Events

We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge repre- sentation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and rela- tionships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge (...) from the context (the scene) they occur in. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the concept of an event and of event representation as an umbrella notion. It provides an overview of different ways events have been dealt with in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. This variety of positions has been construed in part as the result of different descriptive and explanatory projects. It is argued that various types of notions — common-sense, theoretically revised, scientific, and internalist psychological — be kept apart.

This paper argues for the philosophical and semantic importance of attitudinal objects, entities such as judgments, claims, beliefs, demands, and desires, as an ontological category distinct from that of events and states and from that of propositions. The paper presents significant revisions and refinements of the notion of an attitudinal object as it was developed in my previous work.

It is often assumed that, while ordinary actions are events, ‘negative actions’ are absences of events. I claim that a negative action is an ordinary, ‘positive’ event that plays a certain role. I argue that my approach can answer standard objections to the identity of negative actions and positive events.

Are there events? If so, how are they to be conceived? A line of argument motivating ontological commitment to what I prefer to call processes is presented, drawing primarily on the development of the elementary understanding of thermal processes, but pointing to a broader view by analogical extension. Suggestions are made for an approach to the mereological structure of processes, and some comments are offered of linguistic distinctions sometimes applied to processes and to modal features of events mentioned in the (...) literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge the traditional narrative that William James’s arguments against determinism were primarily motivated by his personal struggles with depression. I argue that James presents an alternative argument against determinism that is motivated by his commitment to sound scientific practice. James argues that determinism illegitimately extrapolates from observations of past events to predictions about future events without acknowledging the distinct metaphysical difference between them. This occupation with futurity suggests that James’s true target is better understood as logical (...) determinism rather than causal determinism. This has consequences for James’s proposed alternative, which I call his probabilistic underdeterminism, a conception of the universe that is built on chance, choice, and a local teleology. All of this forms part of a broader criticism of the scientific practices of his day based on their widespread failure to acknowledge the distorting effects of observation on that which is observed. (shrink)

We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

This paper makes a case that we should believe in the existence of worldly states of affairs.

In this essay I make a case for a number of common themes between A. N. Whitehead and W. V. Quine in their approach to ontology. Both philosophers espoused a view of metaphysics as continuous with natural science and stressed the importance of physics in the development of ontology. As a consequence of the revolutionary developments in modern physics, both Whitehead and Quine contend that events are ontologically basic, but differ on the status of properties in their respective systems.

In this essay I examine the concept of an event within the context of P. F. Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics. As opposed to the linguistic treatment of events in the descriptive approach of Strawson and Donald Davidson, I make a case for the revisionary approach of A. N. Whitehead and W. V. Quine, according to which events are basic rather than dependent on substances.

While Whitehead and Russell’s collaboration on the foundations of mathematics ended with the publication of Principia Mathematica, both philosophers separately developed a philosophy of physics in the 1920s that was based on the revolutionary advances in modern physics. This essay explores the affinities and contrasts in Whitehead and Russell’s event ontology as a metaphysical foundation of physics and demonstrates the influence of Whitehead’s method of extensive abstraction on Russell’s metaphysics and epistemology.

In this monograph, I argue that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. I investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, I defend the naturalized and (...) speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century. (shrink)

There are some necessary conditions on causal relations that seem to be so trivial that they do not merit further inquiry. Many philosophers assume that the requirement that there could be no temporal gaps between causes and their effects is such a condition. Bertrand Russell disagrees. In this paper, an in-depth discussion of Russell’s argument against this necessary condition is the centerpiece of an analysis of what is at stake when one accepts or denies that there can be temporal gaps (...) between causes and effects. It is argued that whether one accepts or denies this condition, one is implicated in taking on substantial and wide-ranging philosophical positions. Therefore, it is not a trivial necessary condition of causal relations and it merits further inquiry. (shrink)

This is a phenomenological description of what is happening when we experience the death of another that interprets surviving or living on after such death by employing the term event. This term of art from phenomenology and hermeneutics is used to describe a disruptive and transformative experience of singularity. I maintain that the death of the other is an experience of an event because such death is unpredictable or without a horizon of expectation, excessive or without any principle of sufficient (...) reason, and transformative or a death of the world itself. (shrink)

The investigation is devoted to the problem of formal representation of logical structure and ontological commitments of natural language event sentences. The specificity of ontological commitments problem with regard to natural and formal languages is shown. The alternative approaches to the formal representation of event sentences are characterized with respect to their key features from formal logical and ontological points of view. The difference in the logical structure of sentences expressing events by verb phrases and by nominalization is depicted. The (...) role of a paraphrase in formal representation of natural language phenomena is discussed, as well as the notions of “hermeneutic" and “revolutionary" approaches in logic-semantical analysis introduced by J. Burgess and G. Rosen. It is shown that the neodavidsonian approach with regard to verb phrases is an example of “revolutionary" approach because it changes the original logical structure of natural language sentences. The analysis of ontological commitments shows that there is no bound event variable in the logical structure of verb phrases at sentence level but it's included in the internal semantic structure of a verb. The possible ways to the logical interpretation of the natural language mechanism of the dynamic shift between verb-based and nomi- nalized sentences are outlined. (shrink)

