Abstract

Ordinary action explanation formulated as "I am doing A because I am doing B" is explanation of an action in terms of another action-in-progress. According to Michael Thompson, the explained action is a teleological part of the explaining complex action, which is composed of different parts. Thompson's analysis focuses on the part-whole relation between the explained action and the explaining action, thus ignores a possibility: these two actions can be two different parts of a complex action. I shall argue that the interrelation between different parts of a complex action corresponds to a new kind of action explanation of the formulas: "I am doing A because I am doing B" and "I am doing B because I have done A", where A and B are two different parts of a complex action. This kind of action explanation is associated with the temporal schema of an action-type, for example, X: First, do A; second, do B; then, C; finally, D. This is an attempt to probe into the inner structure of complex action.