Kitabı oku: «Mind, Self & Society», sayfa 4
PART II. MIND
7. WUNDT AND THE CONCEPT OF THE GESTURE
THE particular field of social science with which we are concerned is one which was opened up through the work of Darwin and the more elaborate presentation of Wundt.
If we take Wundt's parallelistic statement we get a point of view from which we can approach the problem of social experience. Wundt undertook to show the parallelism between what goes on in the body as represented by processes of the central nervous system, and what goes on in those experiences which the individual recognizes as his own. He had to find that which was common to these two fields – what in the psychical experience could be referred to in physical terms.
Wundt isolated a very valuable conception of the gesture as that which becomes later a symbol, but which is to be found in its earlier stages as a part of a social act. It is that part of the social act which serves as a stimulus to other forms involved in the same social act. I have given the illustration of the dog-fight as a method of presenting the gesture. The act of each dog becomes the stimulus to the other dog for his response. There is then a relationship between these two; and as the act is responded to by the other dog, it, in turn, undergoes change. The very fact that the dog is ready to attack another becomes a stimulus to the other dog to change his own position or his own attitude. He has no sooner done this than the change of attitude in the second dog in turn causes the first dog to change his attitude. We have here a conversation of gestures. They are not, however, gestures in the sense that they are significant. We do not assume that the dog says to himself, »If the animal comes from this direction he is going to spring at my throat and I will turn in such a way.« What does take place is an actual change in his own position due to the direction of the approach of the other dog.
We find a similar situation in boxing and in fencing, as in the feint and the parry that is initiated on the part of the other. And then the first one of the two in turn changes his attack; there may be considerable play back and forth before actually a stroke results. This is the same situation as in the dog-fight. If the individual is successful a great deal of his attack and defense must be not considered, it must take place immediately. He must adjust himself »instinctively« to the attitude of the other individual. He may, of course, think it out. He may deliberately feint in order to open up a place of attack. But a great deal has to be without deliberation.
In this case we have a situation in which certain parts of the act become a stimulus to the other form to adjust itself to those responses; and that adjustment in turn becomes a stimulus to the first form to change his own act and start on a different one. There are a series of attitudes, movements, on the part of these forms which belong to the beginnings of acts that are the stimuli for the responses that take place. The beginning of a response becomes the stimulus to the first form to change his attitude, to adopt a different act. The term »gesture« may be identified with these beginnings of social acts which are stimuli for the response of other forms. Darwin was interested in such gestures because they expressed emotions, and he dealt with them very largely as if this were their sole function. He looked at them as serving the function with reference to the other forms which they served with reference to his own observation. The gestures expressed emotions of the animal to Darwin; he saw in the attitude of the dog the joy with which he accompanied his master in taking a walk. And he left his treatment of the gestures largely in these terms.
It was easy for Wundt to show that this was not a legitimate point of attack on the problem of these gestures. They did not at bottom serve the function of expression of the emotions: that was not the reason why they were stimuli, but rather because they were parts of complex acts in which different forms were involved. They became the tools through which the other forms responded. When they did give rise to a certain response, they were themselves changed in response to the change which took place in the other form. They are part of the organization of the social act, and highly important elements in that organization. To the human observer they are expressions of emotion, and that function of expressing emotion can legitimately become the field of the work of the artist and of the actor. The actor is in the same position as the poet: he is expressing emotions through his own attitude, his tones of voice, through his gestures, just as the poet through his poetry is expressing his emotions and arousing that emotion in others. We get in this way a function which is not found in the social act of these animals, or in a great deal of our own conduct, such as that of the boxer and the fencer. We have this interplay going on with the gestures serving their functions, calling out the responses of the others, these responses becoming themselves stimuli for readjustment, until the final social act itself can be carried out. Another illustration of this is in the relation of parent-form to the infant – the stimulating cry, the answering tone on the part of the parent-form, and the consequent change in the cry of the infant-form. Here we have a set of adjustments of the two forms carrying out a common social act involved in the care of the child. Thus we have, in all these instances, a social process in which one can isolate the gesture which has its function in the social process, and which can become an expression of emotions, or later can become the expression of a meaning, an idea.
