Individual and Sociality in Science: G.H. Mead’s “Social Realism”

Classical pragmatists shared the confielence in the emancipating possibilities of scientific methocls anel results, although thìs attituele was maintaineel in different ways. One of their most important purposes was IO show that scientific activiry suggests the overcoming of a series of dichotomies - subject/object, mind/nature, theory/practice - that go through both idealist and empiricist traditional philosophies. G.H. Mead's utilization of biological knowleelge anel experimental psychology in the course of his philosophical research represents an attempt [o achieve this purpose by means of an account of human consciousness as a specific phenomenon of biological Iife and, at the same time, through the elevelopment of a soci al psychology, conceived as an empìrical analysisof the relationship berween the structures of socìal Iife anel the elynamics of subjectivity. My intention is to outline the main arguments Meael offers in support of an epistemological realism centred on me idea of the social nature of cognitive activities. The fonnulation of the concept of individuai experience in tenns of functional, organic aspects of the development of sciences, anel me outlook of these latter as a "constructive" process of socially valid objective meanings will be considered as the parameters of a philosophical perspective that aims at neutralizing the risk of scepticism implicit in the opposition of subject and physical world, which characterize traditional forms of realism, as well as the idealistic residues of theories that emphasise rhe logìcal aspect of scientific research. Taking into consideration a group of texts spanning the whole of Mead's work, I will focus on the congruence of this project with a naturalistic theory of minel and Ianguage through which he tries to restructure a nurnber of basic philosophical notions, such as those of unìversaììty, symbolic meaning, truth and objectivity, in view of a conception of knowledge processes definable as "soci al realism."