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Journal of Classical Sociology

DOI: 10.1177/1468795X060612842006; 6; 51Journal of Classical Sociology

Hans-Joachim SchubertGeorge Herbert Mead

The Foundation of Pragmatic Sociology: Charles Horton Cooley and

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The Foundation of Pragmatic Sociology

Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead

HANS-JOACHIM SCHUBERT University of Potsdam, Germany

ABSTRACT Charles Horton Cooley was, according to George Herbert Mead, an

idealist or mentalist for whom imaginations and not symbolic interactions are

the solid facts of society. Contrary to Meads critique, Cooley breaks through

the Cartesian bodymind dualism in disagreement with idealism and behaviorism.

His objective was to develop a theory ofcommunication and understanding as

the foundation of pragmatistic sociology. Communication is the decisive starting

point of Cooleys and Meads sociological theory of social order and socialchange as stages in the process of action. In conflict with each other actors must

define the meaning of the objective, subjective, social and symbolic world. To

overcome problems of action actors create generalized perspectives such as human

nature values (Cooley) or a logical universe of discourse (Mead) which guarantee

socialization or social order and individualization at the same time.

KEYWORDS action theory, communication theory, pragmatism, symbolic inter-

actionism, theory of social order and social change

George Herbert Mead counts today at a time of the renaissance of pragmatism

as one of the classics of sociology. The work of Charles Horton Cooley receives

less attention, despite the fact that Cooley explicitly pursued the goal of using the

pragmatic method to construct a general sociological theory of social action, of

social order and of social change, a project he eventually accomplished with his

trilogy: Human Nature and the Social Order(1964 [1902]), Social Organization

(1963 [1909]) and Social Process(1966 [1918]). Mead came to pragmatism lateand thought of himself as a philosopher and social psychologist. In any case, he

hardly spoke about sociology. A few references to theory and the subject matter of

sociology are found in his essay Cooleys Contribution to American Social

Thought (Mead, 1964 [1930]). There Mead criticizes Cooley severely.

Journal of Classical SociologyCopyright 2006 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi Vol 6(1): 5174 DOI: 10.1177/1468795X06061284

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Meads Critique of Cooley

To begin, I will discuss the question of whether Mead, in his critique, is able to

establish a superior position with respect to Cooley. It must be said beforehand

that Mead did not produce a didactic masterwork with his Cooley essay. Hischarge is that Cooleys conception of society is mental rather than scientific, that

society has a psychical nature (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxviii). Therefore, Cooley

was not able, in Meads view, to adequately determine either the solid facts of

society (1964 [1930]: xxvii) the goal of sociology or to explain the process of

individuation. According to Cooley, the self would also lie in the mind, being

psychical selves and not, as in Meads own social psychology, an objective phase

of experience (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxivv). How does Mead support this

mentalist or idealist charge against Cooley? The genesis of the criticism is Meads

assertion that Cooley adopted the psychophysical parallelism of ordinary psy-

chology, conventional at that time, according to which consciousness is an inside

experience of the life of the external organism (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxii).

Cooley could not, therefore, show how the conscious (mind) and the meaning of

things (body) evolve in the action process. According to Mead, the structures of

society and of the self are founded neither on the mind or conscious nor on

material environmental surroundings or biological conditions, but rather on social

action, on the process of symbolic interaction. Nevertheless, Mead raises the

mentalistic charge against Cooley having hardly mentioned it stating that inadvance of Baldwins and Tardes and even of Jamess doctrine, Cooley has

shown that the self is not an immediate character of the mind, the mind being,

for Cooley, not first individual and then social. In the individual, the mind arises

through communication (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxix). Based on a theory of

communicative action, the self would not have resided in the mind (the self

lying in the mind), and the locus of society would not be in the mind (Mead,

1964 [1930]: xxxvi); rather, Cooley would clearly have broken through the body

mind parallelism of the then-prevalent psychology. The self, like society, would

not have been a prior mental characteristic of the communication process.

In spite of this, Mead reiterates his parallelism criticism of Cooley a few

pages later, maintaining that he begins from a parallelism between sensations,

perceptions, emotions, volitions, and so forth, and physiological processes, and

for him selves and others lie inside of the consciousness of ordinary psychol-

ogy and would not arise through the communication process. Cooleys parallel-

ism, according to Mead, is not a parallelism between states of processes in two

different realms of metaphysical being, as in Cartesian thinking; rather, for

Cooley, body and mind identify an outside and an inside view of the same reality,namely of the communication process. Although Mead suspends his parallelism

charge against Cooley a second time, following this revision, he immediately

continues, saying that Cooley is lodging the self and others in consciousness and

thus he accepts the parallelism of ordinary psychology. However, Mead con-

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tinues, Cooley succeeded in avoiding the segregation of the animal organism

from social and so, moral, experience typical for the dualistic philosophy of the

mind by merging the life process and the social process in a universal onward

evolution (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxiiiii). With this, we come to the heart of

Meads criticism of Cooley: The Cartesian bodymind dualism is dissolvedbecause, so says Mead, Cooley recognized an evolutionary transition from the

natural to the cultural: In the evolutionary process, the physical (i.e. outer

environmental conditions or nature) would lose determining power in favor of the

mental (understanding or nurture). The crucial point for Mead is that Cooley had

no normative theory at hand with which he could evaluate and critique the

empirical and historical change from nature to nurture. Cooley had a profound

faith in evolution, which for him was a philosophy and a faith rather than a

method

(Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxiii

iv).

His sociology was in a sense an account of the American community to

which he belonged, and pre-supposed its normal healthful process. This

process was that of the primary group with its face-to-face organization

and co-operation. Given the process, its healthful growth and its degenera-

tions could be identified and described. Institutions and valuations were

implicit within it. The gospel of Jesus and democracy were of the essence

of it, and more fundamentally it was the life of the spirit.

(Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvi)

According to Mead, a normative theory must be founded on anthropology and

ethology. Lacking that approach, Cooley could only develop an ethnocentric

position. Because he is unable to trace and verify the reality of the gospel of Jesus

(there is no evidence in Cooleys writings for a Christian viewpoint) and to trace

democracy back to the dim beginnings of human behavior, he cannot establish the

origins of the social patterns that are responsible not only for the structure of

society but also for the criticism of that structures evolution. Only anthropo-

logical and ethological research, according to Mead, can reconstruct the normat-

ive meaning and evaluative power of a logical universe of discourse (Mead, 1964

[1930]: xxxvivii). Devoid of this anthropological dimension, Cooleys sociology

cannot reach beyond a presentation of the American community.

This criticism of Cooley is in error, for two reasons. First, Cooley, contrary

to what Mead believes, represented not a mentalist and parallelist but a pragmatic

point of view, anchored in the theory of communication, socialization and

primary group. Second, this view provided the foundation of a universalistic

theory discriminating between facts and norms. Mead, on the other hand, in hiscriticism of Cooley, maintained that a normative theory must be based anthropo-

logically or ethologically (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvii).

This suggestion is not convincing, given that anthropology and ethology

can only show that communication is the distinguishing factor that separates

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humans from animals and is common to all humans (therefore, universal), but not

expose the normative core of communication. From an anthropological viewpoint

it remains unclear what characteristics or what social meanings (Cooley, 1969a

[1894]: 61) are inherent in the process of communication, giving it its normative

power and meaning that can be used to evaluate social facts and historicalchanges. Such a measure cannot in any case be determined through anthropo-

logical or ethological reasoning.

Cooley suggests another way to establish his normative point of view. He

shows (as does Mead in other places in his work) that human society (social order)

and subjectivity (the self) evolve through understanding in the process of

communicative action. Understanding and sympathy are for Cooley (1964

[1902]: 1367) universal moral norms that have their factual reality in the basic

structure of the primary socialization process. On the one hand,

understanding

and communication are preconditions for the development of the self because an

autonomous self comes only from the synthesis of disparate judgments. On the

other hand, the evolving self must be entangled in a communicatively structured

social environment that opens perspectives for the socialization process. Mutual

understanding (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 10) in primary groups is a prerequisite for

individuation, for successful integration into the social environment, and for the

reproduction of the general social order. The normative power and meaning of

communication are founded on the fact that, without understanding and commun-

ication in primary groups, socialization and individuation could not take place.Cooley does not, then, define primary groups, as Mead maintains, through

particular social norms and cultural values peculiar to the American community.

Cooley realized, instead, that the basic means for creating communities is

communication in the form of dialogues.1 He is, in the first place, interested in

articulating the universal rules that simultaneously enable both socialization and

individuation. This conception of continuity between personal identity, primary

group (or community) and social organization (or society) is altogether unprece-

dented. Ferdinand Tonnies, whose term Gemeinschaft (community or primary

group) provided a focus of orientation for Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, for

example, differentiated in a dualistic way between Gemeinschaft (group) and

Gesellschaft(society). He defines Gemeinschaftenas thick, organic unities, charac-

terized by hierarchies, habits, moral orientations and emotions. Gesellschaft is, in

every sense, just the opposite of Gemeinschaft: Gesellschaften are controlled by

conventions, laws and public opinion. It is not possible to subsume Cooleys ideas

within this European scheme. Tonnies dualism which was motivated by a

philosophical dualism between British natural right theory and attempts to

historicize German idealist philosophy is accompanied by a similarly dualistictheory of action. Gemeinschaftenare organized by normative action. Gesellschaften

are integrated by rationality of means and ends. However, for Cooley, whose

concept of primary group was motivated, above all, by the new social psycho-

logical theory of William James and James Baldwin the basic mode of action




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which underlies Gemeinschaftenand Gesellschaften or primary groups and social

organizations is communication. The difference between Cooleys and Tonnies

respective conception of community leads to very different social-political

theories. Cooley analyzed the deep-rooted democratic aspects of primary groups.

In his theory, the enlargement of primary-group ideals involves by necessity the

enlargement of democracy, whereas no theory of democracy derives from

Tonnies conception of Gemeinschaft. Cooleys examination of primary-group

communication reveals the intrinsically social nature of humankind and does not,

as Mead believes, model the structure of the American community.

Primary groups are only in part molded by special traditions, and, in larger

degree, express a universal nature. The religion or government of other

civilizations may seem alien to us, but the children of the family group

wear the common life, and with them we can always make ourselves at

home.

(Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 278)

Cooley reformulates the postulates of enlightenment, freedom, equality, solidarity

and justice not as natural rights, and not as popular impressions, but as sure

and sound sentiments based on experiences available to every member of a

primary group.

According to Cooley, primary groups are the place where actors can

experience the ideals of enlightenment as characteristics of the action process. This

involves the postulation offreedom because in primary groups actors constantly

face conflicts with significant others; to make a decision, they must synthesize

disparate views into their own judgment, thus developing freedom and auton-

omy from others. Actors experience the meaning ofsolidarity and equality not

only because survival can only be assured through cooperation with others, but

also because individuation can only succeed on the basis of common views; onlythrough sympathetic introspection and through understanding of others can

actors create their own perspectives. Finally the idea of justice is based on

primary-group experiences because the generalization of subjective views is

dependent on the recognition of others, a recognition that can only be had when

communication partners accept an assertion because it is correct and fair.

