Intentionality Of Action Research Articles

Исследование волевой сферы личности курсантов, обучающихся в образовательных организациях МВД России открытого и закрытого типов

The article presents the results of the study of the volitional sphere of employees of the internal Affairs bodies. With the help of comparative analysis the distinctive psychological features of volitional regulation of cadets and students studying in educational institutions of the Ministry of internal Affairs of Russia of open and closed types are revealed. The authors for the first time presented the characteristics of two types of educational institutions of the Ministry of internal Affairs of Russia (open and closed), influencing the features of the development of the volitional sphere of students. Based on the results of the study, it is concluded that when comparing the data of self-assessments of volitional qualities, the identity of the rank structure of volitional qualities in the tested educational organizations of open and closed types is found. When comparing the results obtained by using the method of the scale of control over the action of Kulya, it is revealed that orientation to the state (self — control) during realization of intention in action is stronger developed at cadets (listeners) of the educational organization of open type of training, and orientation to action (self-regulation) - at subjects of the educational organization of the closed type of training.

Increasing Stroke Recognition and Behavioral Intent to Call Emergency Management Services in a Vietnamese American Population

Objective: Serious complications of stroke, one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States can be mitigated if treated in a timely manner. Stroke outcome disparity in Vietnamese Americans (VAs) is attributable to pre-hospital delay. To increase acute stroke recognition and behavior intent to call Emergency Management Services (EMS) among VAs and their families, an evidence-based, culturally and linguisticallyappropriate educational intervention was pilot-tested. Methods: A convenience sample of 38 Vietnamese-speaking adults recruited from a free community clinic participated in a one-hour educational session. Pre and post intervention surveys were administered to assess knowledge and intent. Results: Differences in pre-test and post-test means were large for stroke knowledge (Cohen's D=2.39), associated emergency action (Cohen's D=2.57) and behavioral intent to call EMS (Cohen's D=0.94). Conclusion: A linguistically and culturally appropriate community-based education intervention may be effective in increasing stroke recognition and behavior intent to call EMS among VAs.

On the Role of Attention and Ascription in the Formation of Intentions within Behavior

This article explores the roots of action in behavior. Departing from the standard understanding of action as ‘intentional behavior’, we argue that this view is often based on the underestimation of the intentional structures that are already operative within behavior. Distinguishing between a broader and a narrower meaning of intentionality, we then elaborate on the processes that lead from the diffuse and operative intentionality of behavior to the focused intentionality of action. In order to properly appreciate these processes, we show that a reassessment of the phenomenon of attention – which takes into consideration its double (passive and active) nature as well as its social embedment – is required. Finally, we discuss the interplay between the obtained reframing of the genesis of intentional actions with the phenomenon of social ascription

G.E.M. Anscombe on the Analogical Unity of Intention in Perception and Action

G.E.M. Anscombe on the Analogical Unity of Intention in Perception and Action

What Is It Like to Be a Social Scientist?

ABSTRACTAlexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science is an effort to establish foundations of social science based on the ontology of modern physics. The quantum revolution has deservedly had repercussions in many sciences, but it is unwise to ground social science on physical theories, which are subject to constant revision. Additionally, despite its empirical success, there is no agreed-upon interpretation of quantum theory. Finally, even if there were, the random indeterminacy intrinsic to the quantum world cannot account for the intentionality of human action. Intentional agents act for reasons, not at random; nor are the reasons chosen at random.

Searle, Merleau-Ponty, Rizzolatti – three perspectives on Intentionality and action in sport

Actions in sport are intentional in character. They are directed at and are about something. This understanding of intentional action is common in continental as well as analytic philosophy. In sport philosophy, intentionality has received relatively little attention, but has more recently come on the agenda. In addition to what we can call ‘action intentionality,’ studied by philosophers like Searle, the phenomenological approach forwarded by Merleau-Ponty has opened up for a concept of ‘motor intentionality,’ which means a basic bodily attention and relatedness to the surrounding world. This conception is very relevant for the study of bodily actions as we find them in sports. However, there may be even deeper layers. The identification of mirror neurons in the brain has opened up for a type of almost ‘muscular intentionality’ whereby a simple bodily movement like grasping a cup to drink seems to be intentionally controlled and orchestrated. My goal in this paper is to discuss the relation between different levels of intentionality, such as a) ‘action intentionality’ operating at a conscious cognitive level, as for instance, when a player shoots a goal in football, b) the ‘motor intentionality’ directing the bodily movements when kicking the ball, and c) the muscular ‘mirror neuron intentionality’ of the goal keeper which is in operation when the keeper is seeing how the kicker’s foot hits the ball. How are these different layers of intentionality related and how can they give a more nuanced and integrated picture of the body–mind in action in sports?

