman 1916. Language and The Associative Reflex. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13(14): 645-649. [JSTOR]

Students of epistemology have curiously neglected the study of language as the medium in which our more significant knowledge is retained and rendered effective. Recent developments in psychology, however, have rendered a restatement of the problem imperative. In particular, the problems treated by Mr. F. L. Wells furnish suggestions that no philosopher can longer afford to neglet. If we take the fact that "a response primarily elicited by one class of objects becomes elicited by another class of objects associated with the first" and combine it with the fact of "affective transference, by which the affect, originally attaching to some special experience, is loaded upon another perception or idea somehow associated with that original experience" we surely have a basis upon which the fundamental facts of the use of language can be understood. (Brown 1916: 645)

This "affective transference" sounds very semiotic, perhaps even how "sentiments" (ideas loaded with emotional valence) come to be. Very keen to see how this is supposed to explain "the fundamental facts of the use of language".

To take an obvious example, I associate certain inflections of the voice with certain emotional states, and the word 'fire' with a certain experienced fact, then, upon hearing someone shout "fire!" I respond to the object and the emotional states of him who called. That is, a second class of objects, the words uttered and the inflections in which they are uttered, invoke a response from me that would normally be invoked by objects themselves. The thesis of this paper is, then, that words, spoken or written, are objects that have become so thoroughly associated with other objects or situations that, in the absence of them, they can evoke responses, both emotional and practical, which would be evoked by the things themselves. But since the example chosen may seem to be misleading, as specially selected for the case in question, and the thesis not applicable to articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and the elaborate technicalities of developed speech, it is necessary to work it out more fully in terms of the growth of language, and this shall be the task of this paper. (Brown 1916: 645)

There is something Lockean though I am unable presently to explain why or how. Overall it calls to mind the episode from Jonathan Swift ridiculed by Lotman, i.e. the scientists who carry with them all the things they wish to converse about.

To seek the absolute beginnings of language is, of course, an impossible task, for in evolutionary history it is certainly not true that men arose and then learned to talk, but rather, in the course of development, animal noises became gradually transformed into articulate speech. And the language learning of children is not an adequate starting point, for in the child we have a being with maturing speech organs copying the behavior of those about him who already talk, while for primitive man, the acquisition of speech was a genuinely creative task. The speech of savages is, however, more illuminating, for it represents arrested, or at least retarded, development along lines that are probably not wholly without analogy to those along which more successful speech has passed. (Brown 1916: 646)

To the loaded question, Why is the speech of savages not as good as ours? we are given one according to which it is more complex than it needs to be (see above), that they only talk about irrelevant things (Malinowski's phatic communion), and now we find out that their speech is somehow arrested or retarded, though not how or why. In any case it is taken for granted that our speech is "more successful", whatever that means.

It is interesting to note that the results of this method have been greatly strengthened by the recent work of anthropologists. (Brown 1916: 646)

"Cf. Marett, "Anthropology," Ch. on "Language.""

The fact of simplification of grammar is equally striking. Thus if words are not built up from roots, but roots "are abstractions of that which is common to a group of words which are felt as etymologically related," as Professor Jespersen believes (p. 114), as sorrow and sorry are felt to be related to one another although 1,000 years ago one belonged to the Old English sorg, "care," and the other to sarig, "wounded," grammatical structures must somehow have resulted from abstractive comparison structures must somehow have resulted from abstractive comparison of sentence words and served to reduce the tremendous vocabulary that so many independent terms would have compelled. (Brown 1916: 647)

Etymological false friends.

Sounds made on the inspired, instead of the expired breath which still exist in some savage communities, and the pitch accent, which was characteristic of ancient Greek, are sufficiently difficult to account for their disappearance, and the speech of the uncultivated illustrates a further simplification in our day. (Brown 1916: 648)

The uneducated classes speak like savages do, naturally.

Without involving the controversy concerning "imageless thought," one can recognize that the larger part of thinking takes place in the form of the repetition of sentences. In this repetition, however, a further simplification has taken place, for the sentence no longer has to be uttered, and when the procedure is rapid, the words are not even fully articulated. (Brown 1916: 648)

Inner monologue has a tendency towards what I've taken to calling "cue reduction". Lotman found an example in Kügchelberg's prison diaries: "mingist ajast alates ei näe ma unes mitte asju ja sündmusi, vaid mingeid nõiduslikke lühendeid, mis on nendega seotud samamoodi nagu hieroglüüf kujutisega, raamatu sisuloend selle raamatuga" (Lotman 2010[1973]: 134-135). A more common term for this might be indexicalization, but I'm not sure.

But is not this a continuation of the same process, and may it not be that the physiological procedure of thinking is nothing but a simplified process of articulating words or sentences and responding to them by articulating more words or sentences until finally those occur which represent, in the associative reflex, a situation demanding some other sort of response such as an overt action? (Brown 1916: 648)

The physiological procedure of thinking, huh. The highest function of the central nervous system.

Such a state of things, of course, supports the instrumental theory of knowledge, and for this sort of thinking, at least, the problem of images disappears and the question of the resemblance of images to their objects is almost meaningless, for the image is [|] merely the word, and words stand for objects, not from any resemblance, but because they have become established as objects which not only take their place in eliciting practical responses, but also because on them are "loaded" all of the affective states which originally were awakened by the situation in question. (Brown 1916: 648-649)

Between iconicity and symbolicity.

