This chapter contains sections titled: Overcoming Cartesian Dualism with a New Interpretation of Action Creativity or Rationality as the Nexus in Social Theory? How Rational is Rational Choice? Creative Pragmatism and Economic Sociology How Do Values Emerge? The Contingency of Social Change.

While rooted in careful study of Mead’s original writings and transcribed lectures and the historical context in which that work was carried out, the papers in this volume have brought Mead’s work to bear on contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy.

“The organism is assumed to be originally acting and for this action no cause need be sought.” Thus concluded American sociologist Ellsworth Faris about George H. Mead’s basic position years ago when reviewing the posthumous edition of lectures, Mind, Self, and Society, for which Mead has become best known. Soon after that time, that basic idea and Mead’s thought in general sank into negligence. Mead has not been absent from the philosophical map in the same way as his fellow-pragmatist and (...) personal friend, John Dewey, once was. Dewey’s philosophy was declared obsolete in the immediate post-WWII time, and it began to arouse new interest only since the 1980s. Mead’s thought has not received that kind of... (shrink)