The Role of Disgust in Homosexuality Judgments

Background: There is a continuing debate on whether emotions underlie moral judgments. Recent studies have shown that emotions, and particularly disgust, play an important role in moral judgments. Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of induced disgust on implicit and explicit judgments of homosexuality and to examine the relationship between those judgments and disgust sensitivity. Method: Sixty-four college students were presented with a neutral or disgust inducing slideshow and a scenario describing homosexual or heterosexual couples French kissing in public. Implicit and explicit disapproval of public French kissing was measured along with disgust sensitivity. Results: The findings revealed that participants in the induced disgust condition showed greater implicit, but not explicit, disapproval of both homosexual and heterosexual public French kissing, compared to those in the neutral conditions. Homosexual public French kissing was implicitly judged more harshly than heterosexual public French kissing. With regard to disgust sensitivity, results revealed its contribution to implicit judgements. Conclusion: Present findings add to the existing literature by showing that disgust plays a role in the formation of implicit judgments of sexual behavior. Theoretical considerations accounting for the role of disgust in relation to the intentionality of moral actions are discussed.

Facilitation effect of observed motor deviants in a cooperative motor task: Evidence for direct perception of social intention in action.

Spatiotemporal parameters of voluntary motor action may help optimize human social interactions. Yet it is unknown whether individuals performing a cooperative task spontaneously perceive subtly informative social cues emerging through voluntary actions. In the present study, an auditory cue was provided through headphones to an actor and a partner who faced each other. Depending on the pitch of the auditory cue, either the actor or the partner were required to grasp and move a wooden dowel under time constraints from a central to a lateral position. Before this main action, the actor performed a preparatory action under no time constraint, consisting in placing the wooden dowel on the central location when receiving either a neutral ("prêt"-ready) or an informative auditory cue relative to who will be asked to perform the main action (the actor: "moi"-me, or the partner: "lui"-him). Although the task focused on the main action, analysis of motor performances revealed that actors performed the preparatory action with longer reaction times and higher trajectories when informed that the partner would be performing the main action. In this same condition, partners executed the main actions with shorter reaction times and lower velocities, despite having received no previous informative cues. These results demonstrate that the mere observation of socially driven motor actions spontaneously influences the low-level kinematics of voluntary motor actions performed by the observer during a cooperative motor task. These findings indicate that social intention can be anticipated from the mere observation of action patterns.

The Concept of Action and the Relevance of Intentional Collective Action in History

The article starts with the theses that it is the very concept of action that is at stake in many debates between philosophers and historians. Whereas in philosophy actions are conceptualized by reference to their beginning, namely their motives or intentions, in historiography the consequences of actions are much more in the focus of interest. Especially the debate about the dualism of structure and agency is characterized by different concepts of action. In the article it is argued that this dualism can be overcome by stressing the intentionality of collective actions. First, a concept of action is developed against the background of a theory of intentionality. Second, intentional collective action is distinguished from individual and social actions and an analysis of a collective we-intention is proposed. Third, it is argued that the development of social structures has to be understood by reference to intentional collective actions.

Revealing humans' sensorimotor functions with electrical cortical stimulation.

Direct electrical stimulation (DES) of the human brain has been used by neurosurgeons for almost a century. Although this procedure serves only clinical purposes, it generates data that have a great scientific interest. Had DES not been employed, our comprehension of the organization of the sensorimotor systems involved in movement execution, language production, the emergence of action intentionality or the subjective feeling of movement awareness would have been greatly undermined. This does not mean, of course, that DES is a gold standard devoid of limitations and that other approaches are not of primary importance, including electrophysiology, modelling, neuroimaging or psychophysics in patients and healthy subjects. Rather, this indicates that the contribution of DES cannot be restricted, in humans, to the ubiquitous concepts of homunculus and somatotopy. DES is a fundamental tool in our attempt to understand the human brain because it represents a unique method for mapping sensorimotor pathways and interfering with the functioning of localized neural populations during the performance of well-defined behavioural tasks.