Gault, Robert H. 1915. On the Meaning of Social Psychology. The Monist 25(2): 255-260. [JSTOR]

Social psychology in its widest sense applies to the social behavior of all animals, but more specifically, and as the term is usually employed, to the social behavior of members of the human race, both individually and collectively. (Gault 1915: 255)

Brilliant. Very suitable for the beginning era of behaviorism.

Behavior is used here in the sense in which it appears in the literature of general psychology, to point to an adjustment on the part of an organism to its environment. But not all adjustments are social, and social behavior implies those interactions or adjustments that occur among men and women and children. They may or may not be accompanied by a social consciousness. (Gault 1915: 255)

Hence Kantor's "referential adjustment" (cf. Hess 1929: 355, above). Is all behavior an interaction between and organism and its environment? What is social consciousness?

It is assumed that the interactions in question were conscious at least in their origins, excepting in cases in which they may have arisen by accident and have been discovered and made use of consciously at a later time; as for example when one discovers that one has already unwittingly adopted a mode of address which elicits favorable response from a neighbor, and therefore deliberately continues to exercise this manner of address, until it once more becomes unconscious. Social behavior, therefore, includes those automatic or relatively automatic adjustments among men - social habits - as well as conscious adjustments. Social psychology, then, is charged with accounting for the development of these social [|] automatisms just as general psychology accounts for the growth of automatisms in the life of an organism. (Gault 1915: 255-256)

A reminder that there's a lot of psychological literature on "automatism", and Gardiner's "mechanization of speech" gives a reason to look into it. As to the unconscious mode of address, this is indeed commonplace, as in a lecturer who consciously tries to shake off her habit of turning towards her students with the formal vous ("teie") since it's a relic or survival of Soviet speech patterns.

Social psychology implies a social consciousness distinct from consciousness that is not social. By this term we mean here that aspect of human consciousness in which one takes cognizance of one's relations to others and vice versa; in which one voluntarily seeks to control another's reactions; in which one anticipates one's reaction to the behavior that may possibly be expressed in the life of another at some future time or the reactions that may occur in the reverse direction; in which one makes adjustment to an ideal that has been developed and expressed by whatever means; finally by social consciousness we mean that aspect of human consciousness in which one responds to what is "in the air," realizing all the while, even though vaguely, that one is doing so because "everybody else is doing it." (Gault 1915: 256)

In other words: "Let me look over the fence and see what my neighbour does, and take it as a rule for my behaviour" (Malinowski 1922: 326-327). To control another's reactions, the sociobiologist Wilson would say, is the whole point of all communication. As to making adjustment towards expectations and social norms or "an ideal" is reminiscent of Kantian ethics, though I can't specify in what regard.

Thus we are socially conscious when we stop to consider the possible effects of our actions upon others. The student is socially conscious when in preparation for an intercollegiate debate he works in the quiet of his study week in and week out, arranging and rearranging his material with a view to getting it into such shape that it will elicit signs of approval from the audience and obtain the decision of the judges in response to his effort. The chess player is socially conscious when he anticipates his next move in case his opponent should make a certain play, or vice versa; the statesman when he anticipates the needs of the state and provides for them, as well as when, from public expressions, he realizes his error and makes correction. (Gault 1915: 256)

This anticipation of possible effects on others is what Fite (1907: 394-395, above) was addressing: we also anticipate possible effects of our own behavior on ourselves. Eliciting "signs of approval" by preparing real hard ya'll is an example of seeking social approval by way of achievement. As to the statesman making a correction in response to public critique we saw today an amusing instance: a journalist (Liisu Lass) tweeted that a minister (Taavi Aas) had a picture of himself hanging on the wall during a televised interview, and made the appropriate adjustment - in the next such interview he had a picture of that journalist hanging in the same place. A critique of vanity gave way to satisfying the critic's vanity. Good move. (The moral of the story being, of course, that all human beings are vain.)

We are socially conscious, furthermore, when we feel constrained to adjust ourselves to an ideal. Whether we associate it with a particular person or not the ideal is personified, and in adjusting to it, or in responding in any way to its appeal, we are indirectly responding to its [|] author. Thus when we are reading a book or looking at a picture we may be socially conscious. Indeed we are so if the book or the picture stimulates the vague or distinct imagery of a recognized ideal. (Gault 1915: 256-257)

Nice to see "appeal" used in this sense before Bühler. Personally, I experience this sort of social consciousness and adjustment every time I compile a mixtape, then having to imagine what the recipient might hear in my selection of songs.

Reduced to its final terms the social consciousness is the sum total of a certain more or less defined mental imagery. We entertain in our mind's eye either anticipatory or retrospective imagery of responses to behavior, responses that might have been or that actually occurred; and this imagery seems to be aimed at the control of our behavior when we are socially conscious. It comes to fruition in the consciousness of the organism alone. It is an aspect of the total individual consciousness. It excludes the concept of an oversoul and of Urwick's usper-consciousness. It is more than the mere consciousness of kind and more than imitative consciousness, though either or both may be a part of it. (Gault 1915: 257)

That is true. This sort of social consciousness is not merely a sense of similarity or identity (consciousness of kind), nor simply some sort of imitation. References to Urwick's Philosophy of Social Progress and Giddings' Elements.