Können Personen im Wortsinne die Ursache von etwas sein? Wer die Frage bejaht, möge ein Akteurskausalist heißen. Ereigniskausalisten hingegen lassen als Relata der Kausalrelation allein Ereignisse zu. Manche Akteurskausalisten, allen voran Kant und Chisholm, fassen die Verursachung durch Handelnde als eine Kausalität sui generis auf, die der gewöhnlichen Ereigniskausalität gleichberechtigt zur Seite zu stellen sei. Andere Akteurskausalisten, beispielsweise Aristoteles, scheinen lediglich eine liberalere Auffassung möglicher kausaler Relata zu haben, ohne für Akteure eine besondere Verursachungsart vorzusehen. Im folgenden möchte ich die (...) Perspektive des Ereigniskausalisten einnehmen und der Frage nachgehen, wie aus dieser Perspektive dem Umstand Rechnung getragen werden kann, daß auch Handlungen mit Verursachungsvorgängen einhergehen. In Handlungssätzen ist typischerweise nicht von zwei Ereignissen die Rede. Können sie gleichwohl ereigniskausalistisch als singuläre Kausalsätze interpretiert werden? Und müßte der Ereigniskausalist nicht einen Weg finden, Handlungssätze in gewöhnliche singuläre Kausalsätze zu transformieren? * Eine überarbeitete Version dieses Beitrags findet sich G. Keil, HANDELN UND VERURSACHEN, Frankfurt am Main (Klostermann) 2000, 2. Aufl. 2015, 373-383. * . (shrink)

Benjamin provides new and important readings of key canonical texts in the history of philosophy in his sustained philosophical reworking of ontology. Amongst texts included are Hegel's _Difference Essay_ and the _Shorter Logic_ and Heidegger's _Time and Being_ and _The Question of Being_. The effective presence of ontology, defined as `an original difference', will be familiar to readers of his earlier writings. This book represents his most thorough and original contribution to contemporary philosophy to date.

To what in reality do the logically simple sentences with empirical content correspond? Two extreme positions can be distinguished in this regard: 'Great Fact' theories, such as are defended by Davidson; and trope-theories, which see such sentences being made the simply by those events or states to which the relevant main verbs correspond. A position midway between these two extremes is defended, one according to which sentences of the given sort are made tme by what are called 'dependence structures', or (...) in other words by certain complex concrete portions of reality between the parts of which relations of dependence are defined. Principles governing such dependence-structures are laid down, principles of an ontologically motivated sort which serve as basis for a topological semantics conceived as an altemative to standard set-theoretic approaches to semantics of the Tarskian sort. These principles are then used to resolve certain puzzles generated by the (semantically motivated) theory of events put forward by Davidson. (shrink)

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians claim that the unique event of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary is present in Eucharistic liturgies. A popular explanatory strategy for this miraculous presence suggests that due to its supernatural character the Eucharist “conquers time,” transcends its boundaries, and allows for temporal coincidence of two chronologically distant events. I discuss the four main approaches within this strategy that can be discovered in contemporary theological writings. The first approach implies a time travel of the Calvary event. (...) The second suggests the time travel of Eucharistic participants. The third eliminates the chronological distance by relocating one of the events into a timeless reality. The fourth assumes multilocation of the event across time. I argue that each of these approaches is untenable on philosophical or theological grounds. (shrink)

According to the Particularist Theory of Events, events are real things that have a spatiotemporal location. I argue that some events do not have a spatial location in the sense required by the theory. These events are ordinary, nonmental events like Smith’s investigating the murder and Carol’s putting her coat on the chair. I discuss the significance of these counterexamples for the theory.

We argue that mereological essentialism for events is independent of mereological essentialism for objects, and that the philosophical fallout of embracing mereological essentialism for events is minimal. We first outline what we should consider to be the parts of events, and then highlight why one would naturally be inclined to think that the object-question and the event-question are linked. Then, we argue that they are not. We also diagnose why this is the case and emphasize the upshot. In particular, we (...) argue that the way we evaluate modal claims which concern events differs from the way we evaluate modal claims which concern objects. Ultimately, then, to our title question we say: the answer does not matter as much as you might think. (shrink)

Traditional document clustering algorithms consider text-based features such as unique word count, concept count, etc. to cluster documents. Meanwhile, event mining is the extraction of specific events, their related sub-events, and the associated semantic relations from documents. This work discusses an approach to event mining through clustering. The Universal Networking Language -based subgraph, a semantic representation of the document, is used as the input for clustering. Our research focuses on exploring the use of three different feature sets for event clustering (...) and comparing the approaches used for specific event mining. In our previous work, the clustering algorithm used UNL-based event semantics to represent event context for clustering. However, this approach resulted in different events with similar semantics being clustered together. Hence, instead of considering only UNL event semantics, we considered assigning additional weights to similarity between event contexts with event-related attributes such as time, place, and persons. Although we get specific events in a single cluster, sub-events related to the specific events are not necessarily in a single cluster. Therefore, to improve our cluster efficiency, connective terms between two sentences and their representation as UNL subgraphs were also considered for similarity determination. By combining UNL semantics, event-specific arguments similarity, and connective term concepts between sentences, we were able to obtain clusters for specific events and their sub-events. We have used 112 000 Tamil documents from the Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation data corpus and achieved good results. We have also compared our approach with the previous state-of-the-art approach for Router-RCV1 corpus and achieved 30% improvements in precision. (shrink)

