The Activity Modalities A neurobiological perspective on coordination, action, and thinking

1. The Activity ModalitiesA neurobiological perspective on coordination, action, and thinking Lars Taxén Associate Professor Linköping University, Sweden

2. Thinking without acting?

3. Acting without thinking?

4. Thinking or acting? “I do not separate thought from behavior” (Piaget, 1962)

5. Thinking and acting! The mental is inextricably interwoven with body, world and action: the mindconsists of structures that operate on the worldvia their role in determining action(Love, 2004) Neural realm Mind Social realm World

6. Theoretical inspiration Vygotsky’s structural-systemic research program • Higher psychological processes emerge when individuals act in their cultural environments • Individuals cannot be understoodwithout taking their cultural environment into account • The cultural environment cannot be understoodwithout understanding the individual Individual Cultural environment

7. Coordination, acting and thinking “I do not see any way to avoid the problem of coordination and still understand the physical basis of life” (Pattee, 1976) Acting depends on coordination Thinking and action are inextricably related Thus, thinking also depends on coordination Neural realm Mind Social realm World coordination?

8. Research problem- Which individual mental capacities are necessary for coordinating actions and thus, thinking?

9. Focus on target Contextualize relevance

10. Normative Spatial Temporal Notation is more than 1000 years old! Harmonized with human mental organization

11. Refocus to related activities

12. Requisite mental capacities Focusing on the target Contextualizing relevance Spatial comprehension Temporal comprehension Normative comprehension Refocusing

13. Focusing on the target Contextualizing relevance Spatial comprehension Temporal comprehension Normative comprehension Refocusing

14. The Activity Modalities Objectivation Contextualization Spatialization Temporalization Stabilization Transition Necessary mental capacities for coordinating actions Consequently, thinking also has these aspects

15. Activity modalities Neural realm Social realm

16. Social realm An example Target: travel to Tallin Objectivation The route: actions Temporalization The map: orientation in space Spatialization The scale in km: convention Stabilization

17. Artefacts and the activity modalities Activity modalities Artefacts Social realm Action Neural realm Mind

18. Functional organs (Luria) “External, historically formed artefactssuch as tools, symbols, and objects ‘tie new knots [functional organs] inthe activity of man’s brain’” “This means that areas of the brain which previously were independent become the components of a single functional system”

19. Functional organs “There no longer exist relations between us. Some time ago I lost my sense of the border between us…. I experience no difficulty in playing sounds…. The cello is my tool no more” Mstislav Rostropovich (1927 –2007) The dialectics between the individual and the cultural environment

20. Joint action- individuals acting together

21. Common identifier temporalization spatialization stabilization Activity modalities Joint action Social realm Common Neural realm Idiosyncratic

22. Summary – main points • Thinking and action are inextricably linked • Coordination • Requisite for action and thus thinking • Activity modalities • Neurobiological requisites for coordination • Bridging the neural and social realms • Functional organs • Brain structures formed in interaction with extracortical artefacts • Joint action • Fitting together individual lines of action to achieve social needs Conceptualizes the dialectics between the individual and the cultural environment

23. Implication for thinking • Action an indispensable element in thinking about thinking • Metacognition • New thinking organizers (TOG)? • Derived from the activity modalities • Subconscious (tacit dimension of knowledge)? • Mental capacities not made explicit in the social realm • The dialectics between individual and environment? • Cultural environment a requisite for understanding the individual • Individual a requisite for understanding the cultural environment

24. Take-home message Cognitive processes are so closely intertwined with action that cognition would best be understood as ‘enactive’, as the exercise of skillful know-how in situated and embodied action Engel et al 2013

25. That’s it!