There are no representations of actions anywhere in human thought.
No amount of talking about it will lead to the reality of what happened or what will happen.
There is no exact connection between what we physically do and what we think we are doing.
If verbal thought is unclear about what has happened when we act then surely we must know what we are doing in a deeper sense? All we are saying here is that we act as an animal. Our actions are part of our biology. But what nature does animal action have?
A pair of ground nesting birds loses their chicks to a weasel. It is late in the season and they have to moult before migrating. Should they mate and lay again or should they moult early? They decide to mate and lay again. At the same time in a nearby tussock a neighbouring pair of the same species loses their chicks to the weasel. They decide to moult early.
A pair of human beings loses their children in a school coach crash. They decide to try for more children. They have friends of the same age who also lost their children in the same coach crash. They decide not to have any more children.
In choosing the example of the ground nesting birds it is possible to show the scale and expanse of the action choices that can face animals as relatively simple as birds. At stake are risky journeys flying between continents for birds that may not have finished replacing their feathers, the possibility of failing to breed, bringing up the chicks so that they are strong enough to migrate and the fact that that this is the decision of a pair of birds not just an individual bird. If this were given as a problem to a human couple a lot of thinking and examining in dialogues (inner and outer) would take place. This in itself would become a factor as it would delay a decision thus making failure to breed more likely. We can see this possibility clearly in the second scenario.
What if the way in which the birds make their different decisions is an option for us as humans? What if we actually do make our decisions in a similar way to birds but also carry the burden of thought with its risk of procrastination. We have previously discussed that however much we, either as individuals or as partners in an action think, in the end we just believe and/or just act?
We can only talk about animal dilemmas by using dialogues that contain words such as decision and dilemma. The core meaning of the word decision concerns the resolution of conflicting demands and the arrival at a point where action can take place. There is something disquieting about using the word decision when referring to bird behaviour. We assume that decisions involve thinking; inner and social dialogues; and we know that birds cannot think. We wonder how the birds manage to decide and how it is possible for one pair of birds to decide one thing and another pair, in the same situation, to decide another. We do not wonder this about the parents in the second story. We wonder it about the birds because for the parents we trust language to identify the issues such as feelings, memories, needs, attachments and social pressures.
In the Attention, consciousness and self topic we have already seen that language fights for the focus of attention and will muscle in whenever it can, often spoiling concentration in the process. This is the nature of the alien that develops within us. We think that it is the basis for our actions when in fact it grabs the process and claims to have done all the work. How much in physical reality do we act on the basis of conflicted biological registers and how much on the basis of thought? Perhaps the parents in the second story are, in a hidden way, deciding like the birds and that their, and our, concern about how to think it through can be cast on one side.
In the topic of believing and knowing we established that only when we commit to a thought do we have a basis for action. We identified the hypothetical nature of all knowledge and the extreme difficulty of applying it in such a way that the ‘outcome of actions’ are intended and can be defended.
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What do actions look like as we live with them moment by moment. Take person X who at this moment is worrying that they have upset their neighbour while wanting to concentrate on packing a parcel at the same time avoiding the tape sticking to their finger, simultaneously sad and slightly anxious that their child has a cold and aware of a thirst. All moments are the same however minor or extreme the content. From this conflict actions emerge. It is a messy ever changing process. It is biological coherence and the expression of life modeling; the natural selection of actions.
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We often attempt to illustrate the value of language by showing how we can use it to direct action.
“You will find it hidden under the flower pot by the front door” or “you reach the river as you walk towards the large tree on the hill”. We need to appreciate these examples of speech as evidence of the sophisticated cooperation possible between language and action. Undoubtedly speech and language has a big role in participating in our actions as we search behind the semantics to find our personal experience of what is being referred to. We describe these as meaning clusters in the Meaning and grammar topic.
Considerable thought and effort has to go into constructing a sentence that points to a physical reality in such a way that someone who cannot currently see it, and who does not know where it is, can find it. (We can easily get the feel of this by playing the game outlined in example one in the speech and language topic). It is easier to do in a world constructed by humans than in the natural world. Language and mind were developed and have spent most of their time in a natural context. This fact has underpinned their development yet in giving precise directions they do not work well in natural physical environments where those engaged in the dialogue do not already know the physical environment intimately. By contrast I could send you to other side of the world to pick up a box at any address using just one sentence.
