Some actions we perform “just like that” without taking a means, e.g., raising your arm or wiggling your finger. Other actions—the nonbasic actions—we perform by taking a means, e.g., voting by raising your arm or illuminating a room by flipping a switch. A nearly ubiquitous view about nonbasic action is that one's means to a nonbasic action constitutes the nonbasic action, as raising your arm constitutes voting or flipping a switch constitutes illuminating a room. In this paper, I challenge this view. I argue that one's means to a nonbasic action can cause rather than constitute it. In the process, we gain a clearer understanding of the scope of our agency—one that includes mental actions such as judgment and decision—and the pluralistic nature of basic features of action including control, purposefulness, and agent participation.

中文翻译：

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如何执行非基本动作

我们“就像那样”执行某些动作，而无需采取任何手段，例如举起手臂或摆动手指。其他行动——非基本行动——我们通过采取某种手段来执行，例如，通过举起手臂进行投票或通过按下开关来照亮房间。关于非基本行动的一种几乎普遍存在的观点是，一个人进行非基本行动的手段构成了非基本行动，就像举起手臂构成投票或扳动开关构成照亮房间一样。在本文中，我对这种观点提出了质疑。我认为，一个人采取非基本行动的手段可以导致而不是构成它。在此过程中，我们对我们的代理范围（包括判断和决策等心理行为）以及行为基本特征（包括控制、目的性和代理参与）的多元化性质有了更清晰的了解。