display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Perhaps it is impossible that an event should have had a causal history different from the one that it actually had. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.220) | |
A reaction: [He cites van Inwagen for this] The idea is analagous to baptismal accounts of reference. Individuate an event by its history. It might depend (as Davidson implies) on how you describe the event. |
8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
Full Idea: It has been argued that an event's time of occurrence is essential to it. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.221) | |
A reaction: [He cites Lawrence Lombard] This sound initially implausible, particularly if a rival event happened, say, .1 of a second later than the actual event. It might depend on one's view about determinism. Interesting. |
3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
Full Idea: Once we conceded that Tom can walk slowly or quickly, and that the slowness and quickness is a property of the walking and not of Tom, we can hardly refrain from quantifying over events (such as 'a walking') in our ontology. | |
From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch. 6) |
8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1 | |
A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right. |