First, they fail to provide a convincing description of more than a small number of actions. Second, they misrepresent and oversimplify the relations that exist among an agent. Third, behaviorism and cognitivism have a common, inadequate conception of the nature of the world, of how reality is given to us. The object of study is the semantic or textual structure of everyday practical activity. What hermeneutic investigator studies is what people actually do when they are engaged in the everyday practical tasks of life.
Practical action is semantic or textual, rather than abstract or causal.
Practical activity is perspectival and holistic. The type of explanation that rationalist approaches seek is one of formal characterization. The laws are not logical rules but statements that express causal and empirical contingencies. The hermeneutic approach seeks to elucidate and make explicit our practical understanding of human actions by providing an interpretation of them. It is a historically situated approach, regarding explanation as first and foremost the giving of an account that is sensible in the way it addresses current interests and concerns, not a search for timeless and ahistorical laws and formal structures.