As we have seen, the ‘social action perspective’ is distinguished by two assumptions. The first is that the subject-matter of sociology comprises social action and/or social interaction (the way that social action is defined effectively obscures the difference between these terms). The second is that the term ‘social action’ means conduct which possesses a ‘social meaning’. Naively, one might have thought that shifting the criterion of definition from action to meaning would involve some attempt to indicate how ‘social’ meaning differed from ‘non-social’ meaning. But contemporary sociologists have generally opted for a more radical solution which serves to justify the treatment of social action as the exclusive subject-matter of the discipline. This involves defining nonsocial action out of existence altogether – something which is achieved by presuming that all meaning is necessarily social. Consequently, not only can there be no such thing as non-social action, but defining action and defining social action inevitably become one and the same. This position is reached by accepting a basic syllogism, one which it is not unreasonable to suggest underpins the central dogma of contemporary sociology. This syllogism is as follows: (a) all actions possess meaning (this is their defining characteristic); (b) all meaning is essentially social; therefore (c) all actions must be social actions. As can be seen, this syllogism builds on the presumption that social actions are actions which possess a social meaning.