When the social consciousness of the organism has been abstracted from the total and we take stock of all that remains we find only those perceptual, ideational, and emotional experiences that come to us uncolored by any sense of their relationship to other selves than our own. The [|] tree on the campus or the chair on the floor may simply mean "something there," changing or unchanging. The moment, however, at which these objects so much as suggest a plan of another intelligence than ours - a plan that arouses even a glimmering reaction of any sort on our part - at that moment the experience becomes social. (Gault 1915: 257-258)

The triad duplicates firstness (perceptual/emotional) and disregards secondness (volition/reaction). This sense of "social consciousness", i.e. experiencing any influence from other people, is not wrong but perhaps too minimalist - "a plan of another intelligence" may be pure conjecture, and not involve the actions of another persons at all.

As I have already intimated the social aspect of the experience may lapse according to the law of automatization. we may take the picture as a matter of course after a while and be insensitive to the message of the artist. We may develop insensitivity to the appeal of the distress at our doors. Such a process is within the realm of social psychology just as distinctly as any other process of automatization in the field of educational psychology or elsewhere. (Gault 1915: 258)

Becoming insensitive to the appeals of the distressed is particularly indicative. This is how a whole society becomes accustomed and normalizes homelessness and other social issues - that's just the way it's always been.

Social psychology is interested too in the sense of social unity that makes the whole group seem kin. It is this sense, ever present especially to those who live with others of their kind and mingle with them on intimate terms, that makes attractive a proposition that a super-consciousness or a universal sub-consciousness includes the consciousness of each one of us and that it is by dint of this background that we have our sense of social unity. The method of psychology, however, cannot supply data concerning such a background, if indeed it exists at all. (Gault 1915: 258)

The latter point is also Malinowski's in his frequent critiques of "collective consciousness". The idea has its appeal but what methods indeed would one employ to study it?

My sense of social unity transcends the immediate present when through the eye of anticipation I confidently see uncounted thousands belonging to future generations modifying the conduct of their thoughts and behavior in response to ideas that are being made extant to-day by myself or by others. (Gault 1915: 259)

Standing on top of a mountain and calling out. The echoes unleash an avalanche.

Mace, C. A. 1934. Metaphysics of Emotive Language. Analysis 2(1/2): 6-10. [JSTOR]

In my previous contribution to this journal I suggested that the two functions of language - representation of the 'scientific' use and expression or the 'emotive' use - are to be conceived as conjunctive rather than as alternatives. Mr. Ayer agrees with me that in the great majority of cases this is so, but cites three cases which appear to provide exceptions to my generalization: (i) the case of writers who, like Miss Stein, deliberately construct verbal compositions which are devoid of all meaning; (ii) the case of metaphysicians who, like Professor Heidegger, achieve non-significance through defiance of the rules of philosophical grammar, and (iii) the case of the genuine metaphysical mystic. The defence of my original thesis would proceed broadly along the following lines. Strictly, neither the first nor the second are cases of emotive language in the relevant sense of the term; and in the third, which is the most important because both metaphysics and emotion are involved, my point appears to be granted. But each of these cases is of distinctive interest and bears upon a general inquiry into the genesis of nonsense. (Mace 1934: 6)

Only two functions by 1934 - that is just poor performance. The general impetus seems to be that the emotive us of language is meaningless. These three exceptions would later be described as "phatic". This Stein's stuff sounds like zaum (Aljagrov et al.), Heidegger's case still mystifies philosophers today (heideggerese), as to the genuine metaphysical mystic - his language could be described as "spiritual" or "magical".

The case of Miss Stein. It is very probably true that writers of the school of Miss Stein are interested in producing collocations of words - I do not think they can be properly described as sentences - which are not intended to possess literal, or for that matter any other, meaning, but only balance, rhythm and other aesthetic properties. But this is not to use emotive language in the sense with which I was concerned. There is an important difference between exciting and expressing an emotion. There is little in common between asying 'Rats!' to one's dog and saying 'Rats!' as a piece of vulgar repartee. There is a further important difference between the use of words in a manner which depends upon an awareness of their meanings and the use of words as so much auditory raw material. Can we, in fact, in the latter case, be said to use words at all? (Mace 1934: 7)

This difference between exciting and expressing an emotion is noted in Jakobson's discussion of the emotive function: "It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion, whether true or feigned" (Jakobson 1960d: 22). But this is not quite the point. It looks more like Mace is approaching, with "exciting", the conative function.

The interest in these sentences, I suggest, is that they succeed in combining a tautology with a self-contradiction, achieving thereby a contradiction of the socend order. Take, for example, the sentence in which the author expresses his belief in the masterly inactivity of the non-existent: 'Das Nights selbst nichtet.'
'The Nothing does something' the metaphysician appears first of all to assert. He is committed to this by using the word 'nothing' as if for the subject of a proposition. We raise our eyebrows and inquire: 'And what, pray, does the Nothing do?' 'It just does nothing,' comes the triumphant reply. If this language were in no sense sinificant, I do not think we could assert it to be either tautological or self-contradictory or to presuppose any mistaken assumptions. Merely agreeable or disagreeable noises do not have these properties. (Mace 1934: 8)

"The point about the Heidegger passage is not that the words are used without significance but that they have been used in a way which shews that their proper significance has not been understood" (ibid, 7). The illustration is of an improper agentive: how can nothing do something? It is not an agent. "There are of course sentences in which the word 'nothihng' can properly be used so as to appear superficially to be the subject without being so. But here it is intended to be a subject." (ibid, 8; footnote)

There are, of course, subtler considerations. In emotion we experience an attitude directed to an object, and the converse of this fact is that the object in question has a certain relational property in respect of this attitude. (Mace 1934: 10)

Philosophers naturally assume that emotions have an object and not that they are neurophysiological states.

