to branch off here on this specific point (I'll try to respond at the thread tip to your other replies, also thanks for engaging in discussion here!):
You weren't intending to define reading, but in asserting that "memorize the page" is a means-axis variation, not a task-axis one, you're implicitly setting the scope of definitions you'll allow to be treated as "definitions of reading" very broadly. Perhaps you're offering a meta-definition, not a definition? But your choice of meta-definition privileges attainment in the following way.
Let's suppose I give a "Reading test" by setting up a maze with written directions about the path to the center. I claim that anyone who makes it to the center has passed the test, and has "attained reading." One participant is a cat, and climbs over the walls, ending up at the center. I conclude that "cats can read."
I think we'd both agree on this instance the conclusion is not warranted, and that this particular test needs to come with some means-restrictions in order to even count as a "test of reading" rather than a "test of reading or climbing". The cat's solution is a task-axis deviation from "reading", not a means-axis deviation. But in asserting the task-axis bounds I'm willing to tolerate, I implicitly allow various deviations in approach within those bounds to be considered means-variations. I guess this is a long way of saying "I don't think your task and means axes are really orthogonal" and that "your categorization of memorization as a means-axis variation and not a task-axis variation implies that the way you measure attainment is uncomfortably broad to me."
This reflects well on your paper actually, because I'm finding the terms you've set up to be extremely useful in making this argument, even as I'm disagreeing with some of the nuances.
I've been inspired by the writing of this post with a more robust idea, but it will take me more time to get that one firmed up.
