The Case Against Events

Abstract

THE concept of event has a prominent role in contemporary philosophy, because many important philosophical problems are often phrased with reference to events. For instance, the mind-body problem is often regarded nowadays as the problem of the relation between mental events and physical events; discussions of scientific explanation usually assume that the entities explained are events; causation is usually treated as a relation between events; determinism is usually taken to be the thesis that all events are causally necessitated; and actions, a species of event, are the very subjectmatter of action theory. It is not surprising, therefore, that philosophers have generally taken for granted that there are such things as events. We naturally tend to be tolerant of entities which seem to play such a prominent role in so many philosophical issues. But I contend that the concept of event is much less vital to the formulation of these issues-and to our conceptual scheme in general-than it first appears to be. Indeed, I shall argue that it is a mistake to posit events at all. My case will rest on an application of Occam's Razor. I will show that despite the initial appearances, there is no real theoretical need to postulate events. So, since their elimination yields an important simplification of ontology, we should banish them from existence.

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