Without the concept of action there would be no social science. Much work can be (and is) done without a detailed examination of this concept, but ultimately there is a need for a full conceptual analysis of action. Even though philosophers are already addressing that task, work of a more formal nature is still in its infancy. In this chapter some suggestions toward a formal analysis of action are offered, in the belief that philosophical work of this kind ought eventually to result in formal modelings.

We take our lead from Georg Henrik von Wright, to whom we should like to attribute the insight contained in the slogan “to act is to bring about a fact.” As a first step, then, one ought to analyze the notion of a fact; this is attempted in the first five sections, the bulk of this chapter. The last two sections contain some suggestions – sketchy, to be sure – for how a theory of action, in the spirit of von Wright, might be based on our analysis of facts.

FACTS ACCORDING TO VON WRIGHT

This observation was made by von Wright in his book Norm and Action ([14], p. 25), and he went on to distinguish three types of fact: states-of-affairs, events, and processes.