This is not to deny the existence of unconscious behavior, merely to consider action as a subset of human behavior - that which is conscious and deliberate. However, it must be accepted that very little behavior is unconscious - any behavior that lasts more than an instant is deliberate. Nor is it to state that "action" by this definition is always the result of direct thought. Much of what is misrepresented as "unconscious" action is in fact inattentive action - a person makes a choice to focus attention on one thing and pay little to no attention to anything else. The negative consequences of these actions are the result of the choice not to give attention to the consequences.
Even a person's deliberate action may be undertaken with only a vague notion of the end he wishes to achieve, such that the things that he does may be intended to achieve it, but entirely incapable. Said another way, a random and stupid action is still an action and to suggest it is unconscious or unintentional is merely a weak attempt to escape blame for having chosen to behave in such a way.
Man's deliberate actions are undertaken to control himself and influence the environment. There are certain limits to the power of man to exert influence - but these are not as limited as some may assert. That is, a man cannot stop himself by force of will from falling ill, but he can stop himself by force of will into entering into an environment that is likely to make him so, and he can stop himself from remaining ill for long by taking the necessary actions to restore his health.
Psychology seeks to discover the motivation of man to act, and this approach considers actions to be rational when they are beneficial, or at least benign, and irrational even to the point of insanity when a man intentionally undertakes actions that are detrimental. But psychology itself is a projection of vanity and tends to be false. An individual who is asked the reason he took an action tends to suggest noble motives, whereas an analyst who attempts to find a "hidden motive" is generally following his own desire to prove a cause. This is hardly scientific, and while it is better than nothing at all, it is often quite inaccurate.
Action is not a wish or an intent, but the consequence of wishes and intents. A person may consider doing something and then not do it, or may find that selecting a given course of action eliminates our ability to take others, at least for that time. Action is only that which we actually do, not what we intend.
In a similar sense, the outcome of action is the actual results and not the results that an individual wished to achieve. Ethics may forgive mistakes in consideration of good intentions, but praxeology does not mitigate: what happened is exactly what happened and what resulted is exactly what resulted, and imaginings or rationalizations are moot.
To do nothing is not an action, but merely a choice not to undertake action that might have achieved results is a choice to abstain. It does not, as some would suggest, cause an absence of what might have existed were the individual to have undertaken the action, as nothing that had ever existed is destroyed by the failure to create it.
And one final thought: to say that action is a manifestation of man's will does not mean that his will was not constrained. A choice to "do or die" is still a choice to do (to avoid the choice to die) and is based on the assessment of the likelihood of the suggested consequence. It is again in the sphere of ethics to define the "goodness" of an action that is taken under compulsion. Ultimately, accepting compulsion and obeying the commands of others is a demonstration of will and not the absence of it.
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