The concept of action plays a central role in theories about what ‘thinking beings’ do. Examples of events which can be called actions are running, congratulating someone, reforming the legal system, and reflecting on a problem. In discussing examples such as these, it is useful to distinguish the problem of defining the notion of action from the problem of giving criteria for the linguistic ascription of action terms. A common way of defining action is to define it as a type of behavior in the following way. An instance of behavior is an action if and only if it is associated with an intention making the behavior into a means for some end (compare e.g. von Wright 1971).

References

Allwood, J.

1978 On the analysis of communicative action. Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics 38.

Austin, J. L.

1962 How to do things with words. Oxford University Press.

Brenner, M.

(ed.) 1978 The structure of action. Basil Blackwell.

Dilthey, W.

1883 Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Göttingen.

Von WrightG.

1971 Explanation and understanding. Routledge & Kegan Paul.