Ideas from 'The Logical Form of Action Sentences' by Donald Davidson [1967], by Theme Structure
[found in 'Essays on Actions and Events' by Davidson,Donald [OUP 1982,0-19-824637-4]].
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7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / a. Nature of events
7771
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We need 'events' to explain adverbs, which are adjectival predicates of events
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Full Idea:
To deal with the truth conditions for some adverbs, Davidson introduced a domain of 'events', and made adverbs into adjectival predicates of events.
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From:
report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9
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A reaction:
This seems to be a striking case of a procedure of which I heartily disapprove - deriving you ontology from your semantics. Do all languages have adverbs?
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Language-learning is not good enough evidence for the existence of events
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Full Idea:
One needs a better reason for believing in events than the help they provide with language-learning.
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From:
comment on Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967], §8) by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence §8
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A reaction:
I can almost believe in micro-events at the quantum level, but I cannot believe that the Renaissance (made of events within events within events) is an event, even though I may 'quantify over it', and discuss its causes and effects.
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7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / d. Commitment of theories
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If the best theory of adverbs refers to events, then our ontology should include events
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Full Idea:
Davidson argued that the best linguistic theory of adverbial modification assigns truth-conditions quantifying over events; thus we must embrace an ontology of events.
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From:
report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 07.8
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A reaction:
Sider is critical and I agree. This is just the sort of linguistic manoeuvre that gets philosophy a bad name. As Yablo remarks, we have a terrible tendency to want to thingify everything.
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