The primitive situation is that of the social act which involves the interaction of different forms, which involves, therefore, the adjustment of the conduct of these different forms to each other, in carrying out the social process. Within that process one can find what we term the gestures, those phases of the act which bring about the adjustment of the response of the other form. These phases of the act carry with them the attitude as the observer recognizes it, and also what we call the inner attitude. The animal may be angry or afraid. There are such emotional attitudes which lie back of these acts, but these are only part of the whole process that is going on. Anger expresses itself in attack; fear expresses itself in flight. We can see, then, that the gestures mean these attitudes on the part of the form, that is, they have that meaning for us. We see that an animal is angry and that he is going to attack. We know that that is in the action of the animal, and is revealed by the attitude of the animal. We cannot say the animal means it in the sense that he has a reflective determination to attack. A man may strike another before he means it; a man may jump and run away from a loud sound behind his back before he knows what he is doing. If he has the idea in his mind, then the gesture not only means this to the observer but it also means the idea which the individual has. In one case the observer sees that the attitude of the dog means attack, but he does not say that it means a conscious determination to attack on the part of the dog. However, if somebody shakes his fist in your face you assume that he has not only a hostile attitude but that he has some idea behind it. You assume that it means not only a possible attack, but that the individual has an idea in his experience.
When, now, that gesture means this idea behind it and it arouses that idea in the other individual, then we have a significant symbol. In the case of the dog-fight we have a gesture which calls out appropriate response; in the present case we have a symbol which answers to a meaning in the experience of the first individual and which also calls out that meaning in the second individual. Where the gesture reaches that situation it has become what we call »language«. It is now a significant symbol and it signifies a certain meaning.
The gesture is that phase of the individual act to which adjustment takes place on the part of other individuals in the social process of behavior. The vocal gesture becomes a significant symbol (unimportant, as such, on the merely affective side of experience) when it has the same effect on the individual making it that it has on the individual to whom it is addressed or who explicitly responds to it, and thus involves a reference to the self of the individual making it. The gesture in general, and the vocal gesture in particular, indicates some object or other within the field of social behavior, an object of common interest to all the individuals involved in the given social act thus directed toward or upon that object. The function of the gesture is to make adjustment possible among the individuals implicated in any given social act with reference to the object or objects with which that act is concerned; and the significant gesture or significant symbol affords far greater facilities for such adjustment and readjustment than does the non-significant gesture, because it calls out in the individual making it the same attitude toward it (or toward its meaning) that it calls out in the other individuals participating with him in the given social act, and thus makes him conscious of their attitude toward it (as a component of his behavior) and enables him to adjust his subsequent behavior to theirs in the light of that attitude. In short, the conscious or significant conversation of gestures is a much more adequate and effective mechanism of mutual adjustment within the social act – involving, as it does, the taking, by each of the individuals carrying it on, of the attitudes of the others toward himself – than is the unconscious or non-significant conversation of gestures.
When, in any given social act or situation, one individual indicates by a gesture to another individual what this other individual is to do, the first individual is conscious of the meaning of his own gesture – or the meaning of his gesture appears in his own experience – in so far as he takes the attitude of the second individual toward that gesture, and tends to respond to it implicitly in the same way that the second individual responds to it explicitly. Gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse in an individual making them the same responses which they explicitly arouse, or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are addressed; and in all conversations of gestures within the social process, whether external (between different individuals) or internal (between a given individual and himself), the individual's consciousness of the content and flow of meaning involved depends on his thus taking the attitude of the other toward his own gestures. In this way every gesture comes within a given social group or community to stand for a particular act or response, namely, the act or response which it calls forth explicitly in the individual to whom it is addressed, and implicitly in the individual who makes it; and this particular act or response for which it stands is its meaning as a significant symbol. Only in terms of gestures as significant symbols is the existence of mind or intelligence possible; for only in terms of gestures which are significant symbols can thinking – which is simply an internalized or implicit conversation of the individual with himself by means of such gestures – take place. The internalization in our experience of the external conversations of gestures which we carry on with other individuals in the social process is the essence of thinking; and the gestures thus internalized are significant symbols because they have the same meanings for all individual members of the given society or social group, i.e., they respectively arouse the same attitudes in the individuals making them that they arouse in the individuals responding to them: otherwise the individual could not internalize them or be conscious of them and their meanings. As we shall see, the same procedure which is responsible for the genesis and existence of mind or consciousness – namely, the taking of the attitude of the other toward one's self, or toward one's own behavior – also necessarily involves the genesis and existence at the same time of significant symbols, or significant gestures.
