Rationalization and the art of explaining action

It is our ordinary scheme of action explanation which identifies for us those events that we regard as actions. Among the events to which a human being gives rise without the intervention of other agencies, we confer the title of ‘actions’ on those which we explain as the appropriate issue of a certain state of mind. The agent views his situation as offering certain options, let us say, considers that the matters which most concern him are such and such and, by way of doing what he takes to satisfy those concerns, performs one of the options. Here we would have little hesitation in describing the event constituted by that performance as an action. But even in cases where the agent cannot be imagined to go through explicit phases of reasoning, we are prepared to take a similar line. A person who raises his hand to his forehead and brushes off a fly, however casually he does so, would normally be said also to have performed an action. Here too we take it that the event in question occurs as the appropriate outcome of the state of mind. The agent notices something on his forehead and, concerned to get rid of the irritation, is led to sweep his hand across his brow.