The concept of action and ascription of responsibility: H.L.A. Hart and some of his critics

The article deals with the semantic specificity of the concept of action, the ascriptive and descriptive functions of action verbs, and how one can ascribe responsibility using these verbs by example of Herbert Hart's philosophy of action. Furthermore, some critical arguments against Hart's approach have been analyzed. The authors argue that this criticism does not defeat Hart's main idea that the denial of the physical and psychological components of action allows to conclude that, firstly, the concept of action is a social concept and logically dependent on the accepted rules of conduct; secondly, it is fundamentally not descriptive, but ascriptive in character; and, thirdly, it is a defeasible concept to be defined through exceptions and not by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, be they physical or psychological.

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