Morris sobre Mead - Pragmatismo e Universalidade

C.W. Morris

Imagem retirada de: http://www.pragmatism.org/research/prag_books.htm

Estudando recentemente o livro Mind, Self and Society, de George Herbert Mead, encontrei as seguintes afirmações de Morris (na Introdução ao livro, que compilou), tão rigorosas quanto esclarecedoras sobre as relações entre as teorias pragmatistas e a epistemologia, designadamente no que toca o valor da universalidade. Partindo do quadro analítico pragmatista (com óbvias coincidências com a filosofia do «segundo Wittgenstein»), o autor esclarece-nos da seguinte forma.

«It is frequently stated that the pragmatist must be a nominalist and cannot do justice to the fact of universality. In reality, pragmatism is nearest at this point to medieval conceptualism. It is only when the symbol is a bare particular, standing indifferently for a number of other particulars, that nominalism is the result. As a fact, however, the significant symbol, as a gesture, is not arbitrary, but always a phase of an act, and so shares in whatever universality the act possesses. (...) Universality is thus not an entity but a functional relation of symbolisation between a series of gestures and of objects, the individual members of which are "instances" of the universal.

(...) The objects have universality in relation to the act which they indifferently support; the act has universality as the character of being supported indifferently by a range of objects. In such a situation the act or segment of the act that is the gesture may be regarded as the universal under which fall or in which participate the stimulus objects as particulars; while the universality of the objects is the character they possess in common of serving as stimuli to the act. By making universality relative to the act it is brought within the scope of an empirical science and philosophy.

(...) The generalized other, in terms of the account just given, may be regarded as the universalization of the process of role-taking: the generalized other is any and all others that stand or could stand as particulars over against the attitude of role-taking in the co-operative process at hand.»

MORRIS, Charles W. (1962). Introduction. in MEAD, George H. Mind, Self & Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.