Only one of those is a description of an action. The second is a description of both an action and the result of that action. The action is a wink, the result is the softening of the heart.
Well, this goes back to the quote from Donald Davidson in the OP:
A classic article on the analysis of actions (Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963)) gives the following example:
I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I need not have done four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given.
If the PC
winks at the maiden and softens her heart the PC hasn't done two things (
wink, and as a separate thing
soften her heart) - that way lies madness because it will quickly lead to near-endless multiplication of the number of events that have occurred (eg you'll have each movement of an eyelash through each point of space as a separate and distinct thing that the PC did).
There is one action but it falls under more than one description. In the context of playing a RPG, which involves generating shared agreement on the descriptions that are true in the fiction, I think the question of who gets to establish which descriptions is quite interesting. And I think that saying
the player gets to decide what the PC does isn't a useful way of answering the question.
Except the OP is trying to make it sound like the distinction between the wink and the softening is blurrier than it is.
<snip>
But it’s a more straightforward question than the OP seems to be suggesting.
The OP makes a straightforward but perhaps not simple point: when the PC winks at the maiden and softens her heart, the PC has performed one action (that falls under more than one description), not two. Separating it into
action and
result already assumes a regimentation that is not straightforward either in theory or in practice - eg is the player allowed to describe
I tighten my hand about the pommel of my sheathed sword and move it in a sword-drawing motion or is the player allowed to describe
I draw my sword. Those are two different descriptions of what, typically, will be the one action. You can frame the first as the action and the second as the result if you like, but I think there is a lot of RPG play which won't conform to that way of parsing the example.
Likewise for
I use my larynx, mouth, breath etc as I would to loudly speak the words "Help me" and
I call out to my companions, "Help me". Etc.
It seems to me that in different systems, and perhaps on different occasions within a system, it may become important to know who has authority to establish which descriptions as true in the fiction, and how they can do this. Saying
the player gets to describe what the PC does and/or
the GM gets to decide the result won't help. Whereas characterising it as
establishing the truth of a description in the shared fiction gets the subject-matter of the discussion right.
it's pretty easy to wink. Softening hearts sounds a bit more difficult. Especially when your name is, say, Quasimodo.
Also, some analysis of the problem might be in order, because I don't see Soften Heart and Wink as the same action. If a player told me "I wink," I'd say "great." If a player said "I soften the maiden's heart," I'd say "so how do you do that?"
And what if a player says "I wink at the maiden to soften her heart"?
I'll have another go:
Suppose the player says
I wink at the maiden to soften her heart.
And the GM replies
OK, that's a Difficulty 4 Presence check. You can add your Glamourie to your pool if you have it. (I'm using Prince Valiant as the system here - it's pretty simple.)
And the player replies
Right, well I've got 3 Presence and 2 Glamourie so that's 5 coins in my pool - then tosses the coins, and they come down in a 3/2 split, so FAILURE - ie short of 4 successes.
Now, what is true in the fiction? From the failure, we know it's not true that
the PC winked at the maiden and softened her heart. Is it true that
the PC winked at the maiden? Who gets to decide that, and according to what principles? Is it true that
the PC winked? Who gets to decide that, and according to what principles?
The Prince Valiant rulebook doesn't actually come out and answer these questions - it was written in the late 80s and RPG designers hadn't got as good as contemporary ones about addressing these important issues of play - but it does contain some hints.
I don't think you can answer by saying
the player decides what the PC does - because if this was true, then the player could decide that the PC
softens the maiden's heart with a wink. Yet we know that has been taken off the table in virtue of the failed check result.