Cooley

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Cooleys

• Human Nature
• The Social Order
• Part I
• Presented by Tina Quicoli

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Introduction

• Cooleys theory is both one on human nature and
  social order.
• For him, human nature does not have content and
  meaning superior to the social order.
• Human nature mirrors in each person the social
  order in which they act out their lives.
• The imaginations that people have of one another
  are the solid facts of society.
• Language supplies society with a
  self-understanding. Social communication is
  fundamental to selfhood.
• Language allows us to see ourselves as others see
  us, so that we can address ourselves as others
  address us.
• The locus of society emerges through our
  experiences in meaningful communication.
• Without an imagery of self or a common
  consciousness society would doubt that it exists.
  
• Society is mental for Cooley. That is, it exists
  in the minds as the contact and reciprocal
  influence of certain ideas called I.

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• The self has three principal elements
• 1. The imagination of our appearance to others.
• 2. The imagination of judgment of our appearance
  by the other person.
• 3. Some sort of self feeling such as pride
  or mortification.
• Cooley believes that society is an affair of
  consciousness.
• He describes three types of consciousness self
  consciousness, social consciousness, and public
  consciousness.
• Ones self-consciousness allows them to reflect
  on the ideas about their self that are attributed
  to the other.
• We exist in our imagination of them. It is only
  in the imaginations that others have of us that
  we are able to affect them.

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Society and the Individual

• When our lives begin two elements of history are
  drawn upon, the heredity and social. These
  elements merge together to create a new whole
  that ceases to exist as separate forces.
• Society and the individual are not separate
  phenomena, but are collective and distributive
  aspects of the same thing.
• When we speak about society we think about the
  general view of the people, and when we speak of
  the individual we disregard aspects and think
  about them as if they were separate.
• The human mind is social, society is mental, and
  society and the mind are aspects of the same
  thing.
• The imagination is the naïve expression of a
  socialization of the mind that underlies all
  later thinking.
• The mind lives is a perpetual conversation. The
  impulse to communicate is an inseparable part of
  thought.
• The mind is not a hermits cell but a place of
  hospitality.

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• To imagine is to be come real in a social sense.
  A person is real only though imagining an inner
  life that exists in us. That is, all real
  persons are imaginary.
• The personality can be described as a group or
  system of thought associated with the symbols
  that stand for them.
• Society may then be said to be a relation among
  personal ideas.
• The individual and society must therefore be
  studied in the imagination.
• The imaginations that individuals have of each
  other are the solid facts of society.
• Thus, the object of study is an imaginative idea
  or group of ideas in the mind..
• A social person is a fact in the mind, which may
  be observed there.

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Freedom

• The individual has organic freedom, which is
  worked out by cooperating with others. The
  individual cannot simply do things independent of
  society, they must function in their own way, but
  they have to play the game as life brings it.
• Freedom may be defined as the contrast between
  what man is and what he might be as out
  experiences of life enable us to imagine.
• Freedom may be thought of as the individual
  aspect of progress the individual and the social
  order.
• Freedom can exist only in and through a social
  order.
• The notion of freedom is in accord with a general
  or vague sentiment. It is the notion of fair
  play, of giving everyone
• a chance. Nothing upsets us more than the
  belief that
• someone or some class does not have a fair
  chance.
• Therefore, in our view of freedom we believe that
  we
• have a right to.

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Defining the I

• The word self refers to the first person. It can
  be expressed through words such as I, me, my,
  mine, and myself.
• The I is a fact like other facts. The I means
  feeling or its expression
• The feeling of the self may be regarded as
  instinctive.
• We are born with the need to assert ourselves,
  but whether we do our not or not depends on the
  opportunities offered to us in the social
  process.
• The meaning of the I is learned just as other
  words of
• emotion and sentiment are learned.
• This feeling of the self undergoes
  differentiation and
• refinement just as any other sort of innate
  feeling.
• In common speech, I usually refers to opinions
  purpose,
• desires, and claims.
• It should be noted that my and mine are more the
• names of the self. However, the I refers
  more to
• Miscellaneous possessions.

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A Social Self

• The social self is any idea, or systems of ideas
  that are drawn from the communicative life, which
  the mind takes to be its own.
• The I of common speech has meaning that includes
  some sort of reference to other people.
• It is doubtful if it is even possible to use
  language without thinking of someone else.
• It may then be concluded that what we call me,
  mine, or myself, is not something separate from
  general life, but rather it is both general and
  individual.
• We care for it because it is the part of the mind
  that is living and strives to impress itself upon
  the minds of the others.
• The intense self-consciousness regarding it is
  combined with instinct or experiences that
  connects it with the thoughts of others.
• We bring the I into the social world and we put
  our self-consciousness into it.

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Discussion Questions

• 1) Consider the agency structure debate or
  Alexanders distinction between individualistic
  and collectivistic theories Where does Cooleys
  theory fall?
• 2) Do you believe we have the self-feeling
  that Cooley describes? Is this self-self feeling
  an important notion? What do you think Cooley
  means when he says that the self-feeling is in
  part an instinct?
• 3) Does Cooleys theory of the self rely on a
  nonrational element or faith?