Actions and doings

AI photo by https://perchance.org/ai-text-to-image-generator and edited by me.

In my blog last week, I stated that I don’t perform an action when I kick the ball and break the window unintentionally. Of course, it is something I did and I am responsible for breaking the window, because I should have been more careful when kicking the ball; and maybe it was not the right place to play football there, because there was too great a risk that I would break the window. This example illustrates that it makes sense to make a distinction between doing (something) and performing an action. I want to speak of doing in case of an unintentional activity or if it is open whether the activity was intentional. An action is then an intentional activity. In this blog, I want to restrict the meaning of doings to unintentional activities (so leaving out the possibility that doing is a general term for every human activity). I’ll also ignore Von Wright’s distinction between “with an intention” and “intentional”: Here, an intentional activity is an activity with an intention.

I want to restrict the meaning of doing also in another way: A doing is not a mere physical movement of my body like a knee reflex. A knee reflex is not something I did, although it was my knee that moved and although it was a consequence of my physical setup. It was not someone else who lifted my knee (although someone may have touched it with a hammer). The reflex happened to me; it was a piece of behaviour.
So, a doing is an activity unintentionally performed by me but that didn’t just happen to me. How is this possible? To make this clear, I want to use Anscombe’s idea of “under a description”. (see her Intention) Take this example (which is from Davidson, 1980, pp. 4-5, though): I come home and there is a thief in my house, which I don’t know. I enter my house and turn on the light. The thief sees the light and so he knows that I have come home and flees. Afterwards, I can describe what I did in different ways. I can say that I turned on the light, but also that I alerted the thief. These are two activities I did at the same time. What I did depends on the way I describe my activity. However, there is a significant difference between these descriptions: I did one, turning on the light, with an intention, while I alerted the thief unintentionally. Or take again the kicking the ball case. Here, too, my activity can be described in two ways: “Kicking the ball” and “Breaking the window”. Also in this case, one activity was intentional and one wasn’t.
What does this mean for my distinction between doing and performing an action? Both turning on the light and kicking the ball were my actions. Breaking the window and alerting the thief were doings. However, the latter activities can only be performed if they can be described as actions as well. Say, I trip over a stone, I fall and I break a window. Can we say that I did it (in the sense of doing used in this blog)? No, for tripping over the stone happened to me. It was a piece of behaviour at most and not a doing. There is an alternative description as an action in the case that I broke the window while I was playing football, namely that I kicked the ball intentionally. However, there is no alternative description as an action in the case that I broke the window when I tripped over a stone and fell. Note that in the first case I must pay the window, while in the second case maybe the person responsible for the bad condition of the road must pay. We can analyse Davidson’s case in the same manner, for example if I alerted the thief because I tripped over the threshold and alerted him by the noise.
What this analysis has taught us is this: A doing is an unintentional activity that can be described as an action in an alternative way. An action is an activity under an intentional description. (And a body movement is a mere piece of behaviour, if it is neither an action nor a doing and if the body is not moved by someone else).
Nevertheless, matters are not that simple. I am playing football and I kick the ball many times. I know that in this way I damage the grass. However, I had no intention to do so (it would be better if it wouldn’t happen). Moreover, I was allowed to play football there. Must we say then that damaging the grass was something I did (in the sense used in this blog)? This raises the question: Was it relevant that I damaged the grass by kicking the ball? Any action has unintended consequences, but not all consequences can be ascribed to me as my doings in a sensible way. Doings cannot be seen as unintended activities without regard to their relevance.
Or take these cases, described in my blogs On philosophical puzzles and Philosophical puzzles:
- A man tries to kill someone by shooting at him. He misses his victim by a mile, but the shot stampedes a herd of wild pigs that trampled the intended victim to death. (Daniel Bennett)
- Carl wants to kill his rich uncle because he wants to inherit his fortune. He believes that his uncle is home and drives towards his house. His desire to kill his uncle agitates him and he drives recklessly. On the way he hits and kills a pedestrian, who happens to be his uncle. (Roderick Chisholm)
- A climber wants to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope. He knows that by loosening his hold on the rope he can rid himself of the weight and danger. This idea makes him so nervous that it causes him to loosen his hold, and the other man falls into the depths. (Davidson)
The question is then: Were these killings doings or actions? Were the victims killed intentionally by the actions performed? Can you do something intentionally? Or, can you perform an action unintentionally even if you act with an intention? Maybe killings can be doings and not actions, even when you tried and so intended to kill the victim by what you did.