Mike Oren
Plans & Situated Actions (1994; orig. 1987)
Lucy Suchman
Why Questions: Why do artificially intelligent machines designed to interact with humans fail
when based on models of planned action?
Motivational-mechanisms: Intent can serve a practical purpose insofar as they are general and
do not try to address each step toward that intent (38). Planned action follows an incorrect model
where plans are thought of as a prerequisite to action; however, they are an artifact of reasoning
about action (that has occurred), and not a generative mechanism of action (27 and 39). Plans do
exist before action occurs, but their role is not in determining action but in orienting people to the
situation where action will occur in vague, flexible terms rather than strict step-by-step terms
(52). Actors do not have explicit rules and procedures, rather when situated action becomes
problematic then rules and procedures are explicated through deliberation and action and only in
the process of working out a solution does situated action ever become accountable to rules and
procedures—which normally are not invoked when taking action (54). Mutual intelligibility is
formed by common practices that “produce typifications of which schemes and rules are made”
rather than the rules and schemes themselves (57-58).
Key terms:
 Planned/Purposeful Action – Posits that “[m]utual intelligibility is a matter of the reciprocal
recognizability of our plans, enabled by common conventions for the expression of intent,
and shared knowledge about typical situations and appropriate actions” (27). Heavily
grounded in traditional Western philosophy of rational action.
o Planning Model – “takes the significance of action to be derived from plans, and
identifies the problem for interaction as their recognition and coordination” (28).
Artificial machines such as Shakey and NOAH showed that planning based on a single
actor’s actions alone was an inadequate model for realistic action (28-33)
o Speech Act Theory – “Accounts for the recognizability of plans or intentions by
proposing conventional rules for expression” (28).
o Shared Background Knowledge – “common resource that stands behind individual
action and gives it social meaning” (28).
 Situated Action – (emphasis mine) “course of action can always be projected or
reconstructed in terms of prior intentions and typical situations, the prescriptive significance
of intentions for situated action is inherently vague. The coherence of situated action is tied
in essential ways not to individual predispositions or conventional rules but to local
interactions contingent on the actor’s particular circumstance” (27-28).
o Plans exist not to determine action but to orient action in order to “obtain the best
possible position from which to use those embodied skills on which […] success
depends” (52). Plans help the social actor mitigate their known limitations given the
situation in order to obtain their goal. However, the goal may not be determined until
after it has been reached (52).
o Rationality is a post-action occurrence, where social actors rationalize their actions as a
plan toward the goal after they have reached the goal even if the plan did not exist
beforehand (52-53).
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o Indexicality of language – “typically is used to distinguish those classes of
expressions whose meaning is conditional on the situation of their use in this way
from those” (59). Language is conditional on what the language-user means in the
context of speaking—all language has an indexical relationship with the embedded
world (60).
o Structure is a property (result of) situated action; so like rationality structure only tells
an effect/property of mutual intelligibility and not the underlying cause (67).

Social Facts – “typifications of common-sense reasoning […] to be taken as social science’s
topic” rather than social science’s resources (57).
Planned / Purposeful Action
Actors plan out a step-by-step
process to reach an intended
goal.
All action is rational and
occurs within a process to
reach a goal.
Language is used to convey
plans to others based on a
repository of shared
knowledge that one does not
need to discuss.
Good for practical, common
sense understanding of action
and interaction. Inadequate for
a science of understanding
action.
Universal truth claim – true
regardless of circumstances.
Situated Action
Social actors do make plans but only to set an intent within a
given situation—often the intent is not known until after a goal
has been obtained and rationalization occurs after the fact.
Rationality is an illusion based on actors being able to
rationalize before or after an event while the actual action
occurs within the context of a situation where actors follow one
path that may have been previously chosen and then adjust
based on the situation to maximize their ability to reach an
intended goal given their embodied properties. Note: This part
seems a little fuzzy to me, since her use of maximization throws
me into thoughts of rational choice, but I think the difference is
that the maximization isn’t thought through—it is automatic
based on the bodies known limitations (e.g. you know you have
to turn to the side to make your way through a crowd
intuitively).
Language is contingent on the situation that social actors find
themselves in and the unspoken elements are referents to
indexical elements of the situation that the language is being
used within.
According to Suchman, this is the way to understand the
meaning of action and the underlying means that science must
study to determine how mutual intelligibility occurs.
Truth exists but only within the situation and circumstances
and the response of social actors to the situation and each
other’s understanding of the situation and context.
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