Events

Eddy M. Zemach

pp. 85-95

in: Yirmiahu Yovel (ed), Philosophy of history and action, Berlin, Springer, 1978

Abstract

In a number of papers published over the last few years Donald Davidson has advocated an ontology which admits events as full fledged, real particulars. Events, in his view, are in no sense reducible to, or even secondary to, individual things. The category of events, he says, is "a fundamental ontological category" (IOE, p. 232).¹ "The assumption, ontological and metaphysical, that there are events is one without which we cannot make sense of our most common talk ... I do not know of any better, or further, way of showing what there is' (CR, p. 703).

Cited authors

Davidson Donald