Mead, George H. 1912. The Mechanism of Social Consciousness. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 9(15): 401-406. [JSTOR]

The organization of consciousness may be regarded from the standpoint of its objects and the relation of these objects to conduct. I have in mind to present somewhat schematically the relation of social objects or selves to the form of social conduct, and to introduce this by a statement of the relation of the physical object to the conduct within which it appears. (Mead 1912: 401)

Selves are social objects, huh. First read this paper in 2013.

A physical object or percept is a construct in which the sensuous stimulation is merged with imagery which comes from past experience. This imagery on the cognitive side is that which the immediate sensuous quality stands for, and in so far satisfies the mind. The reason for this satisfaction is found in the fact that this imagery arises from past experience of the result of an act which this stimulus has set going. Thus the wall as a visual stimulus tends to set free the impulse to move toward it and push against it. The perception of the wall as distant and hard and rough is related to the visual experience as response to stimulation. A peculiar stimulus value stands for a certain response value. A percept is a collapsed act in which the result of the act to which the stimulus incites is represented by imagery of the experience of past acts of like nature. (Mead 1912: 401)

Objects of consciousness are grounded in past experience and knowledge. As to the "act" stuff, it looks like when we see any physical object our first thought is what we can do with it, and this imagery is collapsed in the very process of perception, which is why we may not take too much notice of it (it's automatic).

Given a different type of conduct with distinguishable stimulations and responses, and different objects would arise - such a different field is that of social conduct. By social conduct I refer simply to that which is mediated by the stimulations of other animals [|] belonging to the same group of living forms, which lead to responses which again affect these other forms - thus fighting, reproduction, parental care, much of animal play, hunting, etc., are the results of primitive instincts or impulses which are set going by the stimulation of one form by another, and these stimulations again lead to responses which affect other forms. (Mead 1912: 401-402)

Social conduct is "mediated" by signs from others. Very general and abstract, this.

It is of course true that a man is a physical object to the perception of another man, and as really as is a tree or a stone. But a man is more than a physical object, and it is this more which constitutes him a social object or self, and it is this self which is related to that peculiar conduct which may be termed social conduct. (Mead 1912: 402)

Sounds like E. R. Clay's definition of the "real", which has that something more that makes it an actuality.

Most social stimulation is found in the beginnings or early stages of social acts which serve as stimuli to other forms whom these acts would affect. This is the field of gestures, which reveal the motor attitude of a form in its relation to others; an attitude which psychologists have conceived of as predominantly emotional, though it is emotional only in so far as an ongoing act is inhibited. That certain of these early indications of an incipient act have persisted, while the rest of the act has been largely suppressed or has lost its original value, e.g., the baring of the teeth or the lifting of the nostrils, is true, and the explanation can most readily be found in the social value which such indications have acquired. It is an error, however, to overlook the relation which these truncated acts have assumed toward other forms of reactions which complete them as really as the original acts, or to forget that they occupy but a small part of the whole field of gesture by means of which we are apprised of the reactions of others toward ourselves. The expressions of the face and attitudes of body have the same functional value for us that the beginnings of hostility have for two dogs, who are maneuvering for an opening to attack. (Mead 1912: 402)

Which is to say that we are most conscious of other beings in the beginning of our interaction with them, but shortly a sort of "consensus" is established. Or, to put it another way, we are more observant of other people's facial expressions and body movements when we're starting our interaction, and soon slip into a verbal mode when conversing with them. Why emotion should have more to do with the suppression of certain acts, I do not know. Appraising the reactions of others toward ourselves an instance of the looking glass self.

This field of gesture does not simply relate the individual to other individuals as physical objects, but puts him en rapport with their actions, which are as yet only indicated, and arouses instinctive reactions appropriate to these social activities. The social response of one individual, furthermore, introduces a further complication. The attitude assumed in response to the attitude of another becomes a stimulus to him to change his attitude, thus leading to that conversation of attitudes which is so vividly illustrated in the early stages of a dog fight. We see the same process in courting and mating, and in the fondling of young forms by the mother, and finally in much of the play of young animals. (Mead 1912: 402)

This was written when instinct psychology still reigned large. In order of appearance: instinct of pugnacity (dog fight), sex instinct (courting and mating), maternal instinct (fondling of young), and the play instinct.

Articulate sounds have still another most important result. While one feels but imperfectly the value of his own facial expression or bodily attitude for another, his ear reveals to him his own vocal gesture in the same form that it assumes to his neighbor. One shakes his first primarily only at another, while he talks to himself as really as he talks to his vis-à-vis. The genetic import of this has long been recognized. The young child talks to himself, i.e., uses the elements of articulate speech in response to the sounds he hears himself make, more continuously and persistently than he does in response to the sounds he hears from those about him, and displays greater interest in the sounds he himself makes than in those of others. We know also that this fascination of one's own vocal gestures continues even after the child has learned to talk with others, and that the child will converse for hours with himself, even constructing imaginary companions, who function in the child's growing self-consciousness as the processes of inner speech - of thought and imagination - function in the consciousness of the adult. (Mead 1912: 403)

Not exactly the same form, otherwise hearing recordings of ourselves would give us no surprise. Wouldn't this observation, that children attend to their own sounds more than those issuing from others, throw a wrench into the argument that self-consciousness develops after social consciousness?

