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Motor Representations Ground the Directedness of Actions to Goals

What is the relation between an instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

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intention or motor representation
or ???
coordinates
specifies
The standard answer to this question involves intention.
An intention (1) specifies an outcome,
(2) coordinates the one or several activities which comprise the action;
and (3) coordinate these activities in a way that would normally facilitate the outcome’s occurrence.
What binds particular component actions together into larger purposive actions? It is the fact that these actions are all parts of plans involving a single intention. What singles out an actual or possible outcome as one to which the component actions are collectively directed? It is the fact that this outcome is represented by the intention.
So the intention is what binds component actions together into purposive actions and links the action taken as a whole to the outcomes to which they are directed.

What is the relation between an instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

intention

The outcome is related to the action via an intention.

The intention specifies an outcome.

The intention causes the actions in a way that would normally increase the probability of the specified outcome ocurring.

<-- does not work for very small scale actions

(in general, there may be some exceptions)

(also, habitual processes will not solve this)

Becaues they are about stimulus-action links, where the action is specified as an outcome.
(Can make some progress by having chains of actions linked together by habitual processes; but will still bottom out in very small scale instumental actions.)

What is the relation between an instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

light
smoke
open
pour
tilt
soak
scare
freak out
fill
intention or motor representation
or ???
coordinates
specifies
Now as Elisabeth Pacherie has argued (and I’ve had a go at arguing this in joint work with Corrado Sinigaglia recently too), motor representations are relevantly similar to intentions. Of course motor representations differ from intentions in some important ways (as Pacherie also notes). But they are similar in the respects that matter for explaining the purposiveness of action. (1) Like intentions, some motor representations represent outcomes (and not merely patters of joint displacement, say). (2) Like intentions, some motor representations play a role in coordinating multiple more component activities by virtue of their role as elements in hierarchically structured plans. (3) And, like intentions, some motor representations coordinate these activities in a way that would normally facilitate the outcome’s occurrence. The claim is not that \emph{all} purposive actions are linked to outcomes by motor representations, just that some are. In some cases, the purposiveness of an action is grounded in a motor representation of an outcome; in other cases it is grounded in an intention. And of course in many cases it may be that both intention and motor representation are involved.

What is the relation between an instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

intention

The outcome is related to the action via an intention.

The intention specifies an outcome.

The intention causes the actions in a way that would normally increase the probability of the specified outcome ocurring.

<-- does not work for very small scale actions

(in general, there may be some exceptions)

(also, habitual processes will not solve this)

motor representation

... via a motor representation

The motor representation specifies an outcome.

The motor representationtention causes the actions in a way that would normally increase the probability of the specified outcome ocurring.

plan

1. What is the relation between a very small scale instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

2. How, if at all, does answering this question challenge the Standard Answer to the Problem of Action?

3. Is there a parallel set of issues concerning joint action?

I started by observing that there are two quite different approaches to answering the question, Which events are actions? What does the ground I’ve so far tell us about this?
I don’t think it tells us much yet (there’s much more to come).
First, both stories are stories about purposive actions. So they don’t have clearly demarcated domains.
Second, it may make it tempting to think that motor representations are just a kind of intention, and so to take the radical view that there are not really two distinct stories here at all.

intention = motor representation? No!