There is a chasm between co-operation in our close cousins the chimpanzees and human co-operation. When in a familiar natural environment chimpanzees and humans are sharing overlaps of episodic memory. A complex of shared experience and shared knowledge of environmental sounds, images, movement memories and much more. The difference is that much of this can be referred to in human language both in dialogue within the group and in the thinking of the individual humans present. Organisation of the individual actions of the group in that environment can be planned using human language and the inner dialogues of each human influenced by discussion, debate and instructions. When group action is taking place changes to group and individual actions can occur continuously and in penetrating detail. All this is courtesy of human language and thought. In an environment largely created by human beings, and increasingly planetarily standardised, what can be achieved by co-operation is even more remarkable by comparison with our cousins. The creation of the largely standardised environment we live in is itself testimony to human language and thought in a multiplicity of ways. However a new kind of failure of co-operation has also been created: “I thought you said/meant…” The variation in meaning between individuals takes its toll.
I have a favourite example of the use of language to manage the actions of the generality of modernised humans in a standardised environment. It comes from a personal experience in a hotel bedroom in London. I was struck by how many detailed physical and social actions intended for total strangers could be directed by a few written messages. The hotel had limited staffing but also a culture of care for its quests and, quite clearly, experience of the difficulty of directing people’s actions. When we know how to do something we confidently believe that referring to this in a common sense general way will be enough to direct the actions of someone else. We do this even though the world of experience is full of examples of people not following instructions which we commonly interpret as stupidity, laziness and/or perversity on their part.
Do you want your towels changed? If so please leave them on the floor and we will replace them.
Important. The bedroom door does not lock automatically. Please make sure that you turn the key to lock the door when you leave the room.
Important. Before you go to bed make sure that you know how to escape in case of fire and that you know how and where to operate the fire alarm. The Duty Manager will call the Fire Brigade.
The temperature of the central heating radiator can be adjusted by turning the valve with numbers at this end of the radiator.
Most of our pillows contain feathers. If you need foam pillows, please let reception know.
Please note that the extractor runs for 16 minutes after the light is switched off. Guests can use the shaver light if they do not want to be disturbed by the noise of the extractor.
Two people by a pond
We meet them again in the attention, consciousness and self topic.
In open woodland two people are sitting by a pond:
Person1 “what are you thinking about”?
Person2 “nothing, I was looking into the water, what were you thinking about”?
Person1 “oh, nothing much, but if you want to know, I was thinking if the chutney in my sandwich will go with the cheese. I thought I saw something move behind that tree over there and then I caught myself scratching my ankle and looked to see if I had a bite”.
Person one finds themselves scratching their leg. In this case focussed attention was only engaged after the act of scratching had started. Before this the scratching was a bodily response. An intentional action requires focussed attention. It requires the first place where we are. After focussed attention has been caught by the scratching in either a chimpanzee or human then the scratching is under the control of focussed attention and is an intentional action. This change can be seen easily in both species. It is the moment when both animals look at what they are doing. This intentional action lasts until focussed attention is grabbed by something else. The scratching might continue as a bodily response but is more likely to pause or stop. In both a chimpanzee and a human any particular sensation or feeling could make the grab. Imagine a sudden bird call or a pang of hunger. For the human something else could happen; they could think.
Thinking, the inner dialogue, could grab the focus of attention. Person one is thinking of his sandwich when his focus of attention is first grabbed by a visual movement and then by an itch. His focus of attention returns from thought to vision to see himself scratching his own leg. At this point the scratching could be stopped by a thought. Person two now grabs person ones focus of attention by asking ‘what are you thinking about’ and thereby pulls it into dialogue. All this happens very quickly.
In the copying part of the movement topic we noted that chimpanzees can intend to show another chimpanzee how to use anvil and hammer stones when breaking into nuts. Their focussed intention to break into nuts can be combined with a shared attention life model. A human can parallel their demonstration with something like the following: An anvil stone looks like this. Notice that it has a flat bottom and therefore stays still when you hit the nut. This heavy round stone is good as a hammer.
Chimpanzees can also demonstrate the following. After each one we have put in italics how a human being might use language to help the demonstration.
How to select branches to wedge together, and sticks for different stages of building the night time tree nest. If you break a branch about the size of your wrist and pull it across two forking branches and then fill the gaps with smaller branches, that you have split off completely, you are only left with having to make a cushion of leaves.
How to choose the best blade of grass and how to poke it far enough into the ants nest to capture ants. That piece of grass you have got is too short. Go and find a longer one over there.
How to choose the best bit of moss to soak up the water trapped at the bottom of a hollow tree branch, preparatory to holding up the moss and squeezing the water into your mouth. Remember what the leaves of this tree look like. They often develop hollows where the lower branches leave the trunk.
Language is so helpful for humans that we think that to talk is enough. This is often true socially but almost never when acting in an unknown natural environment.