We are familiar with this phase of a baby's development, being confident that he recognizes the different members of the group about him. He acts then with confidence toward them since their gestures have come to have meaning for him. His own response to their stimulations and its consequences are there to interpret the facial expressions and attitudes of body and tones of voices. The awakening social intelligence [|] of the child is evidenced not so much through his ready responses to the gestures of others, for these have been in evidence much earlier. It is the inner assurance of his own readiness to adjust himself to the attitudes of others that look out of his eyes and appears in his own bodily attitudes. (Mead 1912: 403-404)

Recognition is unproblematic. Deductions concerning meaning from eye looks and confidence is less so.

It is highly probable that lower animals never reach any such objective reference of what we term subjective experiences to selves, and the question presents itself - what is there in human social conduct that give rise to a "me," a self which is an object? Why does the human animal transfer the form of a social object from his environment to an inner experience? (Mead 1912: 405)

Refuted by videos of cats reacting to a cat facial filter applied to their owners.

Of course the mere capacity to talk to oneself is not the whole of self-consciousness, otherwise the talking birds would have souls or at least selves. What is lacking to the parrot are the social objects which can exist for the human baby. Part of the mechanism for transferring the social objects into an inner experience the parrot possesses, but he has nothing to import into such an inner world. (Mead 1912: 405)

Birds don't have souls? Also, a reply to an earlier question: talking birds have "nothing to impart".

If this statement is correct the objective self of human consciousness is the merging of one's responses with the social stimulation by which he affects himself. The "me" is a man's reply to his own talk. Such a me is not then an early formation, which is then projected and ejected into the bodies of other people to give them the breadth of human life. It is rather an importation from the field of social objects into an amorphous, unorganized field of what we call inner experience. Through the organization of this object, the self, this material is itself organized and brought under the control of the individual in the form of so-called self-consciousness. (Mead 1912: 405)

A vague uncharted nebula.

It is a commonplace of psychology that it is only the "me" - the empirical self - that can be brought into the focus of attention - that can be perceived. The "I" lies beyond the range of immediate experience. In terms of social conduct this is tantamount to saying [|] that we can perceive our responses only as they appear as images from past experience, merging with the sensuous stimulation. We can not present the response while we are responding. We can not use our responses to others as the materials for construction of the self - this imagery goes to make up other selves. We must socially stimulate ourselves to place at our own disposal the material out of which our own selves as well as those of others must be made. (Mead 1912: 405-406)

"I, as thinking, am an object of the internal sense, and am called soul. That which is an object of the external senses is called body." (Kant 1855: 237) - The highlighted argument on the other hand sounds like categorical bull. It's like you can't fully comprehend a text while reading it out loud. Not fully, perhaps, or even depending on how (fast, with what intonation, etc.) you read, but to say that nothing makes through would be nonsense. Likewise, it's not as if we're not present when we're responding to another.

The "I" therefore never can exist as an object in consciousness, but the very conversational character of our inner experience, the very process of replying to one's own talk, implies an "I" behind the scenes who answers to the gestures, the symbols, that arise in consciousness. The "I" is the transcendental self of Kant, the soul that James conceived behind the scene holding on to the skirts of an idea to give it an added increment of emphasis. (Mead 1912: 406)

How much of this is actually Kantian I cannot yet say.

Alexander, H. G. 1937. Language and Metaphysical Truth. The Journal of Philosophy 34(24): 645-652. [JSTOR]

No generation, since Aristotle first separated off that branch of knowledge which was to be called "metaphysics," has lacked its sceptic or its "practical man," eager to question the worth of so abstract a study. And yet our faith in metaphysics continues. Is this, together with a hope for immortality and divine justice, just another evidence of the doggedness of human nature, or is there some valid reason for our trust in the truth of metaphysical propositions? We have beheld attempt after attempt made to prove or disprove once and for all the value of this cream of philosophical speculation. Perhaps we can never do more. But if metaphysical thinking can be shown to have some kinship with the more practical studies, some basis in human experience which links it inextricably with other thought modes, then I believe it can never be relegated to the realm of idle pastime or of mere fantasy. (Alexander 1937: 645)

Not sure how I went from absolutely nothing about metaphysics a few years ago to knowing the bare surface of it, associating it with triadicity and the subject/object distinction.

Thinking, when it removes itself from the first level of familiarity with our surroundings, heads straight for a generation of subject-matter. The more we depend upon reason for knowledge, the more do we cling to dichotomies and classifications. When finally we arrive in the sphere of metaphysics, we are dependent upon the most sweeping categories of which the human mind is capable. It is by means of the extraordinary tool of language that we have been enabled to do this. Language, as it were, has handed us symbols whereby we could hold to a sense of the substantial, even while soaring in a rarefied atmosphere. (Alexander 1937: 645)

As opposed to the (dialectical) materialists, who consider our species' transformation of our surroundings the only relevant realm of thinking. The most sweeping categories are probably those they call "transcendentals". I once stumbled upon a book listing them for students that long predated even Locke.

