Is waiting an action?

Bus stop in Paris

My readers may have noticed that I have become increasingly interested in “boring” questions of daily life, such as waiting. Waiting is often boring for those who are waiting, so many who wait seek distraction using their smartphones. But is waiting also philosophically boring? We spend much time on it, so from that point of view waiting should be an important theme in philosophy!
On the face of it, waiting seems a passive affair: it happens to you. Suppose, you have an appointment with a doctor, and she is not yet there. Maybe you arrived early or she is still busy with another patient. Then you have no option but to wait. Or you arrive early at the bus stop or the bus is late. Also then you can only wait, although it is not your choice. It just happens. On the other hand, when you go to a doctor or want to take a bus, no doubt you take it into account that you must wait. In that sense it is not something that just happens to you. It is not an accident like a car that hits you while you are walking to your appointment or to the bus stop. It belongs to having an appointment or taking a bus, though, if possible, you would prefer not to wait. So, at the same time waiting is something that happens to you and it is something you do, for you don’t cancel the appointment or leave the bus stop. This raises the question: Is or isn’t waiting an action?
What actually is an action? In my PhD thesis I explained that we call what we do an action if we do it with an intention. Now I think that we cannot deny that waiting is something we do. Although you can only wait when the doctor is not yet there or when the bus has not yet arrived, nevertheless it is not something that only happens to you, as we have seen. In fact, you chose to keep waiting. In case an accident happens to you, you are there “at the wrong place at the wrong moment”. Not so when you wait. Maybe you didn’t arrive at the right moment (and that’s why you must wait), but you are there at the right place, anyway. You have chosen to be there and not to walk away, although you may not have chosen to wait as such. You actively prefer to wait because you consider it the best option in the given situation. It is not so that you are forced to wait. If the lift suddenly stops and you cannot go out, you push the alarm button, and wait for help. In this case you are forced to wait. It is not something you do, but it happens to you. Such a wait is comparable to the case that you trip over a stone and automatically try to keep your balance. But such waiting is exceptional.
So, usually you wait because you have chosen to wait, since it is the best you can do in the situation at hand. You choose to wait, because you have reason to do so, namely the thing you are waiting for (the treatment by the doctor; going to the destination where the bus will bring you). If you had nothing to wait for, there would be no reason to wait. Moreover, you have considered that the best you can do is to realize this “for” now at the place and time you have chosen. You could have preferred to come at the last moment, but then you would run the risk that the bus has already left, or that nevertheless you must wait because the doctor has already given your turn to the next patient. Therefore you prefer to come a bit early and wait. So, your waiting is intentional, actually in two respects. Firstly, you are waiting for something, and this something (like the treatment by the doctor) gives the waiting sense. It is the purpose of your waiting and with that its main intention, in the expectation that your purpose will be realized, if you wait long enough. Secondly, you have incorporated deliberately some extra time, so that you will be sure to be in time for your appointment, for the bus etc. Even if the bus is late, or the doctor is still busy with another patient at the time of your arrival, you keep waiting, expecting that it will not be in vain. In short, waiting has an intention in view of your purpose and the extra time you have incorporated and so it is done intentionally and that makes it an action.
In analytical philosophy, an action is often represented by a practical syllogism (PS), so by a scheme like this (see my PhD thesis):

(1) A intends to bring about p.
(2) A considers that he cannot bring about p unless he does a.
(3) Therefore A sets himself to do a.

In this PS A refers to the acting person or actor. In line (1) of this PS we find the purpose p of the action we want to explain. Line (2) tells us which action a the actor will do to realize the purpose. Line (3) tells us that the actor starts to act according to his or her considerations in lines (1) and (2). If a waiting is an action – and not just happens to us like when we are in a lift that suddenly stops – it must be possible to describe it with such a PS. To my mind, it is easy to do so, since the “for” of what you are waiting for refers to your intention (so the thing you want to bring about) and with that to your purpose p, and the waiting is something you must do, for if you don’t, p will not be achieved. Of course, waiting is not the only thing you must do in order to reach your purpose, but it is a necessary part of what you must do to achieve your purpose or otherwise it will not be achieved. (If you leave the doctor’s waiting room, your appointment will not happen) In other words, waiting belongs to the means to achieve your purpose.
So, for the case that John goes to a doctor because he has an appointment with her, you get a PS like this:

PS (waiting)
(1) John intends to go to the appointment with a doctor.
(2) John considers that this appointment will not happen unless
- he leaves his house no later than time x and goes to the hospital
- and waits there till the doctor calls him for his appointment (in case the doctor is still busy with another patient, when he arrives in the hospital).
(3) Therefore John leaves his house no later than time x etc.

PS (waiting) shows how waiting fits in a practical syllogism in line (2) of the PS-scheme that contains the description of the action that must be performed in order to achieve the purpose. Such a PS can be constructed for any waiting, unless it is of the type of waiting for help in case of an accident like a lift that suddenly stops.
I have now shown that waiting is an action. In line (2) of PS (waiting) we see that waiting is not the whole and only action an actor must perform to achieve a certain purpose, but it is one of them. Many actions are links in an action chain. Or, from another point of view, many actions can be divided into several smaller steps or “partial actions”. All these partial actions belong to an overall action or “umbrella action”, in this case the umbrella action “going to the appointment with a doctor”.
The upshot is that, although waiting seems like a passive, not active, if not boring manner of achieving a purpose, in fact it is something you do with an intention and this makes it an action. Waiting is something you actively do.