A course-grained theory of event individuation is defended by arguing that events are spatiotemporal particulars with an ontological affinity to coarse-grained physical objects and by demonstrating that the metalinguistic correlate to one set of adequate identity conditions for events is most plausibly iterpreted as coarsely individuating events. Such coarse-grained events, it is argued, do admit of divisibility proliferation, much like the proliferation of physical objects entailed by Goodman's calculus of individuals. This coase-grained, divisibility proliferation account of events is then used (...) to resolve Davidson's paradox concerning the poisoned space traveller who is killed long befor he dies. (shrink)

I offer a formal ontological theory where the basic building blocks of the world are timeless events. The composition of events results in processes. Spacetime emerges as the system of all events. Things are construed as bundles of processes. I maintain that such a view is in accord with General Relativity and offers interesting prospects for the foundations of classical and quantum gravity.

According to Kim, events are constituted by objects exemplifying property(ies) at a time. In this paper I wish to defend Kim's theory of events from one source of criticism, extending it by taking into account a number of ideas developed by Davidson. In particular, I shall try to avoid events proliferation – one of the most serious problems in Kim's theory – by using a suggestion Kim himself advances, that is, by taking adverbs and the like to be events' rather (...) than properties' modifiers. Keywords: events, properties, adverbs, modifiers. (shrink)

Theory of social events is a new attempt to create a general sociological theory. Now it should be better substantiated than it was done on the initial states of the research. One has to pay more attention to the different modes of use of the concept event in a few schools of sociological methodology.

There are many ontologies and datasets on the semantic web that mention events. Events are important in our perception of the world and in our descriptions of it, therefore also on the semantic web. There is however not one best way to model them. This is connected to the fact that even the question what events are can be approached in different ways. Our aim is to better understand how events are represented on the semantic web and how it could (...) be improved. To this end we first turn to the ways events are treated in philosophy and in foundational ontologies. We ask questions such as what sorts of things we call events, what ontological status we assign to events and if and how can events be distinguished from other entities such as situations. Then we move on to an empirical analysis of particular semantic web ontologies for events. In this analysis we find what kinds of things are usually called events on the semantic web. We use the findings from the philosophy of events to critically assess these ontologies, show their problems and indicate possible paths to their solution. (shrink)

What is an event? What sort of object are they? How is a given event distinguished from other events and other objects? This thesis on science oriented metaphysics will take Davidson's account of events as its starting point to answer the above questions. It will develop this conception of events into one that is consistent with the special theory of relativity by updating its notions of change, cause and property. The new concept of a proper property, a generalization of the (...) notion of an invariant, is introduced to solve some of these metascientific problems. Other features of the work include an analysis of the Lorentz force equation as it applies to one family of cases of causation, showing that a use of cause and effect to help individuate events cannot be complete until relativistic features are built into it. I propose that the conception of a proper property will also solve this worry over the nature of causation as it affects the issues of events above. In particular, it will attempt to solve a charge of circularity which has been leveled at Davidson's account. This property analysis also has the feature that it makes the account of events which started with Davidsonian inspiration more like Kim's. Kim's account of events is modified on the grounds it does not do justice to our intuitions about changes and events. (shrink)

Among the most well-known accounts of events is Jaegwon Kim’s exemplification theory, which identifies each event with a property exemplification. Two of the most influential rival event theorists have urged rejecting exemplificationism on the basis of the charge that it ultimately conflates events with facts [Lombard : Events: A Metaphysical Study. Routledge & Kegan Paul; Bennett :Events and their Names. Hackett Publishing Company]. In response, I offer a detailed examination of Lombard and Bennett’s arguments that exemplificationism undermines the event/fact distinction. (...) I then develop and defend a modified version of Kim’s account that overcomes this objection, and so constitutes a more plausible exemplification theory of events. (shrink)

The article deals with the differences of the notion of 'object' or 'thing' in natural languages, concluding that some languages are by their structure more object-biased while others are more event-biased and proceeds to analyse how two common Japanese words, mono and koto , both meaning 'thing', have been treated in 20th-century Japanese thought, notably in the philosophical works of Watsuji Tetsurô, Ide Takashi, Hiromatsu Wataru and Kimura Bin. All of these thinkers represent different schools and trends (Watsuji could be (...) called a cultural particularist, Ide was an Aristotle scholar, Hiromatsu a Marxist and Kimura is a psychiatrist), but come to similar conclusions in this respect, allowing us to regard event-biased and object-biased linguistic constructions as manifestations of two different, but equally necessary cognitive faculties. (shrink)