Selection for Action

"Many fruit are within reach, and clearly visible, yet for each individual reach of the hand, for each act of plucking, information about just one of them must govern the particular pattern and direction of movements. The disposition of the other apples, already encoded by the brain, must be in some way temporarily decoupled from the direct control of reaching, though it may of course still influence the action ..."

Successful action requires ...

• Not just moving in a certain way, but also
• Selecting the right object to move toward, and
• Selecting the right effector (body part) to do this.

Put another way ...

• Successful non-reflexive action requires solving the Many-Many Problem.
• This problem arises because in any given case there are always many possible targets (Do I choose this apple or that one?); and many possible ways to engage with them (Do I use my right hand or my left?).
• Skilled action requires coupling inputs to outputs in the right way, and this involves a form of selection, since not all the possible couplings can be realized at once.