Why can't a member method be passed to a base class constructor?

Question

class Flarg {     private readonly Action speak;      public Action Speak     {         get         {             return speak;         }     }      public Flarg(Action speak)     {         this.speak = speak;     } }  class MuteFlarg : Flarg {     public MuteFlarg() : base(GiveDumbLook)     {     }      private void GiveDumbLook()     {     } } 

The compiler gives an error "An object is required for the non-static field, method, or property 'Project.Namespace.Class.GiveDumbLook'.

This seems no different than passing an action as a parameter to any other method. Why is this invalid?

Edit Great answers. Thanks to everyone. I guess this just confuses me, because it seems like it is the opposite-side-of-the-coin from this question; where the highest voted answer clearly states

A C# object is fully constructed and initialized to zero before the first constructor runs.

By that statement, it seems that the above code should work. Apparently there is a subtle difference.

Answer 1

Rewrite it like this:

public MuteFlarg() : base(this.GiveDumbLook) { } 

and it is now clear why you can't. It's not legal to refer to this in a base class constructor invocation. This is not legal because it can easily lead to bugs. The constructor for the derived class has not run yet, and so the fields are not set to their initial state (initial state being defined by the state of the object when the constructor is done running).

This is explicitly stated in §10.11.1 of the specification:

An instance constructor initializer cannot access the instance being created. Therefore it is a compile-time error to reference this in an argument expression of the constructor initializer, as is it a compile-time error for an argument expression to reference any instance member through a simple-name.

The last statement explicitly forbids referring to this.GiveDumbLook by its simple-name GiveDumbLook.