Nowhere is the richness of human experience symbolized for us more fully than in language. Phases of this vast world of experience have their special codes, but language is the only one which approaches universality. Communication appears as our chief evidence of that which we call "mind" and "will." And language is symbolized communication. Our question, then, is whether language from its very function in human wisdom can tell us aught of this strange faith in our ability to scale the metaphysical heavens. (Alexander 1937: 645)

Another way of saying that language is the primary modelling system.

The world is a flux. This we can not deny in some measure. But language is aware of this. Linguistic symbols are not indicative of one to one relations with the objects of experience which they symbolize. They are metaphors, terms that may be taken from one context and placed in another with a degree of permanence of meaning, but also with a degree of flexibility. The nuances and subtle feeling-tones of which linguistic usage is capable are almost untold. The grammarian and translator are alike aware of this in their efforts to classify or interpret languages. Language must be able to convey the understanding of all phases of experience, not only of the exterior world of sense-perceptions, but of that other and inner world of feeling, impulse, desire, volition. (Alexander 1937: 646)

As Peirce would have it, words ase continual determinators of form.

Conflicts in the realm of thought are frequently due to divergences of opinion, and these may largely be blamed upon differences of emphasis and perspective. A situation or context may be correctly envisaged so far as its broad relations are concerned, but the matter of special interests, the highlights, as it were, will vary from person to person. Language reflects this condition. The matrix of a language is its morphology and syntax, its formal structure of particles and elements and their indicated relations, modes, quantities, and characters. This gives the background of the situation or event to be depicted, and against this background those features upon which the attention is focused must be brought out in relief, made to receive their proper emphasis. These emphasized portions will be the objects of which of which the speaker is conscious, they are the things he will consciously objectify, i.e., will talk about. The most strongly objectified concepts are those which are symbolized by a name or noun. This is especially true in languages of an analytical temperament which tend to keep their nouns separable and free from the background of relational elements and particles. There are, of course, many highly synthetic languages which tend to draw the noun down into the matrix in order to give a more unified view of the whole situation. But, in general, we may say, it is the ability of a language to draw out certain ones of its symbolized concepts in high relief, thus reflecting the objectification of different elements in a context, which gives it its much-needed flexibility. It is also this ability which makes abstraction possible; for the function of creating abstract nouns from verbs and adjectives and other parts of speech is a direct outcome of this. (Alexander 1937: 646)

Appropriately vague for a discussion of language and metaphysics. Jakobson's "non-verbalized context" comes to mind, i.e. the referential function only points out, or places an emphasis on, so to say, some aspects of the total situation.

Let us consider some common abstractions. We shall find that they are nothing but objectified activities or conditions, relations or qualities. "Universe" is literally a "turning into one," but a turning of what or into what we do not know. "Hypothesis" is a "placing of something underneath as a groundwork or foundation," but what it is that is placed underneath, or under what it is placed, is not designated. "Intuition" is a "looking into," but it tells us naught of the looker or the thing into which he looks. "Intellect" originally referred to "the act of choosing or collecting from among," i.e., "understanding," and the context here again needs the designation of a chooser and of a thing or things chosen, in order to make it definite. Even the word "space," mentioned above, comes from the Latin, spatio, connected with the Greek, στάδιον, which latter was used as a definite measure or relation of distance, and not as the symbol for the generalized concept of space, as we use it. These ideas have been substantivized to reflect their objectification in thought. Linguistic usage treats them as though they symbolized something as materially objective as "books" or "chairs." But it [|] does not mean to betray the fact that they represent extremely fragmentary portions of the original context. (Alexander 1937: 647-648)

All very interesting examples, no doubt.

Linguistically, the position of abstractions, then, is that of a fragmentary situation torn from a context and objectified in conscious thought. It is a mere "swooping," a "moving," or "being," with our knowledge of the determinant characteristics suspended. It may also be only the frame of reference itself, with the type of activity or being suspended. (Alexander 1937: 648)

Concrete wholes, abstract parts.

Logic has come to be the study of relations of all kinds and of the functions of variables. But logic grew up out of language as an effort to reduce the relations indicated by linguistic propositions to a uniform consistency which would avoid ambiguity. This came about because language not only leaves room for, but thrives on, ambiguity; for, indeed, it is of the nature of language to be metaphorical, and of the nature of metaphor to be ambiguous. The fundamental law of logic, the law of identity, is invoked in order to keep the meanings of the abstract terms as uniform as possible. Interestingly, it is when they are transferred from the realm of abstraction to a situation with a concrete content, where logic is less applicable, that ambiguity is most likely to ensue. We must be ever alert, when speaking of the Good, to analyze the similarity between this general concept and some particular concept of a particular good. (Alexander 1937: 649)

All poignant observations. Particularly that logic becomes useless when dealing with the empirical world (concrete content).

It is natural that a people whose language has not been carried to these heights of abstraction, and who have not had to discipline themselves with logic, should not be too critical of complete identification of particulars, as the evidence which M. Lévy-Bruhl invokes to uphold his theory of a "pre-logic," would show. This is natural because language only succeeds in its task of communicating by likening different things, and if the speakers have no generalities in which to relate particulars, they are left to liken one particular to another. In identifying oneself completely with a particular kind of bind - the situation described by M. Lévy-Bruhl - no repugnance of thought is felt simply because a critical appreciation of the degree to which this likening may be carried is not evoked. Logic represents the attempt to arouse this critical appreciation. (Alexander 1937: 649)

Yeah, that guy again. On the whole this not all that bad a discussion of iconicity in language.

