consciousness

Consciousness relates to a person knowing what they are doing and what to expect from their gestures. The gesture becomes what is called a significant symbol (see symbols) because it calls forth the same response in the gesturer as in the one to whom it is directed. This constitutes one 'knowing' what one is doing. Consciousness ties in with gesture-response communicative interaction because it is in this interaction that consciousness arises.

Complex responsive processes view of consciousness (Stacey, 2007, pp 272-273) --
For consciousness to arise, Mead argued that our mammal ancestors must have evolved central nervous systems that enabled them to gesture to others in a manner that was capable of calling forth in themselves the same range of responses as in those to whom they were gesturing. This would happen if, for example, in the case of the encounter of two dogs, the snarl of one called forth in itself the fleeting feelings associated with counter snarl, flight or submissive posture, just as they did in the one to whom the gesture was being made. The gesture now has a substantially different role. Mead described such a gesture as a significant symbol, where a significant symbol is one that calls forth the same response in the gesturer as in the one to whom it is directed. See symbols. Significant symbols, therefore, make it possible for the gesturer to 'know' what he or she is doing. If, when one makes a gesture to another, one is able to experience in one's own body a similar response to that which the gesture provokes in another body, then one can `know' what one is doing.

Possessing this capacity, the maker of a gesture can intuit, anticipate and to some extent predict, the consequences of that gesture. In other words, he or she can know what he or she is doing, just before the other responds. The whole social act, that is, meaning, can be experienced in advance of carrying out the whole act, opening up the possibility of reflection and choice in making a gesture. Furthermore, the one responding has the same opportunity for reflecting upon, and so choosing, from the range of responses. The first part of a gesture can be taken by the other as an indication of how further parts of the gesture will unfold from the response. In this way, the two can indicate to each other how they might respond to each other in the continuous circle in which a gesture by one calls forth a response from another, which is itself a gesture back to the first.

As individuals interact with each other in this way, the possibility arises of a pause before making a gesture. In a kind of private role-play, emerging in the repeated experience of public interaction, one individual learns to take the attitude of the other, enabling a kind of trial run in advance of actually completing or even starting the gesture. Will it call forth aggression, fright, flight or submission? What will be the consequences in each case? In this way, rudimentary forms of thinking develop, taking the form of private role-playing, that is, gestures made by a body to itself, calling forth responses in itself. Mead said that humans are fundamentally role-playing animals.

Consciousness, therefore, arises in interaction and the body, with its nervous system, becomes central to understanding how we 'know' anything. I want to stress how Mead is arguing that individual human consciousness, mind, arises in the social act, in communicative interaction, so that there cannot be the one without the other.