Action potential

“ In a rational action we, by a preliminary effort, obtain this knowledge—we make the requisite plan. In the instinctive action this knowledge is innate; the plan is ready formed in the mind, requiring no premeditation, no deliberation to determine the mode of action. In the rational actions we acquire the knowledge of these plans for ourselves, and it is the preliminary effort to determine what to do, and how to do it—to find the mode of action—that tasks our intellectual abilities. ”

“ But for the realisation of these instinctive ends, whether in their crude or acquired forms, the finding and the establishment of systems of means in every case is necessary, and in order that they may be realised man must acquire the requisite capacities for action. ”

“ An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in action, which is necessarily causal, or causative." This feeling of energy or force, inherent in an act of will, is knowledge a priori; assurance, prior to experience, that we have the power of causing effects. ”

“ They are constituent parts of human nature. How we are actuated, when we feel them, is matter of experience, which every one knows within himself. Their action is what it is, whether they are simple or compound. ”

“ His mind has acquired the power of observing, reasoning, reflecting, judging, and acting; and he feels that, like a pendulum, the action of his mind is capable of giving activity, force, and value, to a large body of well-compacted machinery, of which he is a part. ”

“ But whatever the limitations or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake. ”

“ It is in accordance with modern scientific knowledge, to view the mind, not as a collection of distinct faculties, but rather as a single kind of power, like each of the physical forces, having several different modes of action ”

“ The purposes of conduct are to be determined in the presence of a field of alternative possibilities of action. The ends of conduct are not to be determined in advance, but in view of the interests that fuller knowledge of conditions awaken. So there appears a conception of determining the field that shall be quite independent of given values. A real world which consists not of an unchanged universe, but of a universe which may be continually readjusted according to the problems arising in the consciousness of the individuals within society. ”

“ Let us, therefore, first bend all our energies to the smaller of these tasks, thinking only of the larger tasks which lie beyond as incentives to a determined line of immediate action, and as a means of realising the great value of little things if done in the right manner and in the right spirit. ”

“ Thus the only activity which we know intuitively is that of consciousness; for we have only indeterminate ideas of corporeal activity. The words action, reaction, force, resistance, impulse, express only indeterminate relations, and represent something fixed and determinate, only in their effects. ”

“ And since it is by these laws, combined with the facts of each particular case, that the whole of the phenomena of human action and feeling are produced, it is on these that every rational attempt to construct the science of human nature in the concrete, and for practical purposes, must proceed. ”

“ It follows that Thought and Discourse, in furnishing us with Knowledge, must themselves be active, and must in some way or other reproduce the activity of Nature. Thought, in short, is an Activity which reproduces the activity of things, the activity in which the phenomena of Nature arise.
But how do we arrive at any apprehension of Natural Action? What informs us that Nature is a potency ever operative? What suggests to us [61] the conception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea of potent action because we are ourselves active beings. ”

“ He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish. ”

“ The activity is itself the substantial fact of the process, and the desires under whose guidance the action takes place are circumstances of temperament which determine the specific direction in which the activity will unfold itself in the given case. ”

“ Summary.—An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to consciousness and made a factor in determining present observation and choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an activity has become intelligent. Specifically it means foresight of the alternative consequences attendant upon acting in a given situation in different ways, and the use of what is anticipated to direct observation and experiment. A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim which is imposed upon a process of action from without. ”

“ The difficulty with a statement of aim in terms of the harmonious development of the abilities or capacities possessed by the individual is found in the lack of any criterion by which we may determine the desirability of any particular kind of development or action. We may well ask for what purpose are the capacities or abilities of the individual to be developed. It is possible to develop an ability or capacity for lying, for stealing, or for fighting without a just cause. ”

“ It Is quite confidently believed that these forward movements in every branch of intellectual pursuit, these combined efforts of the intellect, in peering into the occult side of material things, are in response to the evolutionary needs of the Thinker, and in addition, are the evidences, and shall in time be the cause, of the development of an additional set of faculties. Function, or the performance of acts, determines faculty or the power of action and ultimately the organ itself. ”

“ The phenomena of purely subjective mental action, are, however, of little practical importance to mankind when compared with the action of the subjective mind modified by the co-ordinate power of the objective intelligence. ”

“ Not less important than the manner of reaction is the differing susceptibility to particular kinds of excitation; the character resulting from the mutual action and reaction of individual and world depends upon the manner in which the individual adapts himself to circumstances, ennobles and disciplines himself. ”