If it is true that human nature is developed in primary groups which are

everywhere much the same, and that here also springs from these acommon idealism which institutions strive to express, we have a ground

for somewhat the same conclusions as come from the theory of a natural

freedom modified by contract. Natural freedom would correspond

roughly to the ideals generated and partly realized in primary association,




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the social contract to the limitations these ideals encounter in seeking a

larger expression.

(Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 47)

These communicative preconditions of the socialization process can, ofcourse, be concealed in particular non-communicative norms; potentially, how-

ever, they are basic to all primary groups because without understanding,

individuation and socialization cannot occur. Through non-communicative inter-

action, already-present attitudes and structures can be reproduced, but to create a

new perspective or identity unfamiliar meanings must be understood, tested and

synthesized. Therefore, new group and identity structures can only develop

through understanding and sympathy and not in interactions based on delimita-

tion. In primary groups individuals gain social competencies and experiencenormative ideals that are a prerequisite for social democratization. Democracy is,

therefore, for Cooley, not a regime, but rather a form of life that is grounded in

primary-group experience. Democracy is endangered when democratic options

are hidden beneath non-democratic cultural traditions and social norms in the

primary group.

Cooley gathers his normative perspective not, as Mead believes, in a nave

belief in evolution of the American community, but rather through the recon-

struction of universal communication prerequisites and characteristics of the

socialization process (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 27). Why Mead ignores the universal-istic and normative demand of Cooleys communication and primary-group

theory continues to be inexplicable.2

Cooley and Mead founded a pragmatic social theory; both came to it

through a disagreement with idealism and behaviorism. While Meads social

psychology was more strongly marked by a discussion with behaviorist positions,

the young Cooley was clearly influenced by American transcendentalism and

idealism (cf. Noble, 1958; Schubert, 1995, 1998; Schwartz, 1985). Possibly

Meads critical stance vis-a-vis Cooley can be explained by their different starting

points. However, in their principal writings, both Cooley and Mead share a

common trajectory: breaking through Cartesian bodymind dualism in develop-

ing a theory of communication.

I shall provide a comprehensive presentation of pragmatic communication

theory created by Mead and Cooley, their theory of social order and social change

as sequences in the process of action and communication, and the theory of

meaning and value proposed by Mead and Cooley, before, in conclusion,

returning to Meads criticism of Cooley. My aim is to show that Mead (logical

universe of discourse) as well as Cooley (human nature values) offered auniversalistic and normatively useful perspective based on a theory of symbolic

interaction. Differences between Mead and Cooley are consequently not based on

theory, but rather on a different approach to subject matter. While Mead worked

above all in the fields of social psychology, philosophy of science, ethics and




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political philosophy, Cooley moved closer to the area of sociology, investigating

the development of social micro (looking-glass self), meso (primary group and

ideals) and macro structures (public opinion, democracy, classes, institutions,

social disorganization) (see Cooley, 1998: 155214).

Cooley and Mead on Communication orUnderstanding

Mead and Cooley share an anthropology-based communication and action

theory: we are determined neither by environmental nor by biological conditions

but inherit only lines of teachability. According to Cooley; however, human

nature provides no instinctive reportoire with which to solve environmental

problems without refl

ection and recourse to generalized social meaning. Theattraction scheme of the animal world gives way to the plasticity of human

nature (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 28) and human reaction is thus based on openness

to the environment. This standpoint is extremely important: the limitation of

action inherent in it the delayed reaction to environmental attraction gives rise

to the objective need for permanent reconstruction and experimental solutions of

action problems as a basic characteristic of human action, as well as a condition for

the development of the mind (Cooley, 1998: 81130; Mead, 1973: 10040). For

Cooley, as for Mead, the mind is not a predecessor characteristic for the action

process, but rather appears only when conflicts limit habitual actions such that themeaning of situations (subjective attitudes and objective values) must be newly

defined. New understanding is gained not, as Descartes (cogito ergo sum), the

founder of philosophy of the mind, believed, through solipsistic introspection or

contemplation, but rather through sympathetic introspection in the process of

symbolically mediated interaction. According to Cooley, Descartes should have

said cogitamus rather than cogito. On the other hand Meads reproach of

mentalism is not unfounded; it refers to such statements by Cooley as society is

mental, imaginations are the solid facts of society, or we know persons as

imaginative ideas in the mind. However, Cooley was not a mentalist; he describes

in detail, in Human Nature and the Social Order, his understanding ofmind and

imagination. Imagination is not a force isolated from the empirical world, but

rather an intersubjective communication. Mind is not a solipsistic capacity, but

an inner experience, created in conjunction with the outside world. The mind,

according to Cooley, lives in perpetual conversation, and the life of the mind is

essentially a life of intercourse. Cooley insists that society is mental because the

human mind is social (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 97, 81).

If human action is determined neither by the mind nor by nature, thequestion arises as to how social order is possible, that is, how individual actions

can be coordinated. The answer that Cooley and Mead give is: actors can define,

generalize and communicate meanings of the subjective, social and objective

world with help of significant or standard symbols such that they can adjust




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their actions to the virtual reactions of the other. Communication and speech is

for Mead (1912) and Cooley (1963 [1909]: 64; 1969a [1894]: 61)3 the deciding

instrument of social organization. The path to an interactionist sociology led

Cooley to reject introspective methods and the philosophy of mind, on the one

hand, and biologistic and behavioristic approaches such as eugenics, criminology,mass psychology, the theory of imitation and the psychology of instinct, on the

other. To establish itself on a firm theoretical foundation, Cooleys sociology

needed to determine the mechanism of social integration. Cooley was not able

to proceed beyond the futile alternatives ofheredity and environment, imitation

and innovation and suggestion and choice key terms in his early thinking

until he discovered the basic elements of his envisioned theory: communication

and understanding. The basic medium of social integration, according to Cooley,

is not the mental mechanism described by mass psychology (Gustave Le Bon), norimitation (Gabriel Tarde), nor instincts (William McDougall), nor social control

in the form of habits (Edward A. Ross), and neither is it a consciousness of kind

(Franklin H. Giddings) but, rather, communication based on standardized

symbols. Human beings have to understand each other to create both a

manifest social order and autonomous selves. Only if symbols are available which

can be understood independently of single situations by all interacting participants

in the same way can a common orientation toward a generally valid pattern of

behaviour be achieved. Nevertheless, symbolic meanings offer no generally failsafe

security of action; the meanings must be permanently defined, if only becausemeanings neither are objectively inherent in things nor do they give a universal

presentation of the mind.

