  Relatively little attention has been given to the Qualification Problem for characterizing actions, in comparison with other problems in temporal reasoning. In particular, the standard accounts of unsuccessful actions are somewhat unintuitive. In the formalization of  Lifschitz 1987,  for instance, actions with some unsatisfied preconditions are only distinguished from actions whose preconditions all succeed in that the conventional effects of the action will only be ensured when the preconditions are met. It is as if an action of spending $1,000,000 can be performed at any moment—although if you don’t have the money, no effects in particular will be guaranteed.   [30] And there is no distinction between actions that cannot even be attempted (like boarding a plane in London when you are in Sydney), actions that can be attempted, but in which the attempt can be expected to go wrong (like making a withdrawal when you have insufficient funds), actions that can be attempted with reasonable hope of success, and actions that can be attempted with guaranteed success. As J.L. Austin made clear in  Austin 1961,  the ways in which actions can be attempted, and in which attempted actions can fail, are a well developed part of common sense reasoning. Obviously, in contemplating a plan containing actions that may fail, one may need to reason about the consequences of failure. Formalizing the pathology of actions, providing a systematic theory of ways in which actions and the plans that contain them can go wrong, would be a useful addition to planning formalisms, and one that would illuminate important themes in philosophy.