What is action?

[Conrad]

I’ve been thinking about the action axiom lately: is the idea that everything that we can interpret/describe as purposeful behavior is an action (seems not cuz we can apply the intentional stance to a whole lot of things), or everything that the action-doer himself would describe as purposeful behavior, or only when the agent in question has a certain degree of complexitiy? I don’t know.

In another way ‘Is action a subjectively ascribed property or are there objective reasons? if the former, does the validity depend on a first person or third person perspective?’

[hayekianxyz]

@Conrad

or everything that the action-doer himself would describe as purposeful behavior, or only when the agent in question has a certain degree of complexitiy? I don’t know.

What’s the problem? Unless you’re talking about sneezing for example.

[Solomon]

The only behavior we can say with certainty is purposeful is our own. Of course we can intuit the existence of intention in the behavior of others fairly accurately, based on the experience of our own action.

The existence of action is stipulated in a purely theoretical setting, i.e. a praxeologist never inquires of an actual situation “Was this agent’s behavior purposeful?”