It is to be expected that the ideal of logic would be a language without ambiguities, and hence without metaphor. The hope, recurrently expressed, that the given is reducible to a perfect correspondence with a completely logical syntax is belied by the nature of languages and of linguistic syntaxes themselves. The imposed orderliness of such syntaxes is forever being upset by their inadequacies, tehir failure to find exact equivalence. Language must revert to its ambiguities, and logic is left to soar off into a realm of pure relations, for the most part, barren in content. (Alexander 1937: 650)

Some difficulties intelligent machines may encounter when confronted with human language.

We are at liberty to focus our attention, to turn our searchlight of interest, upon some portion of the context in order to make the comparisons and contrasts which understanding demands, but we must remember the question marks which have been placed around these fragments. (Alexander 1937: 650)

A powerful figure. The lantern of consciousness.

The third method is the method of parable and myth. In using this form of discourse, the metaphysician is retaining his individual terms in their original meanings and forms, but he is transferring the large image or context from particular to universal. In stating explicitly that he deals in myth, he is guarding with care those question marks which the pure abstraction tends to forget. He is boldly scaling the metaphysical heavens with a ladder forged on the anvil of human experience, yet recognizing that this ladder will nowhere have a permanent resting-place. There will be other ladders and other scalers just as good an just an adept. But this latter method demands not only a clear thinker, but a consummate artist with language. Unfortunately, few of us are Platos. (Alexander 1937: 651)

Evoking scala naturae, I see.

Carr, H. Wildon 1923. Intercourse and Interaction. Mind 32(127): 320-327. [JSTOR]

What I affirm is this. It may or may not be true that mind and body interact, it is at least conceivable that they do. It cannot be true that mind and mind interact, it is not even conceivable if we accept the theory of the monads, because if the mind is a monad interaction is a contradiction. Intercourse between minds is not a theory, such as in my view interaction between minds would be, it is a fact the nature of which has to be interpreted. Intercourse between minds would I suppose be rejected as illusion by a consistent solipsist, but it is the practical working belief without which we should not know how to conduct our lives. It seems to me a pure confusion of thought and not a misuse of words to interpret intercourse as interaction. The conditions of intercourse are different from the conditions of interaction, and the effects of intercourse are different from the effects of interaction. (Carr 1923: 320)

It is possible that mind and body have something to do with each other. That people communicate, on the other hand, is undeniable.

An illustration from history may make the distinction clear. The doctrine of sufficient grace or divine efficacy which Pascal defended in the Lettres Provinciales is an interaction theory. According to this doctrine, God, the infinite mind, not only reveals or makes known his nature and his will to finite minds in his commandments, but he directly acts on [|] the elect enabling them by his efficacious grace to do his will and aspire to communion with him. When grace is withheld the power of the just to fulfil God's commandments fails, and such, according to one side in the famous Jansenist controversy, was Peter's condition when he denied his Lord. On the other hand, the doctrine which Leibniz propounded to Arnauld in the Discours de Métaphysique is the definitive denial of interaction. According to it, the infinite perfection of God depends on omniscience alone. God when he created Adam did so with perfect foreknowledge of his nature and of the actions which would result from that nature, but he created Adam's nature as a clockmaker constructs a clock which is intended to go by itself, a nature whose spring of action is entirely within itself. Adam's nature, because intelligent, comprehends capacity for intercourse but its activity consists in perception and its finitude in the confusion and obscurity of its perceptions. Here then we have two fundamentally distinct conceptions of mental nature, both affirming intercourse, but one asserting, the other denying, interaction between the divine or infinite and the human or finite mind. (Carr 1923: 320-321)

Ah, thus "interaction" here means interference from God. Good, because if you don't believe that God is still interfering with us mortals then you're practically an atheist.

When psychologists use the term interaction they refer always to a theory of the nature of the relation of mind and body. The term has for them a perfectly definite connotation. It expresses the view of those who hold that psychical states - sensations, perception, emotion, volition - are both conditions and conditionates of physiological states - neural transmission, muscular contraction and relaxation, glandular secretion and discharge. It is clear that whether interaction is or is not a true theory of the relation between mind and body it has not the slightest analogy to the relation of intercourse between mind and mind. (Carr 1923: 321)

Mind and body interact, but there is no such thing as "social interaction". At least not until very shortly after the publication of this paper. Historically ironic? Or could this very paper, published in a prestigious journal as it was, been the very instigator of this alteration of meaning? It's like Carr proclaimed 'these words mean very different things' and the popular reply was 'yeah, one sounds better than the other, let's use them interchangeably'.

If we now consider ordinary intercourse, such as when one asks a question of another and receives an intelligible answer, it is clear that if such intercourse depends on interaction it [|] cannot be direct interaction between mind and mind because the two bodies intervene. The only obvious interaction is between the two physiologically organised bodies and the interaction of the two minds would necessarily fall into three completely separable and separate sets of events, viz. an interaction between the mind of the interrogating person and his body, an interaction between the body of the interrogating person and the body of the interrogated, and an interaction between the body of the interrogated and his mind. Such serial interaction may be a condition of intercourse but clearly it is not itself intercourse, nor as a condition is it in any way interpretative of intercourse, for intercourse means that there is mutual understanding of meaning. Clearly my mind does not inform my body, my body thereupon inform another body, and that other body inform its mind. (Carr 1923: 21-22)

Not sure what Carr means by "my mind does not inform my body". Yeah, your mind controls your body? The three separate sets of events are depicted in de Saussure's famous scheme.

