What's An Action
Dear collegueas,
I had a dream tonight: I wrote a new computer program for
a famous company (two letter acronym) and at the same
time I planted some indoor plants. Was that an activity,
an (or several) action(s) or a dream? What's the
difference? For the dreamer, "the dream is the world" (if
there is any doubt, please read D. v. Uslar "Der Traum
als Welt /The dream as world/) but there is a problem: I
miss now the program and where are the plants I planted?
And the dream happened to me, there was no intention to
dream and I could not even control the topic? (Something
about the Bahamas would have pleased me much more)
Perhaps this is an academic example and I will try to
bring the argument to the point.
What is an action? Are all actions created equal? I feel
that is the problem: We have to deal with very different
types of actions and we should distinguish them according
to their qualities and their features
e.g.
observable - not observable
intentional - unintentional
conscious unconscious
complex - simple
task oriented
motivated
goal directed
communicative
Social
Context
etc...
For a meteorologist, there are many different types of
clouds. We are specialists in the field of psychology but
we treat a very complex phenomenon as one simple entity:
action. Perhaps you dont run into troubles when you use
"action" as an explanation and not as topic of
investigation (See the Amano / Grudin message some time
ago)
Some years ago I found in Lenk, "Handlungstheorien
interdisziplinaer" /action theories interdisciplinary/
Vol 1 - 4, Muenchen 1977-84) an interesting and very
helpful article about action. The aouthor distinguishes
among social actions, .... and instrumental actions. I
for my part, socialized in the field of work psychology
(Ulich, Hacker and so on) I found the term "instrumental
action" very helpful for my work in the field of
workpsychology
Instrumental actions can be defined e.g. by
- Intention /Goal directed
- observable by others (or how to deal with dreams?)
- hierarchical construction
- levels of action regulation (Skill based, rule based
knowledge based (Rasmussen, 1986 /english/ or Hacker,
1978ff
- there should be an observable product/effect
(as in a work process)
- an abstract logical structure of the task can be
identified
This allows a distinction what we have to investigate as
an "INSTRUMENTAL action". This singles out a specific
type of action, but I feel it is very close to what we
call in everyday German "action". (You know, action I
agree, that spoken language can be seen as (an
instrumental) action and I feel, that this perspective
makes sense. But I do not think that my (underlying)
thinking process, which generates the words can be
treated as an action because it has many unconscious and
uncontrolled aspects. How can we explain sudden ideas
with the concept of action? This may be seen as
comparable to the cause - effect dichotomy.
What to do about Lia Dibello's example of Hawkins? Do you
agree that in principle, he is performing "instrumental
actions" but without the ability to communicate them
properly?
The problem of identifying (instrumental) "action"
Don't worry, even with "instrumental actions" it is not
so easy to identify an action. There are two heuristics,
one derived by a concept of Hacker and one experimentally
developed.
a) Hacker formulated the concept of the "abstract logical
structure of the task" which can be described by assembly
plans, algorithms and so on. This abstract logical
structure is mentally decomposed (psychological
decomposition) and put into action. In the work process,
you have to formulate sequences of operations. They may
be limited by the structure of the task (e.g. complex or
long mathematical operations) or the human capabilities
(skills, individual differences and limits in short-term
memory /cognitive span/). For example in the equation
(a+b)*c - ((33x/(44y-z)*y) + (89v-9y(365a/b) = 0
there are identifiable points where you have to stop and
the process of decomposition is predetermined by
mathematical rules.
b) experientally, you can identify these sequences also
by measuring thinking times. In a sequence of operations,
an average time per operation can be calculated. Is this
average exceded by a certain percentage (we take two
ranges of 50 - 100% and above 100%) we take these points
as indicators for action boundaries. Experimental
investigations prove the usefulnes of this concept
(Ackermann, 1987, Doctoral Thesis in German).
These concepts work in about 80-90% of the investigated
cases but there still remain behavioural processes which
can not be properly structured into actions by our
methods. Nevertheless I'm happy to have at least these
two tools for identification.
I think that investigating "instrumental actions" can be
a way to understand more "general actions". I m not
against psychoanalyses and unconscious processes and in a
common sense dreams can be seen as action. But what is
the new evidence brought by Leontjev's conception of
action? A new description is applied for a process we do
not really understand and where we have no experimental
tools to investigate. (I rely here on Popper's notion of
"science", but have in mind, that psychology is also an
"art").
Conclusion:
----------
The term action/activity is too general to be of use for
its investigation. Action is useful as a means to explain
phenomena on a macro level. As soon as you start to
investigat the concept of the wonderful explanation...
Furthermore, the term action has to many meanings. The
German root of action "Handlung" means also "Grocery
Store". Perhaps a grocery store is a fine example for
instrumental actions. In German the verb for action
(handeln) means generally observable behaviour and is not
applied to thinking or planning or daydreaming......
To ease our problems, we need a taxonomy or context-
specific definition of actions e.g.
social actions
instrumental actions
communication
Planing / Task related thinking
with the appropriate methodologies, but we distinguish
concepts like motivation, cognition as underlying
processes from "action". we can assume the following
model:
motivation
cognition
: :
(sensorimotor processes)
:
:
action a) represented by
language
b) sensorimotor behaviour
Furthermore, we need a taxonomy of goals
(perhaps something like this)
- related to the abstract logical structure of the task:
syntactic goals
semantic goals
(no motivational aspects)
- related to motivation (abstract logical structure)
task related motivation
- related to the social context
(syntactic) /perhaps doesnt make sense
(semantic)
motivation / intentional goals
- social criteria / and norms
Perhaps we would be able to define a conception or model
of "action" represented in different psychological and
sociological phenomena.