interactionism (redirected from interactionists)

interactionism

In sociology, a theoretical perspective that derives social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) from human interaction. It was Georg Simmel who first stated that “society is merely the name for a number of individuals connected by interaction.” In the U.S., John Dewey, Charles H. Cooley, and especially George Herbert Mead developed symbolic interactionism, the theory that mind and self are not part of the innate human equipment but arise through social interaction—i.e., communication with others using symbols. For symbolic interactionists, the individual is always engaged in socialization or the modification of one's mind, role, and behaviour through contact with others. Other theorists, such as Alfred Schutz, drew on phenomenology to extend interactionism, an effort that led to the creation of fields such as sociolinguistics and ethnomethodology, the study of people's sense-making activities. See also Erving Goffman.

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interactionism

In philosophy of mind, a species of mind-body dualism that holds that mind and body, though separate and distinct substances, causally interact. Interactionists assert that a mental event (as when a person forms the intention to put his hand in a fire) can be the cause of a physical action. Conversely, the physical event (his hand coming into contact with the fire) can be the cause of a mental event (his feeling an intense pain). The classical formulation of interactionism is due to René Descartes, who could not satisfactorily explain how the interaction takes place, apart from the speculation that it occurs in the pineal gland. This problem led some philosophers to deny that mind and body really interact and to explain appearances to the contrary by appealing to divine intervention to create mental or physical effects for physical or mental causes (see occasionalism) or to a divinely ordained “preestablished harmony” between the courses of mental and physical events. Benedict de Spinoza argued for a monistic theory on which mind and body were both attributes of a single underlying substance. See also dualism; mind-body problem.