Information Technology Reference
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It is usually suggested that a goal-directed activity pursues a clear and unequivocal goal and
when the individual acknowledges that the outcome of the process meets its goal then the
activity completes. However, in my opinion, the idea of a clear and unequivocal goal seems
doubtful. Consider, for example, the situation with Experimenter and Subject above.
Obviously, that Subject unconsciously converted the goal “to find a pen” into the goal “to
find a pen in the pockets” and as a result, he is astonished by the proposal “to search a pen
in New York”, though this proposal is consistent with the initial request. Obviously, the
supposition “to search for a pen in another room” could astonish Subject to a lesser degree.
Similarly, Experimenter would be stunned, if Subject could pull a giant pen (for example, 50
centimeters in length) out of his bag though such a pen meets his request. On the other
hand, a pen of a very unusual design but a standard size could wonder Experimenter less.
Therefore, it can be assumed that Experimenter and Subject have some distributions of
anticipations regarding the result of their goal-directed activities rather than unambiguous
goals, but they acknowledge those anticipations only partially.
I suggest that any goal-directed activity is a distribution of anticipations regarding the goal
and means of the activity. The activation of some components of this distribution is
determined by particular aspects of the situation and the changes in the situation results in
the activation of slightly other components of the distribution. The construction and changes
in the distribution are based on the criterion of minimal construction costs.
A suggestion that the goal and means of a goal-directed process are some distributions leads
to two fundamental conclusions. First, this means that there is no simple procedure to define
when the goal is achieved because it may be difficult to find an unequivocal compliance
between the distributed representation of the goal and the output of the activity. Therefore,
the completion of an ongoing process is the result of the interaction between this process,
the situation, and the hierarchy of other processes. In other words, there is no special
comparator always able to compare the goal and the output of the activity and as a result,
people sometimes do not acknowledge that the result of an ongoing activity does not
respond to its initial goal. In my opinion, everyday experience is consistent with this
suggestion. Consider, for example, an individual who plans to buy necessary goods at the
supermarket. Sometimes the result of such activity is that an individual misses several
objects planned. Instead, she purchases other goods but thinks that the goal of the action is
achieved.
Second, the vague representation of the goal and method implies that the sustainability of
a goal-directed activity can be considered as its relatively autonomous attribute. Indeed,
sustainability seems a one-dimensional parameter and hence less variable than
multivariate distributions of goals and means that ought to meet the very complex
structure of the situation. A proposal of the autonomy of sustainability seems unusual
enough but perseveration, i.e., the involuntary and uncontrollable repetitions of a
particular action, which is a very frequent attribute of disturbances in goal-directed
behavior (Luria, 1966, 1972,1983; Joseph, 1999), clearly favors this proposal. Indeed,
perseveration can be considered as the activation of a sustainable component, which, if
the goal-directed system is damaged, persists regardless the influence of the situation or
other processes.
