ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a partial criticism of, one line of support for a certain philosophical theory of bodily action and in the course of these criticisms to outline an interesting type of bodily action reflection upon which may reveal something about action. The traditional philosophical conception of bodily actions is, of course, that they involve a psychological or mental element that causes the required bodily movement or condition. In the middle of the 1970s, though, a theory of bodily action emerged which has a similar structure to the traditional theory of bodily action, but which differs from it in its characterisation of the initiating psychological or mental element. The argument for Universality of Trying that Hornsby advances rests on something like Donald Davidson's characterisation of action; actions are events which are intentional under a description. Davidson's slogan requires for action that there is some description of the bodily movement under which it is intentional.
