Critical reception of behaviorism in the works of George Herbert Mead

The article highlights the specifics of the intellectual heritage of the American philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, reflected in the fragmentary character of texts written by him and the principal incompleteness of his sociological concept. The habitual label of "symbolic interactionism" does not adequately reflect the originality of the ideas of Mead. This term, invented by Herbert Blumer, in its original meaning was not directly related to the concept of George Herbert Mead. But later there was a substitution of concepts and Mead was referred to symbolic interactionists, what corresponds to the real situation only partially. To clarify this issue, the article describes the key ideas of the sociological concept of Mead regarding his critical position on the radical behaviorism of John Watson. The theoretical-methodological position of Mead defined by him as social behaviorism is in contrary relations with radical behaviorism. The main areas of criticism can be described as follows: maximum focus on the behavior and ignoring the wider context of its implementation, failure of behavior-ists to explain the thinking processes, a simplified model of human behavior in which the individual plays the role of a puppet reacting mechanically to external stimuli.