In Wundt's doctrine, the parallelism between the gesture and the emotion or the intellectual attitude of the individual, makes it possible to set up a like parallelism in the other individual. The gesture calls out a gesture in the other form which will arouse or call out the same emotional attitude and the same idea. Where this has taken place the individuals have begun to talk to each other. What I referred to before was a conversation of gestures which did not involve significant symbols or gestures. The dogs are not talking to each other; there are no ideas in the minds of the dogs; nor do we assume that the dog is trying to convey an idea to the other dog. But if the gesture, in the case of the human individual, has parallel with it a certain psychical state which is the idea of what the person is going to do, and if this gesture calls out a like gesture in the other individual and calls out a similar idea, then it becomes a significant gesture. It stands for the ideas in the minds of both of them.
There is some difficulty in carrying out this analysis if we accept Wundt's parallelism. When a person shakes his fist in your face, that is a gesture in the sense in which we use the term, the beginning of an act that calls out a response on your part. Your response may vary: it may depend on the size of the man, it may mean shaking your fist, or it may mean flight. A whole series of different responses are possible. In order that Wundt's theory of the origin of language may be carried out, the gesture which the first individual makes use of must in some sense be reproduced in the experience of the individual in order that it may arouse the same idea in his mind. We must not confuse the beginning of language with its later stages. It is quite true that as soon as we see the attitude of the dog we say that it means an attack, or that when we see a person looking around for a chair that it means he would like to sit down. The gesture is one which means these processes, and that meaning is aroused by what we see. But we are supposed to be at the beginning of these developments of language. If we assume that there is a certain psychical state answering to a physical state how are we going to get to the point where the gesture will arouse the same gesture in the attitude of the other individual? In the very beginning the other person's gesture means what you are going to do about it. It does not mean what he is thinking about or even his emotion. Supposing his angry attack aroused fear in you, then you are not going to have anger in your mind, but fear. His gesture means fear as far as you are concerned. That is the primitive situation. Where the big dog attacks the little dog, the little dog puts his tail between his legs and runs away, but the gesture does not call out in the second individual what it did in the first. The response is generally of a different kind from the stimulus in the social act, a different action is aroused. If you assume that there is a certain idea answering to that act, then you want at a later stage to get the idea of the first form, but originally your idea will be your own idea which answers to a certain end. If we say that gesture »A« has idea »a« as answering to it, gesture »A« in the first form calls out gesture »B« and its related idea »b« in the second form. Here the idea that answers to gesture »A« is not idea »a« but idea »b«. Such a process can never arouse in one mind just the idea which the other person has in his.
How, in terms of Wundt's psychological analysis of communication, does a responding organism get or experience the same idea or psychical correlate of any given gesture that the organism making this gesture has? The difficulty is that Wundt presupposes selves as antecedent to the social process in order to explain communication within that process, whereas, on the contrary, selves must be accounted for in terms of the social process, and in terms of communication; and individuals must be brought into essential relation within that process before communication, or the contact between the minds of different individuals, becomes possible. The body is not a self, as such; it becomes a self only when it has developed a mind within the context of social experience. It does not occur to Wundt to account for the existence and development of selves and minds within, or in terms of, the social process of experience; and his presupposition of them as making possible that process, and communication within it, invalidates his analysis of that process. For if, as Wundt does, you presuppose the existence of mind at the start, as explaining or making possible the social process of experience, then the origin of minds and the interaction among minds become mysteries. But if, on the other hand, you regard the social process of experience as prior (in a rudimentary form) to the existence of mind and explain the origin of minds in terms of the interaction among individuals within that process, then not only the origin of minds, but also the interaction among minds (which is thus seen to be internal to their very nature and presupposed by their existence or development at all) cease to seem mysterious or miraculous. Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience – not communication through mind.
Wundt thus overlooks the important fact that communication is fundamental to the nature of what we term »mind«; and it is precisely in the recognition of this fact that the value and advantage of a behavioristic account of mind is chiefly to be found. Thus, Wundt's analysis of communication presupposes the existence of minds which are able to communicate, and this existence remains an inexplicable mystery on his psychological basis; whereas the behavioristic analysis of communication makes no such presupposition, but instead explains or accounts for the existence of minds in terms of communication and social experience; and by regarding minds as phenomena which have arisen and developed out of the process of communication and of social experience generally – phenomena which therefore presuppose that process, rather than being presupposed by it – this analysis is able to throw real light on their nature. Wundt preserves a dualism or separation between gesture (or symbol) and idea, between sensory process and psychic content, because his psychophysical parallelism commits him to this dualism; and though he recognizes the need for establishing a functional relationship between them in terms of the process of communication within the social act, yet the only relationship of this sort which can be established on his psychological basis is one which entirely fails to illuminate the bearing that the context of social experience has upon the existence and development of mind. Such illumination is provided only by the behavioristic analysis of communication, and by the statement of the nature of mind in terms of communication to which that analysis leads.
