ABSTRACT
In the first three chapters, I have shown that human beings emerge as a result of learning in a social context: the mind and the self are learned phenomena, and people are socialized into the dominant culture. The whole process is a complicated one of learning through action and interaction with fellow human beings in the social-cultural milieu. People can experience the world directly through action and reaction, which represents primary experience, but they can also experience it indirectly through language in communicative interaction, which constitutes secondary experience. We will consider both forms of experience, and other forms of mediations, in this chapter. The purpose of the chapter is to focus on conscious action, so that its relationship to learning can be discussed later on. However, since the idea of action implies that there can be nonaction and since this may also be related to learning, or nonlearning, we will discuss it as well.