Cooley and Mead on Social Order and SocialChange as Stages in the Act

For Cooley and Mead, communication is the basic term with which to describe

the phenomena of social order and social change. Social order cannot be inferred

either empirically from the social or natural environment or nominally from the

transcendental mind. Social change is neither the result of an unconsidered

adaptation to the environment nor the development of an autonomous mind.

Forms of social change and social order are, on the contrary, the other side of the

communicative process. Thus, Meads and Cooleys interactive theory of social

order and social change lies in the tradition of American pragmatism, as estab-

lished by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Peirce arranges the action process in four phases. The starting point for

action is the habits of action and beliefs: according to Peirce, we cannot beginwith complete doubt, but rather only with all the prejudices which we actually

have, for they are things which it does not occur to us canbe questioned. Our

prejudices can be dealt with not through a maxim, as, according to Peirce, in

Descartess initial scepticism, but rather only through living doubt, when our




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beliefs are confronted with an outward clash. Only then do meanings, such as

social rules and individual goal-setting, lose their validity and clarity (Peirce,

1996c: 156, para. 5.264). Only in this second phase of limitation of action or

crisis is it, according to Peirce, realistic to criticize the sense of meanings; only

then will meanings be recognized at all. The doubt stimulates the mind to anactivity (Peirce, 1996d: 253, para. 5.394), so that the phase of the limitation of

action is followed by the reconstruction phase, creative experimentation, in which,

by resorting to old values, new ideas and hypotheses are invented. In a fourth

phase, those ideas that have proven worthwhile will be incorporated in the form of

new rules and habits. At the center of pragmatism lies the phase of reconstruction,

the abductive development of new hypotheses. In his pragmatism lectures of

1903, Peirce declared that the question of pragmatism is nothing other than the

question about the

logic of abduction

(1996b: 121, para. 5.196). The logicalorder of the world, for Peirce, derives not from the deductive of generalized

norms and not from the inductive of single cases, but rather from the abductive in

the context of discovery as a construction process of hypotheses.

Mead developed his theory of a circular connection between order and

change in the communicative process with John Dewey. The Deweyian state-

ment, according to Anselm Strauss,

. . . here somewhat simplified, points to a sequence of action: ongoing,

blocked, deliberating about alternative possibilities of action, and thencontinued action. Mead of course elaborated this action scheme in more

explicitly sociological directions. These include his formulation of stages in

the act, his radical conception of the temporal and complex and potential

flexibility of any act, his elaboration of social interaction, his detailing of

self as process, his greater emphasis on the body in action, his elaboration

of mind as mental activity, and his development of crucially important

perspectival view of temporality and interaction. It has seemed to me that

some version of this general theoretical stance underlies virtually all

Chicago interactionist research and conceptualization.

(1994: 4)

Also for Cooley, habitual forms of social order are a starting point for the

four-stage action process: So long as an idea is not contradicted, not felt to be in

any way inconsistent with others, we take it as a matter of course (1964 [1902]:

67). Actors must first begin from generalized meanings when they enter into

social relationships with others; only under these prior conditions can A offer a

sensible connective action for B. Habits and suggestions, the stream ofthought, provide the material for the communicative process and for the

development of individual goal orientation. Any choice that I can make is a

synthesis of suggestions derived in one way or another from life in general; and it

also reacts upon that life, so that my will is social as being both effect and cause




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with reference to it (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 54). Nevertheless, second, limitation

of actions occurs regularly in the action process because actors do not immediately

react to generalized meanings, and have different experiences in the flow of life

that lead to conflicts. Precisely as the conditions become intricate, are we forced

to think, to choose, to define the useful and the right, and in general, to work outthe higher intellectual life (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 53). The destabilization of

values follows, third, a phase of reconstruction and experiments in which new

hypotheses are discovered that provide a view to overcoming conflicts. We get

on by forming intelligent ideals of right, which are imaginative reconstructions

and anticipations of life, based upon experience. And in trying to realize these

ideals we initiate a new phase of the social process, which goes on through the

usual interactions to a fresh synthesis (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 358). For Cooley,

social order is a process whose starting point lies in habitualized actions that confronted with action problems must be reconstructed in experiments

and phases of search so that fourth new action customs and social rules can

be established.

Indeed it would seem that the struggles of the age have given us at least

one principle, namely, that life itself is a process rather than a state; so that

we no longer expect anything final, but look to discover in the movement

itself sufficient matter for reason and faith.

(Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 377)

Most significant for Cooley is the tentative process, the phase ofimag-

inative reconstruction. In the modeling of utopias and ideals through a creative

synthesis (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 353) of experiences lies, for him, the option of

reason of human action, thus the construction of new individual goals and new

social norms and cultural faith. Cooley habitually resorts to the hallmarks of

originality or creativeness as a frame of reference (Levin, 1941: 21629). The

deciding point is that social order is not guaranteed either through the inner drive

or outer nature (behaviorism and empiricism) or through the internalizing of

social norms (normativism), nor is it reflected in a transcendental mind (idealism)

or in rational individual action (utilitarianism); rather it derives from constant

interpretations and reconstruction of generalized meanings (pragmatism). Social

order is, for Cooley, not a state, but a process of creative and experimental

action.

