Tullio Viola presents a working paper on 'Symbols and the Dynamics of Culture'

The paper presents the main lines of research I will be carrying on at the Max-Weber-Kolleg during the next two years. In particular, it describes the central argument of a book I intend to write, entitled "Pragmatist Theories of the Symbol". The book centres on a reconstruction of the concept of "symbol" in the four classical figures of North-American pragmatism (Charles S. Peirce, William James, George H. Mead, John Dewey). Its main aim is to show that the pragmatists had a coherent and theoretically robust understanding of this concept and of the dynamics underpinning it. Focussing on this somewhat undertheorized aspect of the pragmatist tradition may help us expand the purview of contemporary linguistic philosophy by re-orienting the debate toward a more encompassing reflection on culture. Moreover, it can provide us with new tools for understanding some of the classical philosophical problems involved in the study of cultural phenomena, such as the problem of the tension between universalism and particularism.

Roman Madzia gives a paper on 'Mind, Symbol, and Action-Prediction: George H. Mead and the "Embodied" Roots of Language'

The pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead is arguably one of the most original but at the same time neglected thinkers of embodiment. The paper ‘Mind, Symbol, and Action-Prediction: George H. Mead and the ‘Embodied’ Roots of Language’ presents Mead’s radically embodied and anti-intellectualist view of language and symbolic behavior. The paper develops a Meadian perspective on the phenomenon of the participatory, embodied sense-making called language and connects it with Jakob Hohwy’s theory of ‘prediction error minimization’ in order to elucidate the role which symbolic thinking plays in the process of action-understanding. It also demonstrates the way in which Mead understood significant symbols as encoding environmental and social affordances. Further, the paper re-defines some key concepts of philosophy of language like that of meaning, reference, intension and extension, etc. Finally, it also demonstrates that the classical pragmatist understanding of concepts such as goal-directedness of action, resolution of action-problems, etc., is indispensable if we want to come up with a persuasive account of embodied roots of linguistic behavior.