8. IMITATION AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
Wundt's difficulty has been resolved in the past through the concept of imitation. Of course, if it were true that when a person shakes his fist in your face you just imitate him, you would be doing what he is doing and have the same idea as he has. There are, in fact, certain cases where the responses are like the stimuli in the social act, but as a rule they are different. And yet it has been generally assumed that certain forms imitate each other. There has been a good deal of study on this problem of imitation and the part it is supposed to play in conduct, especially in lower forms; but the result of this study has been to minimize imitation, even in the conduct of the higher animals. The monkey has been traditionally the most imitative animal, but under scientific study this was found to be a myth. The monkey learns very quickly but he does not imitate. Dogs and cats have been studied from this standpoint, and the conduct of one form has not been found to serve the purpose of arousing the same act in the other form.
In the human form there seems to be imitation in the case of a vocal gesture, the important gesture as far as language is concerned. So the philologist in particular, before the psychologist reached a more accurate analysis, went on the assumption that we imitate the sounds that we hear. There seemed to be a good deal of evidence for this also in certain animal forms, particularly those forms that utilize a richer phonetic articulation, such as birds. The sparrow can be taught to imitate the canary by close association with the canary. The parrot learns to »speak«. It is not, we shall see, genuine speech, for he is not conveying ideas, but we commonly say the parrot imitates the sounds that appear about it.
Imitation as a general instinct is now discredited in human psychology. There was a time when people assumed that there was a definite impulse on the part of the human animal just to do what it saw other people do. There is a great deal of seeming imitation on the part of children. Also there is among undeveloped forms a speech that appears to be nothing but imitation. There are persons whom we consider unintelligent who say things over without having any idea of what is meant, a bare repetition of sounds they hear. But the question still remains why the form should so imitate. Is there any reason for imitation? We assume that all conduct has back of it some function. What is the function of imitation? Seemingly we get an answer in the development of young forms. The young fox goes about with the parents, hunts with them, learns to seize and avoid the right animals; it has no original objection to the odor of a man, but after it has been with the old fox the scent of man will cause it to run away. There is, in this case, a series of responses which become definitely associated with a particular stimulus; if the young form goes about with the parent, those responses which are all there in its nature become associated with certain definite stimuli. We can, in a very generalized sense, speak of the fox as imitating its parents and avoiding man. But that usage would not imply running away as an automatic act of imitation. The young fox has been put in a situation in which it does run away, and when the odor of man is present it becomes definitely associated with this flight response. No young forms in the lower animals ever merely imitate the acts of the adult form, but they do acquire during their period of infancy the association of a set of more or less instinctive responses to a certain set of stimuli.
The above observations and reservations do not, as we shall see, justify the questionable sense in which the notion of imitation has often been used. The term »imitation« became of great importance, for a time, in social psychology and in sociology. It was used as a basis for a whole theory of sociology by the French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde. The psychologist at first, without adequate analysis, assumed on the part of the person a tendency to do what other persons do. One can see how difficult it would be to work out any mechanism of that sort. Why should a person wink because another person winks? What stimulus would cause another person to act in that way? The sight of another person acting in another way? This is an impossible assumption.
In the parallelism of Wundt we have the basis for his account of language. Wundt assumed a physical situation which has a certain import for the conduct of the form, and on the other hand he assumed a psychical complex of ideas which are in a certain sense the expression of physiological or biological values. His problem is to get out of this situation language as significant communication.
There are such situations as that represented by the conversation of gestures to which I have referred, situations in which certain phases of the act become stimuli to the forms involved in it to carry out their part in the act. Now these parts of the act which are stimuli for the other forms in their social activity are gestures. Gestures are then that part of the act which is responsible for its influence upon other forms. The gesture in some sense stands for the act as far as it affects the other form. The threat of violence, such as a clenched fist, is the stimulus to the other form for defense or flight. It carries with it the import of the act itself. I am not referring to import in terms of reflective consciousness, but in terms of behavior. For the observer the gesture means the danger and the response of the individual to that danger. It calls out a certain sort of an act. If we assume a consciousness in which there is not only present the stimulus in the form of sensation but also an idea, then there is in the mind the sensation in which this stimulus appears, a vision of the clenched fist, and besides that the idea of the attack. The clenched fist in so far as it calls out that idea may be said to mean the danger.
