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Working Definition:
Change in a state occasioned by an event.
Disciplinary Definitions:
See Kenny, A. (2003). Action, Emotion and Will (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
See also, Goldman, A. I. (1970). A Theory of Human Action. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton UP.
"von Wright (1966) defines acting as intentionally bringing about
or preventing a change in the world." "for von Wright, giving a
complete description of an action requires describing three items: (a) the
initial
state, or the state in which the world is at the moment when action is initiated;
(b) the end state, or the state in which the world is when the action has
been completed; and (c) the state in which the world would have been had
it not been for the action in question (123-24).'' (Herman, Story Logic, 2002, 55) "Grasping
an acting situation or opportunity for action, then, is tantamount to being
able to formulate a counterfactual conditional statement about what would
have happened had it not been for what an agent did on a given occasion.
So to build a logic for action sentences, one must model not only "sentences
describing results of action but also .. . sentences describing states which
are, or are not, transformed through the action" (von Wright 1983: in"
(Herman, Story Logic, 2002, 56)
Comments:
Notes
"Action structures are mental models of participent-oriented patterns of effort, conflict, trouble, and, in some cases at least, resolution of conflict and overcoming of trouble" (Herman, Story Logic, 2002, 90-91).
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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