Przestępstwo nielegalnego przekroczenia granicy w ujęciu historycznym, teoretycznym i praktycznym

Przestępstwo nielegalnego przekroczenia granicy w ujęciu historycznym, teoretycznym i praktycznym

A Control Framework of Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeleton based on Neuro-Muscular-Skeletal Model

A control system framework of lower extremity rehabilitation exoskeleton robot is presented. It is based on the Neuro-Musculo-Skeletal biological model. Its core composition moudle, the motion intent parser part, mainly comprises of three distinct parts. The first part is signal acquisition of surface electromyography (sEMG) that is the summation of motor unit action potential (MUAP) starting from central nervous system (CNS). sEMG can be used to decode action intent of operator to make the patient actively participate in specific training. As another composition part, a muscle dynamics model that is comprised of activation and contraction dynamic model is developed. It is mainly used to calculate muscle force. The last part is the skeletal dynamic model that is simplified as a linked segment mechanics. Combined with muscle dynamic model, the joint torque exerted by internal muscles can be exported, which can be ued to do a exoskeleton controller design. The developed control framework can make exoskeleton offer assistance to operators during rehabilitation by guiding motions on correct training rehabilitation trajectories, or give force support to be able to perform certain motions. Though the presentation is orientated towards the lower extremity exoskeleton, it is generic and can be applied to almost any part of the human body.

Do intentions for action penetrate visual experience?

Do intentions for action penetrate visual experience?

Identity and collective action among European Kurds

This research investigated the role of group-based anger and efficacy in explaining the effects of subgroup (ethnic) and common (European) identity on collective action among Kurds in Europe responding to different types of disadvantage. Whereas stronger Kurdish identity positively predicted intentions for collective action (mediated by anger and efficacy), stronger common ingroup identity was negatively related to collective action intentions. This effect occurred primarily when structural disadvantage was salient, not when attention was drawn to a specific incident of disadvantage, and was mediated by anger but not efficacy. The findings complement recent work demonstrating that intergroup harmony can undermine social change, suggesting that stronger common-group identification reduces collective action by reducing minority-group members' sensitivity to potential bias against them.

There are No Primitive We-Intentions

John Searle’s account of collective intentions in action appears to have all the theoretical pros of the non-reductivist view on collective intentionality without the metaphysical cons of committing to the existence of group minds. According to Searle, when we collectively intend to do something together, we intend to cooperate in order to reach a collective goal. Intentions in the first-person plural form therefore have a particular psychological form or mode, for the we-intender conceives of his or her intended actions as singular contributions by means of which – or: by way of which – a collective goal is pursued. Accordingly, we-intentions are held to have a psychological mode with a “collective goal by means of (viz. by way of) singular contribution” structure, which makes them primitive and irreducible to intentions in the I-form. It is further contended that, albeit primitive and irreducible, we-intentions are not the mental states of an alleged group mind but always of an individual’s mind. This paper targets Searle’s claim of irreducibility by developing an argument whose aim is to show that, pace Searle, it is possible to track the idea of intentions with a psychological mode structured in terms of “collective goal by means of (viz. by way of) singular contribution” back to the concept of intentions in the I-form. The argument mainly relies on the idea that Searle’s technical expressions “being a collective goal by means of singular contribution intention in action” or “being a collective goal by way of singular contribution intention in action” are susceptible to conceptual analysis. The upshot of this analysis is that we-intentions can be reduced to complex bundles of mental states, all of which come in the first-person singular form. If this argument is sound, Searlean we-intentions do not belong to a primitive kind of mental states.

Changing Climate, Changing Attitude?

KLIMA X, a climate change exhibition adapted for the Finnish Science Center Heureka, promotes climate change mitigation by offering extraordinary opportunities for immersion and physical engagement. The case study presented here investigated how KLIMA X contributed to a change in young people's attitudes towards climate change. A mixed method was applied by combining a scientific field experiment and Personal Meaning Mapping. An observation of multiple facets of attitude revealed that the intention to act against climate change did not increase significantly even though other facets of attitude like emotional involvement and knowledge did. Interestingly, those students that both visited the exhibition and had a follow-up class showed a decreased intent to act against climate change compared to the group that only experienced the exhibition. Those students whose action intent increased significantly were likely to be personally interested in Earth Sciences, prefer an abstract/linguistic learning style and feel that their actions would be acknowledged by peers.