According to many investigators there is a direct relation between minds which is experimentally proved to exist; they have named it telepathy. The evidence for the existence of this phenomenon seems to me somewhat too easily and eagerly accepted by most members of psychical research societies, but on the other hand there are many critically minded philosophers who are convinced by it. If such a relation does exist in fact, and if its nature be what it purports to be, then there is a direct relation between minds which is one of interaction pure and simple and nothing else. It is mainly because I hold that intercourse is not interaction and that telepathy if it be a fact is interaction and not intercourse, that the theory of telepathy and the attraction that it possesses for some philosophers seem to me to rest on a complete misconception of the nature of intercourse. In other words, if minds can be conceived to interact in the way which telepathy supposes, then I am at a loss to understand why there is, and how indeed there can be, the ordinary fact we name intercourse. Telepathy is the theory that one mind can make another mind perceive the perceptions, think the thoughts, feel the emotions, which it is itself experiencing, by direct mind-mind action. (Carr 1923: 322)

Ohh nooo. Many people say that telepathy is real, folks, a lot of smart people. I have to say, I recently saw a video about the history of hypnotism, and became somewhat interested in looking into it because the literature is available in Internet Archive (i.e. animal magnetism), and the curious concept of "suggestion", which Freud and his contemporaries used in a more sensible meaning (cf. McDougall 1916: 90-91) than may be attributed to it, could prove interesting in its own right.

If one mind can direct or control the ideas of another mind or impart its own ideas to it by acting directly upon it then our bodies instead of being, as I hold them to be, the means by which non-interacting minds can have intercourse must be a hindrance to the direct interaction of minds, an obstacle to be overcome. It seems to me that believers in telepathy start with the preconception that the body is such an obstacle. I hold that it is the means and the only means of intercourse. (Carr 1923: 323)

The brilliant discovery that if we didn't have bodies we couldn't communicate. Philosophers do break new ground, don't they.

I will choose the shorter way of challenging anyone to produce from his own psychical experience - sensational, emotional, or cognitive - a case in which anything he feels or knows or desires is not due to his own mind's activity but to the activity of another mind. (Carr 1923: 323)

As always, the middle item in the triad is the most variable.

Indeed in regard to sensation is it not universally admitted that experience is incommunicable? Is it not the same with regard to emotions? Many popular expressions seem to indicate that such psychical states as love, fear, anger, are directly communicated from mind to mind, not by individual contemplation of lovable, terrible or outrageous deeds, but by a purely mental influence, across a soul atmosphere as it were, as when, for instance, we speak of panic seizing a mob. The slightest reflective analysis will show, I think, that this is only a way of speaking. If I make my neighbour angry, the emotion is due to his own mind's reaction to my injurious words or gestures, my mind does not directly impart his anger to him. In panic also it is the outward expression which renders the inward experience contagious. (Carr 1923: 323)

Not a bad addition to the analysis of "atmosphere", i.e. something like collective mood. It leads to hypotheses of "collective consciousness" and the like because it may be difficult to discern what exactly it is about a situation that makes it the way it is - something along the lines of seeing the forest in the trees when you're in the middle of it.

I suppose everyone will agree to the answer, that as beween human beings the means of intercourse is language, using the term in its widest meaning and not restricting it to written or spoken words. But what is language? This is the really crucial problem. It is generally thought to depend on the agreement, arrived at by communicating minds, to use a material object as a conventional sign to convey a meaning, and the ideal of a perfect language is a system of unmistakable signs conveying unambiguous meanings. Such a view assumes as already in existence independent minds, generically related, with naturally acquired cognitions. I will not repeat here the arguments by which, in my Theory of Monads, I have claimed to prove that this account of language is untrue in fact and theoretically self-contradictory. (Carr 1923: 326)

Good bait. On the one hand I'd very much like to read how he refuted semiotics in his Theory of Monads, and on the other hand I wouldn't venture such a step before reading Leibniz's New Essays and a bunch of secondary material beforehand, lest the attempt be doomed to incomprehension.

The real fact about language is as paradoxical as the miracle which is said to have happened on the day of Pentecost when the apostle spoke in his own language and the hearers heard each in theirs. Intercourse depends on minds being attuned. The convention consists in inward adaptation and not in outward recognition. The condition of intercourse is not that two minds should be situated within a common universe, in some inexplicable way revealing itself to each and its identity to both, but that two minds each actively co-ordinating its own universe should have a common system of reference. In the language of relativity the identity underlying intercourse is an invariant equation. (Carr 1923: 326)

Huh, not bad. This is that "referential adjustment". In other words, no two words mean exactly the same thing for two people because their life-experiences and associations are different. And yet somehow we manage to understand each other adequately because meanings are, in most case, malleable (ambiguous), and typically our everyday conversations are not rocket science, there is little consequence to small misunderstandings or even lapses of attention.

In my view the body is to the mind its means of self-expression. An activity without means to express itself cannot be presented to thought in an image or idea, and this is what mind without body would be.
In my Theory of Monads I have described the mind-body relation as a solidarity. The two constituents are completely distinct. The mind is an ideal order, the body a material order. There is an intelligible meaning in which my mind was in existence before I was born and will continue in existence after I am dead, an intelligible sense in which mind is essentially eternal, body essentially temporal. (Carr 1923: 327)

Lol, no.

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