What is an action?

If “in fact … the most essential part of the person is constituted by her actions”, as I maintained, with Korsgaard, in my last blog, what then is an action? When do we say that what constitutes us is not just a movement of our limbs, so a piece of behaviour, but something that we do? In order to make this clear I must first explain in what respect a simple bodily movement is different from an action. Now it is so that in my last blog I mentioned the characteristics of an action: It is guided by perception; it is guided by an intention; and the action is attributable to you. However, this needs further explanation, for isn’t it so that also behaviour is guided by a kind of experience in the sense that most behaviour not just happens but that it is a reaction to what happens to the behaving body or to what happens in its environment? And isn’t it so that often behaviour has a purpose and that it can – no must – be ascribed to a body for how else can we say that a body performs a piece of behaviour?
In order to make clear what the difference between an action and a piece of behaviour is, I take an extreme example. It’s extreme in the sense that the behaviour involved is not guided by a perception, anyhow, and that it has no apparent aim. I got this example from Frederick Stoutland (1976). We see a man nodding his head. Why does he nod? The simplest way to know is to ask him. If the man intentionally nodded his head, for example because he was greeting someone, he can tell you. However, if he nodded his head unknowingly, for example because he was falling asleep, he cannot give you a reason. In the first case we say that he performed an action and in the second case we say that what he did happened to him. But, alternatively, we can also say that in the first case the action had an intention for the man: The greeting is a greeting because the nodding man himself sees it as a greeting. However, if he nods his head when he is falling asleep, the nodding has not an intention for him. His head just moved and not more than that. In other words, in the first case the man who nodded can give it a sense, while he cannot when he nods while he is falling asleep. Only if the performer of a deed him or herself can give a sense to what s/he does, s/he performs an action; if s/he cannot, it is behaviour.
The distinction action-behaviour just described looks rather Cartesian, but in my PhD thesis I have explained that it isn’t. Here I want to ignore this problem. (You can also find some further explanation in my blog “Two levels of reality” and in other blogs (enter “meaning 1” or “meaning 0” in the search engine of my blog)). Here I want to concentrate on the significance of the distinction for the present problem. It’s true that there are pieces of behaviour that are guided by a perception and by an intention and that are – of course – performed by someone. For example (an example by Davidson), you come home at night and turn the light on and by doing so you warn a thief in another room of your house. Even though warning the thief is what you did by an intentional action (turning the light on) it’s not what you intentionally did, so it’s not your action (usually we call it a consequence of your action turning the light on). Only your doings that you yourself can give a sense (in the way described above) constitute you as a person. Doings that are merely pieces of behaviour and cannot be interpreted in this way do not constitute you as a person or contribute to your further development as a person (which doesn’t mean, of course, that they are not important for you (they can contribute to your animalistic side, for instance). I act so I am, because I can tell what I do.

Sources
- Davidson, Donald, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes”, in: Essays on actions and events, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; pp. 3-20.
- Stoutland, Frederick, “The causal theory of action”, in: Juha Manninen and Raimo Tuomela (eds.), Essays on explanation and understanding. Dordrecht: Reidel,1976; pp. 271‑304.
- Weg, Henk bij de, De betekenis van zin voor het begrijpen van handelingen. Kampen: Kok Agora, 1996; chapter IV.