CONCEPT
Mimeomorphic and Polimorphic Action
Collins and Kusch's 1998 distinction between actions whose correctness depends on copying surface behavior and actions whose correctness depends on reading social context — the analytical axis on which the entire question of AI competence turns.
The distinction between mimeomorphic and polimorphic action is the load-bearing concept of Collins's engagement with artificial intelligence. A mimeomorphic action is one whose successful performance consists in reproducing the same surface form across instances — stamping out identical parts, executing a chess move that follows from an evaluation function. A polimorphic action is one whose correct performance varies with the social situation in which it occurs — the same physical motion is a different action at a funeral and at a party. Collins's claim, sustained across three decades, is that most consequential human practice is polimorphic, and that machines, however sophisticated their pattern-matching, operate in the mimeomorphic register. They reproduce the surface of expert behavior without participating in the social practices that give the behavior its meaning.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The terminology, introduced in The Shape of Actions (1998), is deliberately technical because the ordinary vocabulary of 'behavior' and 'action' collapses