For Cooley and Mead, social action is created not as the rational result of

clear goals and not in the execution of social norms. The pragmatic social theory

underlies homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus because it shows how individ-ual goal-setting and generalized behavioral expectations are constituted and

stabilized through creative action. Thus, in the view of Cooley and Mead, the

basic motive for action is not, as in utilitarianism, given goals that the actors want

to maximally realize, nor social norms that channel the actions of the actors, but




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rather problems of action and conflicts that must be overcome through experi-

mental action. Accordingly, Cooley labels the dynamic of conflict between

individuals as hostile sympathy (1966 [1918]: 266), since deceptions, animos-

ities and conflicts do not simply threaten social certainties; they are also the

condition for the reaction of new patterns of behavior and of the individual mind.Actors consequently coordinate their actions to overcome uncertainty of action or

conflicts and not because of sanctions or a meansends calculation. Social order is

not a consistent condition of the balance of individual interests and not an

autonomous normative structure determining the range of individual action, but

a process of permanent imaginative reconstruction of social, subjective and

objective meanings.

Cooley and Mead represent neither a nominalist (mind) nor an empiricist

(body) dual theory of meaning; rather they assume that meanings are defi

ned in atripolar situation of interaction. It is decisive that Cooleys approach is based not

on a theory of the mind or knowledge but on a theory of symbolically mediated

interaction, showing how social knowledge derives from the communicative

process. Therefore Cooleys work belongs to pragmatism and not to the sociology

of knowledge.4

Cooley and Mead on Meaning and Valuation

A central sign of pragmatism as it was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce is, incontrast to all the varieties of idealism, nominalism or mentalism, on the one side,

and of empiricism, realism, behaviorism and materialism, on the other side, a

genuine theory of value and meaning. From a pragmatic view, the value of objects

and ideas cannot be separated either from the realm of the mind (res cogitans) or

from the world of things (res extensa). The objective, social and subjective worlds

gain meaning in the communicative process or in usage situations. The truth of

statements comes consequently not from structures of the mind and not from

empirical qualities, but rather is constructed tentatively in discourses. Thus,

pragmatism does not assume either the human mind or the worth of objects;

rather it examines how the mind and meaning come to be in the process of

symbolic interaction. The tripolar, or tri-relative, meaning theoryfirst developed

by Peirce offers a theoretical background for Mead as well as for Cooley.

Therefore, I will reconstruct briefly the position of Peirce in contrast to the

empiricism of David Hume, on the one hand, and to the idealism of Immanuel

Kant, on the other, to show in conclusion that Mead and Cooley directly

represent Peirces position, and to make clearer the common, basic structure of

sociological pragmatism.According to Peirce, values and meanings result from semiotic mediation

of signs, interpretations and objects. Semiosis, for Peirce, means an action, or

influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its

object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way




13/25

resolvable into actions between pairs (1996e: 332, para. 5.484). Meaning results

from the tripolar relationship among sign, object and interpretant. Generalized

meanings (M) are defined by interpretants (I) based on the use of objects (O)

with help of signs (S) (see Figure 1).

The meaning-critical realism of Peirce sets itself against David Humes

image of bipolar realism (in general against empiricism and materialism), which

merges the constituent meaning levels of interpretation and believes that objects

of the external, social or subjective world can be represented by signs (theories) or

at least correspond to these. According to Hume, the human mind is like acontainer that is filled, in that the outer world is taken into the inner world

through psychological mechanisms ofassociation. Even abstract terms or com-

plex ideas such as government, church, negotiation, conquest, can, according to

Hume, be traced to simple ideas that are images of empirical objects, even

though we seldom spread out in our minds all the simple ideas, of which these

complex ones are composd. Despite that, empirical experience is the only

method of recognition for Hume (Hume, 1985 [173940]: 70; see Figure 2).

For Peirce also, objects are provided outside our thinking. In contrast to

empiricism, the pragmatic view of the outer world is not modeled through the

psychological mechanism of association; rather, objects (O) gain meaning (M) forsubjects when they are defined and interpreted in practical situations of action (I)

and are declared with the help of sign carriers (S).

On the other side, Peirce disagrees with Immanuel Kants nominalistic

theory of meaning (and with all varieties of idealism and mentalism). In idealism

FIGURE 1.

Object (O)

Interpretant (I)Sign (S)

Charles Sanders Peirce

Meaning

(M)

FIGURE 2.

Recognition of outer world

David Hume:

Category of understanding

Subject Object




14/25

transcendental categories of the mind are the only prerequisites of meaning,

without considering the interpretive mediation of experience through signs as a

constitutive for a theory of cognition (Figure 3).

Naturally, Kant also sees that reason (thoughts or interpretations) and the

empirical world (objects) are related to each other in the recognition process:

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

(Kant, 1787: 93). Nevertheless, for Kant, generalized meanings are not the

product of experience. Pure reason takes precedence; only it can reduce the

manifold of our representations and empirical perceptions to a general and

uniform notion signifying heterogeneous objects. With Kant, we can therefore

only speak of an object, because the logic of reason as conditio sine qua nonof

recognition and all truth guarantees the unity of objects.

The concept of an object . . . has to be distinct from all our representa-

tions. The unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing elsethan the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of

representations. It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in

the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know

the object.

(Kant, 1929 [1787]: 135)

With this quotation the difference between idealism (or mentalism) and pragma-

tism is clear. With Peirce, in place of Kants postulated a prioristructures of the

mind, interpretation processes (I) are set in motion through action problems, in

whose wake signs (S) are defined, and which establish the meaning (M) of objects

(O). According to Peirce,

. . . a sign has, as such, three references: first, it is a sign tosome thought

which interprets it; second, it is a sign for some object to which in that

thought it is equivalent; third it is a sign, insome respect or quality, which

brings it into connection with its object.

