Abstract

David Miller’s book is a comprehensive treatment of Mead’s philosophy based not only on his published works but also on his unpublished manuscripts and lecture notes. Miller portrays Mead as a systematic philosopher with well-developed views on epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, aesthetics and ethics, giving separate chapter treatments of his theory of the self, language, the world, the physical thing, perception, thinking, creativity, aesthetics and ethics. Throughout these chapters, Miller’s description of Mead as a "social behaviorist" is detailed. Mead is portrayed as one who holds that mind, while not reducible to overt behavior, is understood in relation to such behavior. For thinking is simply the internalization of a process in which the thinker evokes in himself by his own behavior as with a language gesture, the functionally identical behavioral response that this gesture evokes in another. Here and in his description of Mead’s theory of the self and the physical thing, the social character of Mead’s philosophy is emphasized.