scholarly journals Cognitive Representation of Human Action: Theory, Applications, and Perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Seegelke ◽  
Thomas Schack
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Cognitive Representation

Alternatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-138
Author(s):  
Holly M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Future Work

Consequentialists have long debated (as deontologists should) how to define an agent’s alternatives, given that (a) at any particular time an agent performs numerous “versions” of actions, (b) an agent may perform several independent co-temporal actions, and (c) an agent may perform sequences of actions. We need a robust theory of human action to provide an account of alternatives that avoids previously debated problems. After outlining Alvin Goldman’s action theory (which takes a fine-grained approach to act individuation) and showing that the agent’s alternatives must remain invariant across different normative theories, I address issue (a) by arguing that an alternative for an agent at a time is an entire “act tree” performable by her, rather than any individual act token. I argue further that both tokens and trees must possess moral properties, and I suggest principles governing how these are inherited among trees and tokens. These proposals open a path for future work addressing issues (b) and (c).

Action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hornsby
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Status ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning beings who make their impact in the natural causal world, and concerns addressed in ethics and legal philosophy about human freedom and responsibility. ‘Action theory’ springs from concerns of both sorts; but in the first instance it attempts only to provide a detailed account that may help with answering the metaphysical questions. Action theorists usually start by asking ‘How are actions distinguished from other events?’. For there to be an action, a person has to do something. But the ordinary ‘do something’ does not capture just the actions, since we can say (for instance) that breathing is something that everyone does, although we don’t think that breathing in the ordinary way is an action. It seems that purposiveness has to be introduced – that someone’s intentionally doing something is required. People often do the things they intentionally do by moving bits of their bodies. This has led to the idea that ‘actions are bodily movements’. The force of the idea may be appreciated by thinking about what is involved in doing one thing by doing another. A man piloting a plane might have shut down the engines by depressing a lever, for example; and there is only one action here if the depressing of the lever was (identical with) the shutting down of the engines. It is when identities of this sort are accepted that an action may be seen as an event of a person’s moving their body: the pilot’s depressing of the lever was (also) his moving of his arm, because he depressed the lever by moving his arm. But how do bodies’ movings – such events now as his arm’s moving – relate to actions? According to one traditional empiricist account, these are caused by volitions when there are actions, and a volition and a body’s moving are alike parts of the action. But there are many rival accounts of the causes and parts of actions and of movements. And volitional notions feature not only in a general account of the events surrounding actions, but also in accounts that aim to accommodate the experience that is characteristic of agency.

Buddhist Reductionist Action Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Siderits
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Two Truths ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Prior Intention ◽  
Psychological Determinism ◽  
Conventional Truth

This essay develops the theory of action presupposed by Buddhist Reductionists. Their account uses the theory of two truths to reconcile the folk theory of human action with the Buddhist claim that there are no agents. The conventional truth has it that persons are substance-causes of actions, and the willings that trigger actions are exercises of a person’s powers in light of their reasons. According to the ultimate truth, there are no persons, only causal series of bundles of tropes. An action is a bodily or mental event in one such series that has the occurrence of a prior intention event as its cause. Facts about causally connected psychophysical elements explain the utility, and thus the conventional truth, of claims about persons as agents. This two-tier account of human agency makes possible a novel approach to making attributions of moral responsibility compatible with psychological determinism.

Action Theory: Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, Held at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 9-11 May 1975.

1978 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 463
Author(s):  
Michael Bratman ◽  
Myles Brand ◽  
Douglas Walton
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action

The DBO theory of action and distributed cognition

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuukka Kaidesoja
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Alternative Approach

The DBO (Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities) theory of action proposed by analytical sociologists aims to provide an action-theoretical basis for building explanatory theories in sociology. Peter Hedström claims that the DBO theory is realistic because it does not make assumptions that are known to be false or seriously incompatible with the current scientific understanding about the nature of human action and cognition. This article nevertheless aims to show that the DBO theory is not only incomplete but also that its background assumptions are unrealistic, in the sense that they do not fit with the distributed nature of action-related cognition, which has recently become a growing topic of interest in cognitive sciences. The author also indicates that the neglect of the distributed and embodied aspects of cognition in the DBO theory leads to various biases in the process of constructing mechanism-based explanations in social sciences. Finally, an alternative approach to action theory is sketched on the basis of this critique.

Energy Conservation Behaviour of Individuals: A New Age Imperative for Sustainable Development

GIS Business ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Rutwik J. Gandhe ◽  
Satish C. Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Energy Conservation ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Cost Behaviour ◽  
Key Variables

Role of human behaviour in mitigating climate change, controlling Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, reducing carbon footprint leading to sustainable development, is at the centre of all policy discussions across the globe, thereby tailoring human behaviour is considered imperative by contemporary scholarship. This study attempts to understand the psycho-social interaction of individuals that promote such a human action. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework has been used to predict human behaviour assuming human behaviour for energy conservation is one of the pro-social low-cost behaviour. Value orientation of individuals, energy conservation beliefs, subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, and energy conservation attitude have been measured to gauge the behavioural intention, along with capturing the socio-economic realities pertaining to households and individuals therein. Awareness towards energy conservation efforts and social interaction are found to be key behaviour influencers, whereas energy conservation intent is found to be gender neutral. Study implies the underlying necessity to explore mediating and moderating models in order to decipher complex inter-play among key variables for predicting energy conservation behaviour intent.

Dynamic logics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Friedrichsdorf
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Computer Programs ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Formal Systems ◽  
Dynamic Logics

Dynamic logics have been designed by Pratt as formal systems for reasoning about computer programs. The main ingredients discussed are programs, operations on programs, states and properties of states. In particular one can formalize that every execution of a program p starting in state s terminates in a state with a given property. Thus correctness statements for programs can be dealt with. According to Segerberg (1980) programs might be viewed more generally as actions of some agent so that certain aspects of human action theory can also be formulated and studied in these systems.

An Alternative to Self-Reports of Trait and State Affect

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Quirin ◽  
Regina C. Bode
Keyword(s):  
Self Report ◽  
Factorial Validity ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Novel Variants ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
State Affect ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Automatic Activation

Self-report measures for the assessment of trait or state affect are typically biased by social desirability or self-delusion. The present work provides an overview of research using a recently developed measure of automatic activation of cognitive representation of affective experiences, the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT). In the IPANAT, participants judge the extent to which nonsense words from an alleged artificial language express a number of affective states or traits. The test demonstrates appropriate factorial validity and reliabilities. We review findings that support criterion validity and, additionally, present novel variants of this procedure for the assessment of the discrete emotions such as happiness, anger, sadness, and fear.

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