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Single Idea 14004

[from 'The Individuation of Events' by Donald Davidson, in 7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / b. Events as primitive ]

Full Idea

Davidson claims that we require the existence of events in order to make sense of a) action statements, b) causal statements, c) explanation, d) the mind-body problem, and e) the logic of adverbial modification.

Gist of Idea

We need events for action statements, causal statements, explanation, mind-and-body, and adverbs

Source

report of Donald Davidson (The Individuation of Events [1969], Intro IIb) by Craig Bourne - A Future for Presentism

Book Reference

Bourne,Craig: 'A Future for Presentism' [OUP 2006], p.7


A Reaction

Events are a nice shorthand, but I don't like them in a serious ontology. Prior says there objects and what happens to them; Kim reduces events to other things. Processes are more clearly individuated than events.