(こうい act, action)
Oxford Readings in PhilosophyのシリーズのThe Philosophy of Action (ed. by Alfred R. Mele, 1997)のIntroductionでは 「一つの行為とは何か」というindividuationの問題が次のように説明されている。
Question `What are actions?' suggests two others. How are actions different from non-actions? How are actions different from one another? I start with the latter, the question of *action-individuation*.
By the end of the 1970s, a lively debate over action-individuation had produced a collection of relatively precise alternatives: a fine-grained view, a coarse-grained view, and componential views. The first treats A and B as different actions if, in performing them, the agent exemplifies different act-properties. Thus, if I start my car by turning a key, my starting the car and my turning the key are two different actions, since the act-properties at issues are distinct. The second counts my turning the key and my starting the car as the same action under two different descriptions. Views of the third sort regard my starting the car as an action having various components, including my moving my hand, my turning the key, and the car's starting. Where proponents of the other two theories find, alternatively, a single action under different descriptions or a collection of related actions, advocates of the various componential views locate a `larger' action having `smaller' actions among its parts.
Interest in action-individuation has waned, owing partly to the development of a precise, detailed map of the conceptual terrain. Toward the end of an excellent chapter on the topic Carl Ginet remarks, `the issue over the individuation of action, though sufficiently interesting in its own right, is not one on which much else depends'. I am inclined to agree, and in this essay I proceed in a way that is neutral regarding the leading contending theories of individuation. (p. 2)
上にあるように、individuationの問題とは、たとえば「キーを回して車を発 進させる」のは一つの行為か、あるいは複数の行為の集合なのか、というよう な問題。くだらないといえばくだらない話といえるが、実践的には刑法の 分野で問題になることがある。ベンタムもこの文脈で次のように論じている。
It has been every now an then made a question, what it is in such a case that constitutes *one* act: where one act has ended, and another act has begun: whether what has happened has been one act or many. These question, it is now evident, may frequently be answered, with equal propriety, in opposite ways: and if there be any occasions on which they can be answered ony in one way, the answer will depend upon the nature of the occasion, and the purpose for which the question is proposed. A man is wounded in two fingers at one stroke -- Is it one wound or several? A man is beaten at 12 o'clock, and again at 8 minutes after 12 -- Is it one beating or several? You beat one man, and instantly in the same breath you beat another -- Is this one beating or several? In any of these cases it mey be *one*, perhaps, as to some purposes, and *several* as to others. These examples are given, that men may be awere of the ambiguity of language: and neither harass themselves with unsolvable doubts, nor one another with interminable disputes. (An Introduction of the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chap. VII, sec. 20)
10/Dec/2002