p.30-31 my purpose in general is to explore some aspects of the view
that, instead of taking human nature as something 'fixed', as 'already there', as 'existing independently of anything which
we might do or think about', we take changefulness as the basic content of humankind. What if 'human
nature' is a continuously changing and developing artifact, a 'product' constructed and reconstructed in
the process of people's interactions with one another?
p.32 Viewing human action not as a sequence of well-defined
events but as something which develops in time, which involves a passage from something less to more definite,
emphasizes the fact that while we can, on occasions, act deliberately, according to rule, plan, or script, and so on, we need
not always necessarily do so. Often we act simply upon the basis of our ‘thoughts and feelings’
we say, in terms of the situation 'as we saw it’.
p.32 each sentence of what I have
struggled to write so far has been determined, of course, by my following of many 'rules', but it also expresses a certain
aspect of a-situation-as-I-understand-it, and seems to be 'required' by that situation...Thus each sentence both helps
to express or to constitute that 'situation' and must be understood in the context of it, as a part is related to
the whole; each sentence helps to create the 'worlds' in which it appears. All truly personal actions have
this quality... Many social or joint actions have it too: utterances in a dialog, moves in a game...
in fact any action in an interaction in which an individual must interweave his actions in with the unpredictable
actions of others. Such interaction involves a shaping or formative process; the participants
have to build up their respective lines of conduct by constant interpretation of each other's ongoing lines of action
as indicated in their expressions. In the course of such as process a social world can be created and each
action understood in its context.
p.33 human action... is seen as a formative process conducted by the actors themselves
(actors make their own acts); it is not seen as produced by a variety of external factors... but as constructed by
actors by what they take into account... as a process of building up joint actions, people and groups exerting
their influence upon one another not directly but indirectly through interpretation.
p.34 Gauld and I (Gauld and Shotter 1977) suggested that intentionality is a fundamental and irreducible
feature, or better, a presupposition of all thought, all conceptual activity, and all action.
p.38 we may take 'intentionality' to be an already given property of a world of form-producing processes
p.39 All mental phenomena, no matter how primitive, no matter
how vague, are intentional; intentional phenomena cannot be derived from phenomena which in essence are non-intentional,
action cannot be derived from non-action. Well articulated processes simply have their origins in less well
articulated processes of the same kind; not in some other kind of phenomena altogether.
p.39 In the passage from the less to the more well-realized something is formed, or perhaps better,
forming occurs... in the original meaning of the word 'form' in ancient Greek philosophy; as a verb it meant,
according to Bohm, an inner forming activity, which is the cause of the growth of things, and of the development
and differentiation of their various essential forms.
p.40 In the same way that an intention is said to 'contain' or 'point to' its object, so an acorn
may be said to 'contain' or 'point to' an oak tree. But an acorn certainly does not contain an oak tree, or anything
like it, even in miniature. It is best seen as the structured medium or means through which, in interaction with
its surroundings, an oak tree forms, developing itself as the structured means for its own further development or growth.
Furthermore, although an acorn specifies the production of an oak tree from it, and not any other kind of
tree, it does not specify the tree that grows from it exactly (number of branches, twigs, leaves, and so
on), for the tree grows in unpredictable interaction with its surroundings... An intention, then, as I will
suggest at greater length in a moment, may be thought of as a specified yet further specifiable means through which
one can work towards an end; its already realized aspects limiting and specifying what one may yet do in the attempt to more
fully realize it.
p.45 the model for the realization of an intention offered has two aspects or components to it. One component is the
initial 'feelings of tendency' from which the expression of one's action seems to issue... The other component of the model
is a formative process, an inner forming activity that is essential to what a person's intention is, that is, its already
specified but yet further specifiable nature.
p.47-48 actions are initiated and/or guided or controlled by agents, by people themselves... people are treated
as the authors of their own actions.
p.50 Consensual understanding is achieved when, in negotiation with those whose actions one
is attempting to understand... a joint 'way of going on' from the action or actions in question is constructed
and agreed (Habermas 1972).
p.51 A sphere of autonomous, skillful action... In such a sphere, as Hollis (1977) remarks, 'rational
action is its own explanation'
p.52 as Hollis (1977) shows, actors who are creatures of rules are still passive in the sense that the actions
they perform are not 'their' actions.
p.54-55 I want to make two interrelated points: the first is simply that in
the world of practical human affairs, men must often interlace their actions in with those of others, hence, what
they as individuals desire and what actually happens are often two quite different things... As
the results of joint action cannot be traced back to the intentions or desires of particular individuals (as we normally assume
the products of actions can) they can take on a seemingly 'objective' and 'external' quality... The second point is that unintended
though the results of joint action may be, such action remains, nonetheless, intentional, in the
sense of ‘pointing beyond itself’ already discussed at length above. Such action ‘points to’
a realm (or realms) of other possible actions, to a ‘world of meaning or reference’ which seems to make
its appearance even as the action occurs, and can thus function as the context in which the sense of the action is understood
and a reply to it formulated. The reply may transform, or specify the already specified context yet further, and so on,
until a common or joint product of the exchange is formed which is the responsibility of neither of the parties to
its construction.
p.56 Merleau-Ponty (1962, p.416)... says:
Ahead of what I can see and perceive, there is, it is true, nothing
actually visible, but my world is carried forward by lines of intentionality which trace out in advance at least the style
of what is to come. ..Husserl uses the terms protentions and retentions for the intentionalities which anchor
me to an environment. They do not run from a central I, but from my perceptual field itself, so to speak, which draws
along in its wake its own horizon of retentions, and bites into the future with its own protentions.
p.62 As interaction proceeds that structure is transformed accordingly, and one's perceptions of it change.
