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Full Idea
Perhaps it is impossible that an event should have had a causal history different from the one that it actually had.
Gist of Idea
Maybe each event has only one possible causal history
Source
Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.220)
Book Ref
'Causation', ed/tr. Sosa,E. /Tooley,M. [OUP 1993], 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.
| 8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
| 8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
| 8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
| 8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
| 8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
| 8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
| 8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |
| 8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
| 10364 | Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett] |
| 8592 | Empty space is measurable in ways in which empty time necessarily is not [Bennett, by Shoemaker] |