About Steaks Liking to be Eaten: The Conflicting Views of Symbolic Interactions and Talcott Parsons Concerning the Nature of Relations Between Persons and Nonhuman Objects

Reasoning on the basis of the nature of a series of characteristics of social systems, Talcott Parsons asserted that relations of persons with others are interactional, but that their relations with what he called nonsocial objects‐physical and cultural objects‐are other than interactional. Logical as well as common sense considerations show that persons do interact both with categories of objects. Symbolic interactionists hold that interaction of persons with nonhuman objects‐their designation of what Parsons called nonsocial objects‐occurs during the course of the persons taking the roles of such objects internally with presumed mutuality, that is thinking about them, and interpreting them as one or another of three different kinds of signs. In the symbolic interactionist perspective, the overarching background of all interaction is the active self mediating reflexively between the persons and whatever kinds of objects with which they are involved.