Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Events and Their Names', 'On Signs (damaged)' and 'Events'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events

9413	An event is a change in or to an object [Lombard, by Mumford]
	Full Idea: Lombard holds that an event is a change in or to an object.
	From: report of Lawrence B. Lombard (Events [1986]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 2.1
	A reaction: This strikes me as more plausible than Davidson's view that events are primitive, or Kim's that they are exemplifications of properties. Events then exist just insofar as we wish to (or are able to) discriminate them.

8978	Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett]
	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.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1
	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.

14. Science / C. Induction / 3. Limits of Induction

6027	From the fact that some men die, we cannot infer that they all do [Philodemus]
	Full Idea: There is no necessary inference, from the fact that men familiar to us die when pierced through the heart, that all men do.
	From: Philodemus (On Signs (damaged) [c.50 BCE], 1.3)
	A reaction: This is scepticism about the logic of induction, long before David Hume. This is said to be a Stoic argument against Epicureans - though on the whole Stoics are not keen on scepticism.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata

10364	Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.22), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1
	A reaction: Compare 10361. Good argument, but maybe 'fact' is ambiguous. See Idea 10365. Events are said to be more concrete, and so can do the job, but their individuation also seems to depend on a description (as Davidson has pointed out).