Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

An event is something that happens, an occurrence, something that occurs in a certain place during a particular interval of time. Although the concept of change has a philosophical history that is coeval with western philosophy itself, and although the concept of an event seems inextricably tied to that of change, the concept of an event seems not to have been the focus of sustained philosophical treatment until fairly recently. Due no doubt to a re-emergence of interest in the concept of change and to the growing use of the concept of an event in scientific writing and in theorizing about science, the idea of an event began, in the twentieth century, to take on a philosophical life of its own in the work of mc T aggart , A.N. whitehead , and C.D. broad . In addition, interest in the nature of events has been sparked by versions of the Mind–Body Identity Thesis ( see the extended essay on the mind/body problem ) formulated explicitly in terms of events (e.g., every mental event is a physical event) and by the idea that getting a clear picture of the nature of events would facilitate discussion of other philosophical issues (e.g., see the extended essay on causation ). Discussions of events have tended to focus on two fundamental questions: Are there events?, and, if so, What is the nature of these entities? These two questions have usually been treated together, since ... log in or subscribe to read full text