The Selves of other Animals: Reconsidering Mead in Light of Multidisciplinary Evidence

Abstract

Although questions about nonhuman animal mind and selfhood have been a long-standing interest of philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and cognitive ethologists, sociologists have been reluctant to acknowledge the importance of such questions. This is due, in part, to George Herbert Mead’s denial of consciousness, especially self-consciousness, in animals. Indeed, the exclusion of nonhuman consciousness was a fundamental axiom of Mead’s very conceptions of mind and self. However, recently a growing number symbolic interactionists have begun to build a body of research that demands a reconsideration of Mead’s anthropocentric and phonocentric definitions of mind, self, and the nonhuman participants who cohabit the everyday world of social life. Here we provide a brief account of their work and present evidence from evolutionary biology, cognitive ethology, and neuroscience that strongly validates their contention that the processes of consciousness and self, which constitute the cornerstone of meaningful social action and interaction, can no longer be denied to several species of nonhuman animals.

Citation

Young, R.L. and Thompson, C.Y. (2013), "The Selves of other Animals: Reconsidering Mead in Light of Multidisciplinary Evidence", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) 40th Anniversary of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 40), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 467-483. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2013)0000040023