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Full Idea
Davidson claims that events can only be individuated causally.
Gist of Idea
Events can only be individuated causally
Source
report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969], 3) by Jonathan Schaffer - Causation and Laws of Nature 3
Book Ref
'Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics', ed/tr. Sider/Hawthorne/Zimmerman [Blackwell 2008], p.87
A Reaction
Schaffer rejects this in favour of individuating events by their spatiotemporal locations and intrinsic natures (which seem to be property instantiations, a la Kim). Schaffer was a pupil of David Lewis.
| 6402 | In 1927, Russell analysed force and matter in terms of events [Russell, by Grayling] |
| 7949 | Varied descriptions of an event will explain varied behaviour relating to it [Davidson, by Macdonald,C] |
| 8348 | If we don't assume that events exist, we cannot make sense of our common talk [Davidson] |
| 9843 | You can't identify events by causes and effects, as the event needs to be known first [Dummett on Davidson] |
| 14602 | Events can only be individuated causally [Davidson, by Schaffer,J] |
| 14004 | We need events for action statements, causal statements, explanation, mind-and-body, and adverbs [Davidson, by Bourne] |
| 15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
| 8308 | Events are ontologically indispensable for singular causal explanations [Lowe] |
| 4221 | Maybe modern physics requires an event-ontology, rather than a thing-ontology [Lowe] |
| 12839 | Relativity has an ontology of things and events, not on space-time diagrams [Simons] |
| 20467 | Quantum mechanics describes the world entirely as events [Rovelli] |