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G. H. Mead's Conception of “Present”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

David L. Miller
David L. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Extract

In his epistemological system Mead begins with that which the chief philosophers rejected, the novel or exceptional, and makes it central. It is central in a respect which should be carefully explained. The novel or emergent is that with reference to which a present is defined, and a present is the seat of reality. In saying this Mead does not mean that “the past” (more precisely, “a past” and “a future”) and “the future” are meaningless terms. Nor does he reduce them to a present. Rather he holds that neither the past (of the realist or the materialist) nor the future (of the finalist) exists. In fact, they are meaningful only in relation to a present and the various pasts and futures referred to in our statement of causal conditions and predictions belong to a present, which is their seat. Mead escapes the metaphysical problem as to whether the past or the future has some sort of being even now. Certainly in so far as he has a metaphysics at all it derives from his epistemology which is primary and represents a pioneering attempt to develop a theory of knowledge answering to experimental science. Consciously or unconsciously most contemporary scientists are still under the influence of bygone epistemological and metaphysical doctrines in their explicit statements of what constitutes reality and knowing. Yet in so far as they are successful in practice obviously they are free from the blind alleys and dead ends which these older theories lead to logically. However no one, not even the philosopher, has been able to formulate a consistent set of epistemological principles from which experimental scientific procedure follows logically. One thing, Mead contends, has been wholly neglected. It is the emergent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1943 , pp. 40 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

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Footnotes

1

This article refers to Mead's conception of “present” as developed in The Philosophy of the Present. Mr. McGilvary probably has the most respectable review of this book yet offered, but he seems to criticize Mead's view by assuming that the realistic interpretation of the past, present, and future is correct. Of course, this begs the point in question. He writes:

“He (Mead) denies the ability to recall his boyhood days as they occurred, and yet in the same breath admits that there were such days. ... Like Dewey he gives up the quest for certainty, and then denies that we can refer to the past as it occurred because he is certain that we cannot be certain of such a past.” (Int. Jour. of Ethics, Vol. 43, p. 345.)

First of all Mead was trying to show how “past,” “present,” and “future” can be significantly conceived as being interrelated. He takes his cue from science. Hence in a real sense Mead defined these terms with the ordinary assumption that definitions are arbitrary and are more or less adequate as experience will determine. We can be certain about definitions. They are “true” whatever happens. Hence we can be certain that we can not relive the past per se in the present.

In order to refute Mead's argument, or in order to advise significantly against the validity of his conceptions, one must show either that his arguments are internally inconsistent or that his cue from science is not well taken. Mr. McGilvary shows neither.

References

2 There are two fundamental assumptions common to most philosophers and scientists from the time of the ancient Greeks even to the present; namely, (1) metaphysical, (a) the real is fixed or immutable; i.e., impervious to time. It does not exist but has being; (b) the effect is in and like the cause. This dogma is supported often by the phrase: we cannot get something from nothing—e nihilo nihil fit. (2) epistemological, (a) when one knows one knows the real, and its corallary, (b) we can know that which exists only in so far as we can see in it the eternal forms. Hence a present, according to tradition, is real and can be known only in so far as it can be reduced to its causes (mechanical, material, or efficient causes or formal and final causes). This traditional view amounts to saying that time is not an essential character of reality, and indeed that the temporal is unreal. More boldly still, that which exists is unreal and unknowable, and only the eternal material or ideal objects are real.

3 The classical theory of causation is conceived in relation to knowing and prediction thus: The caused is predictable. LaPlace supports this view extensively. Those who defend some such theory as Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy also deny causation. I.e., they talk of “chance” and “statistical laws” as over against causal laws, for they hold with classical physicists that the unpredictable is also uncaused. Mead rejects the classical theory. But emergents, though unpredictable, are nevertheless caused, and our search for the conditions under which they occur is a search after their causes. Understanding, accordingly, consists not in assimilating effect to cause, which presumably is the only way in which prediction is possible according to tradition, but rather in conceiving the processes by which the emergent arises.

Although Alexander states that cause and effect are not alike, it is difficult to interpret him as believing in genuine novelty. The Deity, the next level, is said to be felt or envisaged. Hence it is present in some form; if not metaphysically, at least logically. But emergence is the epigenesis of new forms both metaphysically and epistemologically.

Morgan contends that “all that has been and will be expressed in the consummated course of evolutionary progress ...” is already included in God's purpose. Obviously, he accepts the old theory that effects must be assimilated to their causes and that, consequently, there is nothing new under the sun. (See Emergent Evolution, p. 301; Mind at the Crossways, Chap. XII.)

4 The book, Creative Intelligence, seems to be devoted to the proposition that mind creates or formulates new theories and laws pertaining to nature. Of course, these formulations must stand the test of prediction; nevertheless they are not predetermined nor do they follow logically from previous attitude. Rather they are induced from brute experience.

5 See “Objective Reality of Perspectives,” in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, 1926.