The Social Mind

According to a classic model, dear to the anthropology, philosophy and linguistics of a good part of the last century, the human mind is a reflection of the social life of the individual. Two aspects characterize this model: the thesis that the (socio-cultural) factors external to the individual have priority over and autonomy from the individual’s internal (bio-psychic) constituents; the idea that the mind is determined through an internalization process of external factors—following a one-way constitutive path “from external to internal”. The very dualism created by both these aspects calls into question the validity of the classic model. The underlying assumption of this chapter is a unitary, rather than dualistic, conception of the human mind. Against the one-way perspective offered by the classic model we shall claim that the mind is a product of a two-way constitutive process, in which the factors which proceed “from internal to external” have the same relevance as those which proceed in the opposite direction. Our idea is that the human mind is the product of factors which are at the same time both external and internal to the individual. In these terms, such an idea appears to represent a banal truth which holds little appeal. There are good reasons, however, for putting forward the theme of the social nature of the mind in these terms. In the first place because attempts to unify past theories of the mind have had little success. In the second place because the difficulties which have given rise to the failure of these attempts would appear today to give way to more convincing solutions. Contemporary cognitive science and neuroscience may effectively offer satisfactory explanatory models of the bio-cognitive devices involved in the management of the complex inter-individual relationships among the members of a group. These devices are precious tools for the investigation of internal/external relationships and for reconsidering the theme of the unitary nature of the human mind in a new light.