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Paradox of inaction
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The paradox of inaction purports to show that it is impossible to do nothing. More precisely put: that for no object a is it the case that a does nothing. Description We begin by assuming that there are no unpropertied particulars, i.e. no objects which fail to instantiate any properties. This means that for any object a, there is some property p such that a does instantiate p. It then follows that for any object a, a does something (namely, instantiate the relevant p). So for no object a is it the case that a does nothing. Responses The counterintuitiveness of this conclusion results from the fact that we often want to say that someone is doing nothing. It has been suggested that the counterintuitiveness of the conclusion is mitigated once we notice that "a is doing nothing" involves restricted quantification, and just means that a is not doing any one of the actions in some contextually determined class of actions. A different response has it that to instantiate a property is not to do something. See Also
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