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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.
Gist of Idea
Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology
Source
Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1
Book Ref
'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.369
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.
| 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] |