Abstract

ne important class of actions concerns tasks. Questions may be raised about whether we have succeeded or failed to do what we were trying to do. Not all the things we call actions are open to considerations of such success or failure. And questions of succeeding or failing are not raised solely about what we may have been trying to do. The paper attempts to classify various ways in which one may fail in an action; the array that results is explored in terms of evaluations rendered, responsibility, character, deliberate decision, and the like. The analysis of failing in what one has tried to do is made central. To be said to be trying to do something, one must have done the requisite things that constitute trying to do something and not to have succeeded yet in doing what one may have tried to do. “Trying to succeed”; in doing something is a redundant expression except for special cases; and though one may decide to try to do something, one cannot decide to succeed in this. One may actually succeed in doing what one has tried to do but one cannot deliberately succeed. Further distinctions are made between trying to do something and wishing to do something and believing that one is trying to do something; also, between failing in what one has tried to do, failing to try, failing to do something without failing in what one has tried to do, and failing to do something in respects in which one could never be said to have tried to do it.