Intentions in the Light of Goals

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the various steps of goal-processing and intention creation, as the final outcome of goal-driven action generation. Intention theory has to be founded on goal theory: intentions require means-end reasoning and planning, conflict resolution, coherence. The process of intention formation and intentional action execution is strictly based on specific sets of beliefs (predictions, evaluations, calculation of costs, responsibility beliefs, competence, etc.). The origin of an intention is not necessarily a “desire” (which is just a kind of goal). Intention is a two-layered goal-structure: the intended action(s) to be executed, and the intended outcome motivating that action—with two distinct kinds of “failure”. This belief-goal perspective also allows to examine two stages/types of intention, and the relations and differences between intention “in agenda” (future directed) and intention under execution (intention in action). I will argue that the will is much more than the intention driving an intentional action. I will also claim that intentions are not there just for motivating and regulating intentional actions (from the motor level to more complex behaviors), but that they play also several other important roles.

Beyond irrelevant actions: Understanding the role of intentionality in children’s imitation of relevant actions

The current research examines how 3- to 5-year-old children use intentionality to understand the causal structure of objects in an observational learning context. Two studies are presented in which the intentionality of relevant actions was manipulated during toy retrieval demonstrations and contrasted with whether these actions remained relevant or were rendered irrelevant for the child’s turn. Of interest were whether children would imitate the first action when it was demonstrated intentionally but rendered irrelevant and how they would approach the first action when it was demonstrated accidentally and remained relevant. Findings revealed that children did not align themselves with the demonstrator’s intentions in Study 1, when apparatuses were transparent, but did follow the demonstrator’s intentions in Study 2, when apparatuses were opaque. This suggests that when causality of relevant actions is unambiguous, children use their own causal reasoning abilities, but ambiguous causal structure prompts children to defer to a demonstrator. It is suggested that opaque relevant actions may represent a real life parallel to irrelevant actions, the imitation of which is motivated by inherent ambiguity.

Distinct electrophysiological potentials for intention in action and prior intention for action

The role of conscious intention in relation to motoric movements has become a major topic of investigation in neuroscience. Traditionally, reports of conscious intention have been compared to various features of the readiness-potential (RP) – an electrophysiological signal that appears before voluntary movements. Experiments, however, tend to study intentions in immediate relation to movements (proximal intentions), thus ignoring other aspects of intentions such as planning or deciding in advance of movement (distal intentions). The current study examines the difference in electrophysiological activity between proximal intention and distal intention, using electroencephalography (EEG). Participants had to form an intention to move and then wait 2.5 sec before performing the actual movement. In this way, the electrophysiological activity related to forming a conscious intention was separated from any confounding activity related to automated motor activity. This was compared to conditions in which participants had to act as soon as they had the intention and a condition where participants acted upon an external cue 2.5 sec prior to movement. We examined the RP for the three conditions. No difference was found in early RP, but late RP differed significantly depending on the type of intention. In addition, we analysed signals during a longer time-interval starting before the time of distal intention formation until after the actual movement concluded. Results showed a slow negative electrophysiological “intention potential” above the mid-frontal areas at the time participants formed a distal intention. This potential was only found when the distal intention was self-paced and not when the intention was formed in response to an external cue.

Intentionality in Reference and Action

This essay asks whether there is a relation between action-serving and meaning-serving intentions. The idea that the intentions involved in meaning and action are nominally designated alike as intentionalities does not guarantee any special logical or conceptual connections between the intentionality of referential thoughts and thought-expressive speech acts with the intentionality of doing. The latter category is typified by overt physical actions in order to communicate by engaging in speech acts, but also includes at the origin of all artistic and symbolic expression such cerebral and linguistic doings as thinking propositional thoughts. There are exactly four possibilities by which meaning and action intentionalities might be related to be systematically investigated. Meaning-serving and action-serving intentionalities, topologically speaking, might exclude one another, partially overlap with one another, or subsume one in the other or the other in the one. The theoretical separation of the two ostensible categories of intendings is criticized, as is their partial overlap, in light of the proposal that thinking and artistic and symbolic expression are activities that favor the inclusion of paradigm meaning-serving intentions as among a larger domain of action-serving intentions. The only remaining alternative is then developed, of including action-serving intentions reductively in meaning-serving intentions, and is defended as offering in an unexpected way the most cogent universal reductive ontology in which the intentionality of doing generally relates to the specific intentionality of referring in thought to the objects of predications, and of its artistic and symbolic expression.