(1996c: 169, para. 5.283)

Mead, as well, derived his theory of meaning and value in opposing

Immanuel Kant. Above all, he differentiated his theory of communication from

the dualistic attractionreaction model of behaviorism. The meaning of social

FIGURE 3.

Recognition of outer world

Immanuel Kant:

Category of understanding

Subject Object




15/25

objects comes neither from understanding nor human nature, but rather is a result

of a three-sided social action process.

Meaning is thus a development of something objectively there as a relation

between certain phases of the social act; it is not a physical addition to that

act and it is not an idea as traditionally conceived. Agesture by one

organism, the resultantof the social act in which the gesture is an early

phase, and the responseof another organism to the gesture, are the relata in

a triple or threefold relationship of gesture to first organism, of gesture to

second organism, and of gesture to subsequent phases of the given social

act; and this threefold relationship constitutes the matrix within which

meaning arises, or which develops into the field of meaning. The gesture

stands for a certain result of the social act, a result to which there is adefinite response on the part of the individuals involved therein; so that

meaning is given or stated in terms of response. Meaning is implicit if

not always explicit in the relationship among the various phases of

the social act to which it refers, and out of which it develops. And its

development takes place in terms of symbolization at the human

evolutionary level.

(Mead, 1973: 76; see Figure 4)

In the end, Cooley created his theory of meaning and value above all in an

explanation of economic theory (1912, 1913a, 1913b; see Jacobs, 1979). He

separates himself on one side from the historical school of national economics

(Gustav Schmoller); their methods are, for him, too empirical to hold out muchprospect of an adequate doctrine of process (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 367). His

chief opponent is nevertheless the rational model of the aspiring marginal utility

theory (Alfred Marshall and Carl Menger). The neoclassics abandoned the

question of the origin of values, reducing the subject matter of economics to

FIGURE 4.

Resultant

objective world

Response

social world

Gesture

subjective world

George Herbert Mead

Meaning

symbolic

world




16/25

examining the relation between given values or ends and alternative means. The

economic theorist appears, says Cooley, like a man who should observe only the

second hand of a watch: He counts the seconds with care, but is hardly in a

position to tell what time it is (1966 [1918]: 367). Unlike the historical school of

national economy, which attributed subjective value orientation to objective,social and cultural structures, and, unlike neoclassical marginal utility theory, for

which individuals randomly create objective values, Cooley developed not a dual

but a tripolar theory of value:

It would seem that the essential things in the conception of value are

three: an organism, a situation, and an object. The organism is necessary to

give meaning to the idea; there must be worth to something. It need not

be a person; a group, an institution, a doctrine, any organized form of life

will do; and that it be conscious of the values that motivate it is not at all

essential. . . . The situation is the immediate occasion for action, in view of

which the organism integrates the various values working within it and

meets the situation by an act of selection, which is a step in its own

growth, leading on to new values and new situations. Valuation is only

another name for tentative organic process.

(Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 2845; see Figure 5)

According to Mead and Cooley, generalized values or meaning are defined

in a three-part interaction situation. When an actor or organismindicates with a

gesture (subjective world) (1) an object or the resultant of the social act (the

objective world), (2) and when in a social situation a response or interpretation(social world) (3) is answering that claim, step by step values and meanings get

generalized and finally expressed in significantor standardized symbols(symbolic

world) (4). Communication is the mechanism creating the autonomy, as well as

the heteronomy, of the four entangled worlds:

FIGURE 5.

Objects

objective world

Situation

social world

Organism

subjective world

Charles Horton Cooley

Value

symbolic

world




17/25

(1) Meanings of the objective worldare traceable neither to empirical structures of

the outer world nor to nominal structures of the mind. The meaning of objectives

is generalized in contextual use, in the process of coordination of action. Objects

of action or the resultant of the social act (Mead) gain generalized meaning

when actor A indicates an object with a gesture and actor B through his or herreaction or interpretation of the gesture signals agreement or expresses disagree-

ment, so that A can again react to Bs gesture, modifying his or her position until

a general agreement is reached. According to Cooley, a hammer-value, a grain-

value, but also a stock value or a value of books, of pictures, of doctrines

occurs when interpreters, through the use of these objects or stocks of knowledge,

define their meaning in practical situations. The value of objects is institution-

alized and habitualized through their workability in standard situations

(Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 284

5; see Cooley, 1912).

(2) In practical situations of interaction, meanings of the social world develop

simultaneously in the form of social roles, norms and structures. The social status

of actors is defined in a struggle for recognition of economic, political, social and

cultural capital and competencies important for creating and reproducing prob-

lems of social order. Different from the meanings of the objective world ( spatial

knowledge), social norms (social knowledge, see Cooley, 1998: 11030) did

not have a valid basis outside of the communication process. Actors can anticipate

the reaction of the social world to their subjective demands against a backgroundof symbolically generalized expectations of behavior; they must, however, count

on the contingent reactions of others. The social process oftaking into account

of taking into account is a phenomenon of immersion and cannot be reduced

either to the combining of subjective intentions or psychic objects (individual

level) or to the influence of the objective world or social facts (structural level).

