Events and acts: The structures of their effects

Abstract

A general theory of action provides, first, a notation in which the effects of possible individual acts can be expressed and, second, a method for probability calculations of the dynamics of systems of interacting actors; this article develops the foundation for such a theory. A framework is presented, which allows the effects of human actions to be described. The presentation is sufficiently general that other kinds of event can also be accommodated. The framework uses a simple system of modal logic, with five axioms, to define what is meant by an effect of an event or act at any level of living system or in nonliving systems. It is proposed that, in empirical studies, the significant types of act and event should be characterized by listing their effects in the notation which the framework provides. The application of the framework to human acts is described; and a diagrammatic method to represent the effects of these acts is given. It is shown that there are eleven fundamentally different possible relationships between acts and their effects. For each of the eleven basic kinds of effect, an approximate formula is given to relate the expected frequency of that effect to the overall characteristics of a state of affairs within a system. The use of the framework to draw global conclusions from local information is illustrated by showing how approximate population densities may be calculated from mechanisms for birth and death described in terms of the framework.