ABSTRACT
N.Malcolm. ‘The privacy of experience’, in A.Stroll (ed.) Epistemology, Harper and Row, 1967. (Discusses an ambiguity, and then the issue itself.)
. See ZENO’S PARADOXES.
. See INCONTINENCE.
. The doing of something or what is done. Problems about actions concern first of all what they are, and how they relate to things like trying, choosing, willing, intending (cf. also basic action); and how are persons related to their actions, and how do they know about them? We talk of the action of rain, and of reflex actions, but action of the central kind is what is done by rational beings. Only they can perform actions. Acting usually involves moving in some way, or at least trying to move, so how are actions related to
movements? How is my raising my arm related to my arm’s rising? What one intends is relevant here, and this involves the ways in which what happens can be viewed (cf. INTENSIONALITY.) Consider (as relating to one occasion): making certain neurones in the brain fire, tightening one’s arm-muscles, flexing one’s finger, moving a piece of iron, pulling a trigger, firing a gun, heating a gun-barrel, shooting a man, shooting an exfarmer, shooting the President, assassinating the President, earning a bribe, grieving a nation, starting a war.
