Cognitive Grounding of Activity Modalities

In this paper, we assume that the social reality and the communal meaning about this reality are reflected in each other. In object-related activity two kinds of congruent elements are constructed – objectivated elements oriented internally towards the human mind and objectified elements oriented externally towards the social reality. We propose that the mutual construction of mind and social reality proceeds along certain dimensions called activity modalities. Previously, the “objectification side” of these modalities has been grounded in the practice of developing large telecom systems. The purpose of this paper is to ground the “objectivation side” of the modalities. We claim that the “ontological categories” in the conceptual structure proposed by Jackendoff are compatible with the activity modalities. Thus, the contribution of this paper is a reinforced grounding of activity modalities as basic dimensions for coordinating human activity.