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Single Idea 8278

[filed under theme 7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events ]

Full Idea

Davidson has urged that events are individuated by the causal relations which they bear to one another, in accordance with the principle that events are identical just in case they have the same causes and effects. But the principle is viciously circular.

Gist of Idea

The claim that events are individuated by their causal relations to other events is circular

Source

comment on Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 7.4

Book Ref

Lowe,E.J.: 'The Possibility of Metaphysics' [OUP 2001], p.163

A Reaction

You wouldn't want to identify a person just by their relationships, even though those will certainly be unique. Generally it is what I am (right now) naming as the Functional Fallacy: believing that specifying the function of x explains x.

The 19 ideas with the same theme [explaining happenings in terms of another mode of existence]:

23211 Events are just interpretations of groups of appearances [Nietzsche]
8205 Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine]
12670 A physical event is any change of distribution of energy [Ellis]
3747 Events are fast changes which are of interest to us [O'Connor]
8978 Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett]
8278 The claim that events are individuated by their causal relations to other events is circular [Lowe on Davidson]
8976 If events are ordered triples of items, such things seem to be sets, and hence abstract [Simons on Kim]
8975 Events cannot be merely ordered triples, but must specify the link between the elements [Kim, by Simons]
8974 Events are composed of an object with an attribute at a time [Kim, by Simons]
8977 Since properties like self-identity and being 2+2=4 are timeless, Kim must restrict his properties [Simons on Kim]
8980 Kim's theory results in too many events [Simons on Kim]
10369 How fine-grained Kim's events are depends on how finely properties are individuated [Kim, by Schaffer,J]
4779 For Kim, events are exemplifications of properties by objects at particular times [Kim, by Psillos]
15257 The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden]
15564 An event is a property of a unique space-time region [Lewis]
9413 An event is a change in or to an object [Lombard, by Mumford]
8518 Events are trope-sequences, in which tropes replace one another [Campbell,K]
4220 Maybe an event is the exemplification of a property at a time [Lowe]
4225 Events are changes in the properties of or relations between things [Lowe]