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(1986) Rationality, relativism and the human sciences, Dordrecht, Springer.
The social construction of mind is the thesis that mind is a cultural product the genesis of which in individuals is closely bound up with the social and historical condtitions within which those individuals grow up and are constrained to act. Mead (1934), Vygotsky (1967) and Wittgenstein (1980) have each contributed refinements and clarifications to the thesis that the mentality of individuals is a product of their circumambient social condtitions. Can these various insights be brought together into a systematic account of mind sufficiently clear and simple to serve as the basis of research programmes in psychology? In this paper I shall try to show how, by bringing out the distinctive metaphysics implicit in the social construction point of view, and by setting out a clear alternative system of conceptual controls to the Cartesianism that animates most of recent psychology, the main projects of such a programme can be delineated.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4362-9_6
Full citation:
Harré, R. (1986)., Mind as a social formation, in J. Margolis, M. Krausz & R. M. Burian (eds.), Rationality, relativism and the human sciences, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 91-106.
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