“ That there is but one cause known to us experimentally, which can determine the operation of force towards the attainment of a preconditioned result, none will deny—namely the purposive action of an intelligent will, as known to us in ourselves and in our fellow-men;—and to Will accordingly, immensely more intelligent than ours, has been ascribed the establishment of those laws which the highest intellects of our race are able partially and dimly to apprehend. ”

“ The substitution of action based on knowledge for action based on feeling is made possible in the individual and in society by the development of higher centers of control and the power of choice through inhibition and legislation. ”

“ They introduce values—the materials and influences—only as means of determining the presence of attitudes, of calling them into action, of modifying them, and of giving them application in different fields. They consciously introduce change on the basis of some hypothesis and measure the effect of the new influences on personality development. ”

“ Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. ”

“ Each class as we defined it in behavioristic terms turned out to imply an action-tendency that played an important part in the behavior of human beings while in the pursuit of the objects they desire, or in the attainment of their ends, however variously conceived or projected. Let us, then, bring the whole matter to a focus by saying that whenever we [Pg 115] describe a behavior situation in which the dominant feature is the controlling and directing of human energies, the employment of technique to further man’s purposes, or the attaining of any good whatsoever, the critical word is “right.” ”

“ For a purpose is the tendency to realize some external action which is useful or indispensable to the life-existence of the particular individual being. The tendency to the maintenance of a definite activity in opposition to the onset of disturbing forces of the environment in order to restore the lost equilibrium, may be considered as the universal formula for purposive life in general. ”

“ We may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we have, as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly, as another force. ”

“ An act of the mind, of which we are conscious as such, is called freedom. An act, without consciousness of action, is called spontaneity. Remember that I by no means demand of thee an immediate consciousness of the act as such, but only that on subsequent reflection thou shouldst discover that there must have been an act. The higher question, what it is that prevents any such state of indecision, or any consciousness of our act, will undoubtedly be afterwards solved. ”

“ There must be effort back of the stimulus to initiate it; and back of the effort there must be purpose; and back of all there must be will-power to stabilize and to make continuous the purpose in a series of intelligent efforts. The detached question of will, imagination, and personality, is quite another matter. ”

“ And this method of operating belongs to primary action; for it is the same thing to produce one or many simple natures, except that man is more confined and restricted in his operations, if many be required, on account of the difficulty of uniting many natures together. ”

“ We insist such ends may not be formulated until we know the field of possible action. The formulation of the ends is essentially a social undertaking and seems to follow the statement of the field of possible conduct, while in fact the statement of the possible field of conduct is actually dependent on the push toward action. A moving end which is continually reconstructing itself follows upon the continually enlarging field of opportunities of conduct. ”

“ Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress; ”

“ Still, on the whole, the class of actions called duties exhibit both characteristics: they are not only actions, against the performance of which there are strong natural inclinations, but also actions of which the most obvious effects, commonly considered goods, are effects on other people. Expedient actions, on the other hand, are actions to which strong natural inclinations prompt us almost universally, and of which all the most obvious effects, commonly considered good, are effects upon the agent. ”

“ Authoritative principles of action, such as self-love and conscience, are no more psychologically on a par with appetites and desires than thought and reason are on a par with the association of ideas.
Relation of Body and Mind.
47. The question of subjective initiative leads us naturally to that concerning the connexion of mind and organism, to which Parallelism. we now proceed. In development and efficiency, in the intensity and complexity of their processes, mind and brain keep invariably and exactly in line together. ”

“ For the mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead. ”

“ All our development consists in the increasing consciousness of this connection, which enables us to apply the higher power to whatever purpose we may have in hand, not merely in the hope that it may respond, but with the certain knowledge that by the law of its own nature it [203] is bound to do so, and likewise with the knowledge that by the same law it is bound also to guide us to the selection of right objects and right methods. ”

“ The moment we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action, the whole situation clears up. ”

“ It is by means of these obstructions to free activity that our experience is denoted, and by reference to these that it is cognised. Indeed, Activity itself as we know it [16] depends upon and presupposes the existence of these cohering masses.
Thus the operation of Natural Force and the constraint and limitation which are thereby imposed upon our activity appear at once to determine the conditions of life and to furnish the fundamental implements of Knowledge.
We cannot overleap the barriers by which Life is constrained. ”

“ The categorical imperative which declares an action to be objectively necessary in itself without reference to any purpose, i.e., without any other end, is valid as an apodeictic (practical) principle. ”

“ Every purposed movement is preceded and inspired by thought.
Such reasoned control, by indwelling mind, may be undetectable and inconceivable to a low order of intelligence, being totally masked by the material garment; and the purpose underlying our activity may have to be inferred, by such intelligence, with as great difficulty as we feel in detecting indwelling Purpose amid the spontaneous operations of Nature. ”