On the nature of the motoraction controversy

Martin: Michael, you have got the wrong idea about representation. MacNamara: That's what I'm trying to tell him. A representation is a construct of a scientist that lets us know the world. Now what one knows is the world; one doesn't know the schema nor the representation …. Something like representation must form something in my head. I don't know it directly, but I know of it. Consider meaning: I talk about the world and there must be some way in which the world out there gets tied up in my world. It's in our minds. Member of Audience: What's the relationship between a presentation and a representation? Mace: The way that Martin talked about affordance, he was using good English, but he was not using affordance the way Gibson would. For Gibson, there are very severe restrictions on the notion of affordance, even though it's certainly not a very precise term as yet. (From the Gibson-Shaw discussion, in W.B. Weimer & D.S. Palermo - 1982, Eds. -, Cognition and Symbolic Processes, Vol. 2, 229. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, italics in original. Summary It is proposed to simply coin the debate between motor and action theorists : ‘The’ motor-action controversy. The aim of the present Chapter is to investigate the ‘nature’ of this controversy. After a short historical introduction action theorists' characterizations of the controversy are summarized. The idea presented by motor theorists that action theorists erected a ‘straw man’ is shown to be unproductive. It is argued that the difference between the two approaches cannot be sufficiently defined as one either in ‘domain’ or in ‘level of analysis’. Although negative conceptual demarcations are to the point, to date no positive conceptual demarcation is tenable. A developmental view on science is presented and it is concluded that, at present, the differences between the two approaches can only be understood with reference to thehistoricaldimension of both. ‘Loose’ demarcations of alogicaltype may be apposite but are, from the viewpoint of philosophy of science, not very useful. It is by acknowledging the historical dimension that philosophy of science may serve to direct further research in the field of complex movement behaviour, whereas the field itself offers a case study to evaluate philosophy of science.