Now the problem is to get this relationship between the idea and the symbol itself into the conversation of gestures. As I pointed out before, this relationship is not given in the immediate response of fighting or running. It may be present there, but as far as the conversation of gestures is concerned an act of one sort calls out an act of a different sort in the other form. That is, the threat which is involved leads, we will say, to flight. The idea of flight is not the idea of attack. In the conversation of gestures there is the preparation for the full social process involving the actions in different forms, and the gestures, which are the parts of the act, serve to stimulate the other forms. They call out acts different from themselves. While they may call out acts which are alike, as a rule the response is different from the stimulus itself. The cry of a child calls out the response of the care of the mother; the one is fear and the other protection, solicitude. The response is not in any sense identical with the other act. If there is an idea, in the Wundtian sense, the psychical content that answers to a certain particular stimulus, that will not get its reflection in the response.
What language seems to carry is a set of symbols answering to certain content which is measurably identical in the experience of the different individuals. If there is to be communication as such the symbol has to mean the same thing to all individuals involved. If a number of individuals respond in different ways to the stimulus, the stimulus means different things to them. If a number of persons are lifting a weight, one person takes one position and another a different position. If it is a co-operative process requiring different sorts of responses, then the call on the part of one individual to act calls out different responses in the others. The conversation of gestures does not carry with it a symbol which has a universal significance to all the different individuals. It may be quite effective without that, since the stimulus which one individual gives may be the proper stimulus to call out different responses in the individuals in the group. It is not essential that the individuals should give an identical meaning to the particular stimulus in order that each may properly respond. People get into a crowd and move this way, and that way; they adjust themselves to the people coming toward them, as we say, unconsciously. They move in an intelligent fashion with reference to each other, and perhaps all of them think of something entirely different, but they do find in the gestures of others, their attitudes and movements, adequate stimuli for different responses. This illustrates a conversation of gestures in which there is co-operative activity without any symbol that means the same thing to all. Of course, it is possible for intelligent individuals under such conditions to translate these gestures into significant symbols, but one need not stop to translate into terms of that sort. Such a universal discourse is not at all essential to the conversation of gestures in co-operative conduct.
Such co-operative conduct is presumably the only type of conduct which one finds among the ants and bees. In these very complex societies there is an interrelationship of different forms that seemingly is as complex as human conduct in many respects. There are societies of a million individuals in some of the large ant nests, and divided up into different groups with different functions. What is a stimulus to action for one leads to a different response in another. There is co-operative activity, but no evidence of any significant language in the conduct of these insects. It is, of course, a field in which a great deal of work has to be done, but still there has been no evidence found of any significant symbols.
I want to make clear the difference between those two situations. There can be a high degree of intelligence, as we use that term, in the conduct of animals without any significant symbols, without any presentation of meanings as such. What is essential is co-operative activity, so that the gesture of one form calls out the proper response to others. But the gesture of one may call out very different responses on the part of other forms, and yet there may be no common meaning which all the different forms give to any particular gesture. There is no common symbol that for the ants means food. Food means a great many things, things that have to be gathered, that have to be stored, that have to be carried by the workers and placed in the mouths of the fighters. There is no evidence that there is any symbol that means food as such. The sight, the odor of food, and its position lead to a certain response. An ant picks a food object up and staggers back to the nest with it. Later it means something to be eaten, it means a whole series of activities. The odor along the path is a stimulus to other insects following along the path, but there is no symbol that means »path« to such a group. The odor of a strange form in the nest means attack from other forms, but if a strange ant is dipped in liquid formed by crushing ants from the nest and then placed in the nest there is no attack, even though his form is very much larger. The odor does not mean an enemy as such. Contrast these two situations: in one there is a highly complex social activity in which the gestures are simply stimuli to the appropriate response of the whole group; in the human situation there is a different response which is mediated by means of particular symbols or particular gestures which have the same meaning for all members of a group. Here the cry of an enemy is not simply a stimulus to attack. It means that a person of a different race, of a different community, is present, and that there is warfare going on. It has the same meaning to all individuals and that meaning may mediate a whole series of different responses.
