Lars Taxén Associate Professor Linköping University, Sweden The Activity Modalities A neurobiological perspective on coordination, action, and thinking Lars Taxén Associate Professor Linköping University, Sweden When thinking about thinking from an evolutionary point of view, thinking is obviously something that has enabled out species to survive in the world. But thinking alone does not help. You cannot just sit and watch a lion coming running at you; you have to do something. We have to act, be that running away from a predator or acting together to fulfill some social needs. So, thinking and acting go together. The purpose of this contribution is to make an inquiry into how thinking and acting may be related.

Thinking without acting? A first observation then, is it possible to conceive of thinking without action?

Acting without thinking? Or acting without thinking?

Thinking or acting? “I do not separate thought from behavior” Conscious? Thinking? Connect to Polanyi tacit knowledge “I do not separate thought from behavior” (Piaget, 1962)

Thinking and acting! The mental is inextricably interwoven with body, world and action: the mind consists of structures that operate on the world via their role in determining action (Love, 2004) Neural realm Mind Social realm World Analytically, we may think of this as a neural and social realms which are interwoven And the question then is what such a point of departure implies for theorizing about thinking?

Theoretical inspiration Vygotsky’s structural-systemic research program Higher psychological processes emerge when individuals act in their cultural environments Individuals cannot be understood without taking their cultural environment into account The cultural environment cannot be understood without understanding the individual Individual Cultural environment

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 (read quote) So the focus will be on conceptualizing coordination from a neurobiological perspective Neural realm Mind Social realm World coordination?

Research problem - Which individual mental capacities are necessary for coordinating actions and thus, thinking? In order to answer this question, we have to take a step back and look at what enables ordinary, every-day actions Cannot understand the complex before we understand the simple

Contextualize relevance Focus on target Contextualize relevance Which capacities must the mind have in order to participate in an activity like this? So, to begin with, every activity is about something, in this case a concert. In this situation, we attend to relevant things and disregard that which is not relevant, we cognize a context of relevance For example, players, guitars, scores, note stands, the public are certainly relevant. The books in the shelves are not

Notation is more than 1000 years old! Normative Spatial Temporal Action is carried out using means like the guitar and the score What is required of an individual actor in order to employ these means? Cognize a temporal dimension … Guido of Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation (staff notation) Notation is more than 1000 years old! Harmonized with human mental organization

Refocus to related activities For example, when discussing with the guitar builder about how the guitar should be built

Requisite mental capacities Focusing on the target Contextualizing relevance Spatial comprehension Temporal comprehension Normative comprehension Refocusing The dimensions just outlined seems to be indispensable for carrying out any human activity

Contextualizing relevance Spatial comprehension Temporal comprehension Focusing on the target Contextualizing relevance Spatial comprehension Temporal comprehension Normative comprehension Refocusing If we take this activity some 30 000 years ago, we find the same dimensions That is a strong indication that the ultimate origin of these dimensions are to be found in the neurobiological constitution that evolution has brought about in order for our species to act and survive in the world

The Activity Modalities Objectivation Contextualization Spatialization Temporalization Stabilization Transition The dimensions just outlined seems to be indispensable for carrying out any human activity Necessary mental capacities for coordinating actions Consequently, thinking also has these aspects

Neural realm Social realm Activity modalities These modalities have of course to be grounded in neuroscientific research, and this is quite naturally a tricky business indeed. This illustration is an attempt to embark on such a route, where you can see the dependencies between various capacities needed for acting. So, for example, spatialization is realized by among other areas, the entorhinal or hippocampus areas in the brain Based on this, by I have suggested that coordination can be considered as a higher mental function and modeled as dependencies between certain factors, No time to explain this in detail, other NeuroIS conferences. Staring down here with ‘conation’, striving, including desire and volition. Sensing… attention … The idea is then that the AMs provide, as it were, a “wormhole” or gateway between neural and social realms in that we may device external artifacts attuned to the AMs For example, when you first come to a new place you are probably lost without a means like this – a map. After a while you get around without it. What has happened is that networks in your brain that realizes spatialization, the entorhinal or hippocampus areas, have been restructured to accommodate the new place If these areas are destroyed by a lesion in in the brain, spatialization and thus action is inhibited

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

Artefacts and the activity modalities Neural realm Mind Social realm Action Activity modalities Artefacts A further step in the conceptualization of the link between mind and action is provided by the notion of functional organs

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

Mstislav Rostropovich (1927 –2007) 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) Here is an example Cannot understand the whole by reduction and analysis of parts; parts get new properties by being parts in a certain whole This is a beautiful example of the dialectics between the individual and the cultural environment, the individual is formed by the cultural and the cultural from the individual The dialectics between the individual and the cultural environment

Joint action - individuals acting together So far we have been focusing on coordinating of individual actions. In order to theorize about the situation were several individuals work together, we may use the concept of “joint action” suggested by the American sociologist Herbert Blumer "joint action" refers to the collective form of action that is constituted by the fitting together individual lines of behavior.

Common identifier Neural realm Idiosyncratic Social realm Common Activity modalities Joint action temporalization spatialization stabilization So if we take the example of the guitar quartet again, the layout of the score is basically the same as before, only now arranged to mitigate the coordination of individual actions; it functions as what Blumer called a common identifier for fitting together the playing of each individual into a nice musical experience. And as before the common identifier signifies the same modalities

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 Neurobiological predispositions for coordinating actions Emerged during evolution of humankind Coordination as a mental complex functional system Contributing factors realized by groups of cortical zones Activity modalities Mental factors in coordination which can be manifested externally in artefacts attuned to the modalities Functional organs New structures in the brain resulting from interacting with artefacts Joint action The social constitution of the individual Conceptualizes the dialectics between the individual and the cultural environment

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

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

That’s it!