Event Theory
An event is anything that happens, an occurrence. The idea of an event began to take on a philosophical life of its own in the twentieth century, due to a reawakening of interest in the concept of change, to which the concept of an event seems inextricably tied, and to the growing use of the concept of an event in scientific and metascientific writing (see Broad 1933, McTaggart 1927, and Whitehead 1929). Interest in events has also been sparked by versions of the mind-body identity thesis formulated in terms of events and by the idea that a clearer picture of events will facilitate discussion of other philosophical issues.
Discussions of events have focused on whether there are events and, if so, what the nature of events is. Since whether there are events depends in part on what they would be like if there were any, the two issues have usually been treated together.
Some philosophers (e.g., J. J. Thomson) simply assume that there are events; others argue for that assumption. Donald Davidson has asserted that there are events (and actions) by arguing that, to explain the meanings of claims involving adverbial modifiers (e.g., "Jones killed Smith in the kitchen") and singular causal claims (e.g., "the short circuit caused the fire"), we should suppose that such claims implicitly quantify over, or posit, actions and events (e.g., killings, short circuits, and fires).
This page contains 201 words.
Event Theory article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,766 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Metaphysics Article
