Action and Activity

David Ackermann wrote a very interesting message, titled 'What's an
action'. Here are a couple of reflections on that message.

Firstly, David Ackermann seems to use the terms 'action' and 'activity'
interchangably, as if they were synonyms. At least from the viewpoint of
the cultural-historical theory of activity (inspired especially by
Leont'ev's work), the crucial distinction is between activity and action.
When this distinction is eliminated or ignored, Leont'ev's ideas don't
make much sense. Perhaps it is symptomatic that David Ackermann asks:
"But what is the new evidence brought by Leontjev's conception of action?"
My reading of Leont'ev says Leont'ev was not primarily trying to create
a new conception of 'action' - he did create a theory of activity.

This confusion or blurring between concepts is evident when Ackermann
concludes: "The term action/activity is too general to be of use for its
investigation." Please, which one of those terms are you talking about?

David Ackermann seems to seek answers by classifying actions and related
terms. As valuable as good classifications may be, I subscribe to the old
wisdom that classification is not a viable substitute for theory. As
Davydov would say, classification is a form of empirical thinking - it
does not tell us anything about the origination or 'genesis' and inner
dynamic relations of the phenomenon we are investigating. In that sense,
attempts to model the structure of action are more interesting (Ackermann
refers to a couple - there are very many around). In my opinion, these
models reveal time and again that action is not really a very fruitful 
unit of analysis - at least if it is separated from activity. Most of
the models of the structure of action have the following characteristics:
(a) they remain at the level of the individual - collective and interactive
processes are very difficult to analyze with the help of such models; (b)
they do not take artifacts (tools and signs) as fundamental components
of human action - in other words, they disregard the mediated nature of
action, its cultural character; (c) they describe action in more or less
'algorithmic' terms, as something having a discrete beginning and end,
related to a given goal or task - thus they are incapable of analyzing 
the fundamentally continuous, evolving and self-generating nature of
actions, unable to address the decisive question of goal formation and
problem finding. 

Obviously Vygotsky's triangular model of mediated action is a radical
exception from the mainstream models characterized above. In my opinion
it should be seen as the beginning of formulating a concept of activity,
rather than as just another model at the level of action. 

As to the problem of thinking as activity, I recommend the recent book
'The Psychology of Thinking' (Moscow,Progress, 1988) by Oleg Tikhomirov.
Especially the chapter 'Thinking and Goal-Formation' is valuable in the
framework of the present discussion. I cite one short passage:

"We believe it important, using the overall pattern of the structure of
human activity (activity, action, operation), to distinguish between the
level of analysis of action and of activity (...). The problems of
posed by goal-formation are located between these two levels." (p. 113)