Action includes tendency to motion, not just actual motion

Evidence

Under the term action, besides motion, a tendency, though so it be without actual motion, seems to be included. Held back by strings, a magnet and a bar of iron, suspended at a certain distance from each other, remain both of them without motion: cut the strings of either of them, it moves till it comes in contact with the other; but for the state of mutual action which preceded the cutting of the strings no such motion would have taken place. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 510

Categorization

• DEFINE: Action defined as motion itself OR the tendency to motion, proved via the magnet-and-iron example of latent mutual action.
• XREF: connects to: Freedom depends on the capacity of motion which requires space; Motion resists ontological derivation and must be accepted as a contingent fact; Motion alters a quality’s mode of being rather than its essence (+2 more)

Related

• Freedom depends on the capacity of motion which requires space (similarity 0.91)
• Motion alters a quality’s mode of being rather than its essence (similarity 0.83)
• Action modifies the being of things, not just their appearance (similarity 0.83)
• Motion resists ontological derivation and must be accepted as a contingent fact (similarity 0.81)