(3) In the process of communication between A and B, not only do social orders

and social structures develop, but also meanings of the subjective world of the

actors. Because the value of an object and the social position of actors to each

other are not determined, action problems continuously arise in practical inter-

action situations; actors must therefore develop their own perspective on the

social and objective world to be at all able to make a decision and to coordinate

actions. The self (Mead) or looking-glass self (Cooley) arise in reaction to

action problems through the abductive integration of social, cultural and sub-

jective demands or perspectives.5

(4) Generalized meanings of the subjective, objective and social world can beexpressed through the use of significant or standardized symbols. Because symbols

arise from concrete action situations, a symbolic reference structure, a symbolic

world, develops that gains autonomy from subjective intentions, social rules and

objective validity and can exercise its own influence on the meanings of this world,




18/25

even when the effect and meaning of symbols remain dependent on the inter-

action process and cases of problems of understanding must be newly defined.

In that the word usually goes before, leading and kindling the idea we

should not have the latter if we did not have the word first. This way saysthe word, is an interesting thought: come and find it. And so we are led

on to rediscover old knowledge. Such words, for instance, as good, right,

love, home, justice, beauty, freedom are powerful makers of what they

stand for.

(Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 69)

The Theory of Perspective Change

Combined with the theory of meaning and value, pragmatism gains a genuinetheory of validity. With this, I return to my consideration of Meads criticism of

Cooley. Cooley had not, according to Mead, developed a universalistic, normative

perspective that is necessary to critique empirical facts of social order. In response

to this accusation, I will show that Cooley within the tradition of American

pragmatism created a universalistic perspective subsequently to his theory of

communication and socialization.

According to Peirce, the truth or validity of a claim about the objective,

social or subjective world will be tentatively established in an open-endedinterpretation process. The idea of an indefinite community of communication

regulates the claim for objective truth, according to Peirce.

The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning

would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries

of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows

that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY,

without definite limits, and capable of an indefinite increase of

knowledge.(Peirce, 1996a: 398, para. 2.654)

The prerequisite for objective knowledge lies, for Peirce, in the potential agree-

ment of an indefinite or logical community of communication, a counter-

factual supposition that nevertheless makes an objective judgment thinkable and

which can also be used as regulative idea or moral norm to evaluate social facts,

actions and structures. The logic is founded, according to Peirce, on a social

principle (1996f: 13555, para. 5.22537). The logical conclusion is a semi-

otically brokered, social process; thus the validity of a logical close is dependent onthe agreement of the discursive community.

Cooley and Mead created the normative perspective of the logical uni-

verse of discourse (Mead) or human nature values (Cooley) reconstructively

from the circular relationship of individuation and socialization (see Figure 6). In




19/25

the socialization process, children at play (1) acquire the perspective of others

(Mead), of the members of the primary group or of imaginary playmates

(Cooley); thereby differences between the judgments of significant others arise

(A, B, C, D), such that those being socialized (2) are motivated to break through

the perspective of the significant other in favor of the generalized other (Mead,

1925), ofinstitutional values or ofgreat and famous men as symbols (Cooley,

1966 [1918]: 285; 1964 [1902]: 341). Therefore, they learn to understand rules

that coordinate individual actions, enabling children through games to take

different and even opposing positions. In the continuation of the socialization

process, actors experience that general rules and social norms of different spheres

of action, societies or historical periods contradict each other such that ideas of thelogical universe of discourse (Mead) or of human nature values or an ethical

self (Cooley) can break through in favour of group conventions.6

Finally, the self (4) for Mead and Cooley, as for Peirce (1996f: 13555,

para. 5.22537), is the result of an abductive or synthetic conclusion that is driven

FIGURE 6.

Playmate

Play

Charles Horton

Cooley

George Herbert

Mead

Logical Universe of Discourse

Human Nature Values

Universal solidarity

Self

Institutionalized

Values

Generalized

Others

Significant

Others

Primary

Ideals

Great Man

Game

Ideal Person

Discourse

B C

D E




20/25

by the process of socialization. When contradictions occur in the social world of

the actors, they realize the power to define the situation and to gain freedom and

autonomy from social constraints. On the other side, not only freedom of action

but also the social order is generalized through the inclusion and integration of

differentiated perspectives.7

Autonomous action results, for Cooley and Mead, not in the rational self-

limitation in favor of social necessity, as with Weber and Durkheim, but rather in

communication with others, where new perspectives can be designed in the

objective, social and subjective world. For Cooley and Mead, the differentiation of

societal structures and rules, on the one side, makes possible new forms of

individuation because it increases the chance (or the demand) to take new

perspectives and to integrate conflicting expectations, so that, on the other side,

individuals are motivated toward generalized and synechistic accomplishments,provoking participants in the process of action to differentiate structures of action,

therefore leading to the establishment of new social norms and institutions. In

this communicative process of interaction between the person and society,

individuals find autonomy from social rules and expectation through the increas-

ing broadening of perspectives, and social structures are generalized through the

definition of standardized symbols signifying institutionalized values and situ-

ations of actions.

Notes

1. The following definition of a social group or community is found in Cooleys private notes:

Although group, in ordinary usage, often denotes a mere assemblage of persons or

things it is commonly understood in sociology to mean asocialgroup, that is a number

of persons among whom is some degree of communication and interaction. Moreover

this must be reciprocal and not in one direction only. . . . Evidently the conception is a

very general one, and groups may vary indefinitely in size and character. Any two

persons conversing make a group, and, on the other hand the word might be applied in

some connections to the whole population of the earth, since there can be few persons,if any, who do not directly or indirectly receive and give influence. Some groups are

intimate, lasting and separate, like a family on an ancestral farm, others so . . . as to be

hardly observable. The conception of the group is complementary to that of the person.

Every normal person has his being in a complex of groups, and even those who are

apparently isolated are hardly an exception, since they usually continue the social habit in

imaginary intercourse (conversations). Without groups there would be no persons, just

as without persons there would be no groups: they are aspects of the same human

complex.

