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Single Idea 18914

[filed under theme 5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 2. Domain of Quantification ]

Full Idea

An alternative, and still controversial, extension of first-order logic is due to Donald Davidson, who allows for quantification over events.

Gist of Idea

Davidson controversially proposed to quantify over events

Source

report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 3

Book Ref

'The Old New Logic', ed/tr. Oderberg,David S. [MIT 2005], p.38


A Reaction

I'm suddenly thinking this is quite an attractive proposal. We need to quantify over facts, or states of affairs, or events, or some such thing, to talk about the world properly. Objects, predicates and sets/parts is too sparse. I like facts.

Related Idea

Idea 8348 If we don't assume that events exist, we cannot make sense of our common talk [Davidson]


The 5 ideas from 'The Individuation of Events'

Davidson controversially proposed to quantify over events [Davidson, by Engelbretsen]
You can't identify events by causes and effects, as the event needs to be known first [Dummett on Davidson]
The claim that events are individuated by their causal relations to other events is circular [Lowe on Davidson]
Events can only be individuated causally [Davidson, by Schaffer,J]
We need events for action statements, causal statements, explanation, mind-and-body, and adverbs [Davidson, by Bourne]