(Charles Horton Cooley Collection, index card, Bentley Historical Library,

Ann Arbor, Miscellaneous Papers, Box No. 3)

2. Meads objection has been adopted by many critics. Philip Rieff maintains:

Cooley represented a limited constituency, with a limited history. His small-town doctrine

of human nature may appear as archaic now as that of the philosopher-aristocrats of

Greek culture, in the context of Greek political theory and institutional practice. The




21/25

intelligent and gentlemanly Cooleyan symbolic of human nature White, Anglo-Saxon,

Protestant and Liberal may no longer serve to build up that controlling consensus

which once constituted the specific genius of American culture. It is not yet clear what

the new symbolic is, nor whether, in a technologically advanced and bureaucratically

organized mass society, a controlling consensus, in the classical mode, is required for

social order.(1964: xvii)

Lewis Coser repeated this criticism: Cooleys benign optimism, his somewhat romantic idealism,

are likely to appear antiquated to modern observers who view the world through lenses ground

by harsh historical experiences from which the sage from Ann Arbor was spared (1977: 309).

According to Roscoe C. Hinkle, Cooley is an exponent of one form of sociological romanticism or

romantic idealism (1966: xii). Extremely critical of Cooley is C. Wright Mills:

Cooley took the idealists absolute and gave it the characteristics of an organic village; all

the world should be an enlarged, Christian-democratic version of a rural village. He

practically assimilated society to this primary-group community, and he blessed it

emotionally and conceptually.

(19434: 175)

In contradiction to that critique is John W. Petrass more positive interpretation of Cooley:

Cooley did not believe that the traditional primary groups of family and neighborhood

would remain the most influential controls upon the individuals behavior. This mistaken

conception has, in turn, contributed to the belief that his theory was implicitly anti-

progress. But, progress and the ability to adapt oneself to a changing and complex social

order are the defining characteristics of human nature. In actuality, it appears that the

emphasis Cooley placed upon the role of the primary group in the life of the individual

was in large measure due to his recognition of the passing of the folk culture mystique

in modern American society. In short, the stabilization process which many critics see as

the essential characteristics of the primary group takes the form of adaptability to

change. It is upon this foundation that the moral systems of both the individual and

society are to be based in modern society. The horrors of civilization result from a lack

of fulfilment of human nature, and human nature is plasticity.

(1968: 20)

3. Communication, according to Cooley in his autobiographical retrospective of 1928,was thus my

first real conquest, and the thesis a forecast of the organic view of society I have been working outever since (Cooley, 1969b [1928]: 8).

4. Harvey A. Farberman (1970, 1985) and Ellsworth R. Fuhrman (1980) place Cooley in the sociology

of knowledge in a line from Alfred Schutz and Karl Mannheim, whereas R.S. Perinbanayagam

(1975) separates Schutz from Cooley and Mead.

5. David Franks and Viktor Gecas show that Cooleys term looking-glass self is marked by four

qualifications:

The first is that reflected appraisals of others are actively interpreted by the actor. The

second qualification is that actors, to a large extent, select whose appraisals will affectthem. Third, Cooley discussed the importance of a relatively stable, traditional sense of

values that allow the person autonomy from the immediate appraisals of others. Fourth,

in his writings on appropriative behavior, Cooley argued for a relatively autonomous,

yet social dimension of self-formation based on feelings of efficacy.

(Franks and Gecas, 1992: 50; see also Gecas and Schwalbe, 1983)




22/25

6. Cooley uses the term ideal person or the ethical self, similar to Meads generalized other. This

was not noted in the literature on Cooley. Shrauger and Schoeneman maintain: Meads looking-

glass self is reflective not only of significant others, as Cooley suggested, but of a generalized

other, that is, ones whole sociocultural environment (1979: 550).

7. Harvey A. Farberman believes that Cooley only reconstructed the relationship between personsand society mentalistically, whereas Mead did it interactively:

James first conceived the self as emanating from an indwelling structure of interests that

carried a priori dispositions and was resolutely subjectivistic. Cooley then inserted this

notion of self into the social process via the crucible of highly charged primary group

relations but left in the realm of mental imagination. Finally, Mead revolutionized this

entire line of theoretical development by reconceptualizing the origins, nature, and

consequences of self. Self did not emanate from innate biological endowments and

migrate to the outside world; it developed from primitive gestures and symbols in the

outside world of already on-going joint functional action. Self is not psychical; it is

functional and behavioral, and located in an objective phase of experience.(1985: 27)

David D. Franks und Viktor Gecas have, on the other hand, concluded that based on Cooleys term

understanding or sympathetic introspection, the appearance of the self is interactivistic and

not mentalistically explained:

There is no reason to think that Cooley considered reflected appraisals to be the only

source of self-knowledge or self-regard. As attribution theory stressed . . . important

information about the self is recorded from the consequences of the actions we

ourselves bring forth onto the world, i.e. we come to know ourselves from the products

and effects of our actions.

(1992: 578)

Donald C. Reitzes also rejects the accusation of mentalism against Cooley:

Cooley presents a picture of an active individual influencing the perceptions of others in

the process of being influenced by their perceptions. The reciprocal relation between

individual and others is vital to an understanding of Cooleys social self, and this

reciprocity has not received attention commensurate with its significance.

(1980: 637)

The self arises, according to Cooley, through the creative synthesizing of the social environment,not, as Talcott Parsons (1968) attempted to show, through the internalization of normative

structures.

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Dr habil. Hans-Joachim Schubert, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of

Potsdam, is the editor of Charles Horton Cooley: On Self and Social Organization (University of Chicago

Press, 1998).

Address: PD Dr. Hans-Joachim Schubert, University of Potsdam, Allgemeine Soziologie, August-Bebel

Str. 89, 14439 Potsdam, Germany. [email: [email protected]]

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