Events - An Annotated Bibliography

Introduction

This bibliography is concerned with recent literature on the nature of events and the place they occupy in our conceptual scheme. The subject has received extensive consideration in the philosophical debate over the last few decades, with ramifications reaching far into the domains of allied disciplines such as linguistics and the cognitive sciences. At the same time, the literature is so wide and widely scattered that it has become very difficult to keep track of every line of development. Our hope is that this work will prove useful to overcome that difficulty.

Content and scope of the bibliography

We have chosen Hans Reichenbach’s 1947 pioneering contribution on the logical form of action sentences as a starting point (the other acknowledged milestone being the publication of an influential paper by Donald Davidson exactly 20 years later), and we headed for a review of the extensive literature that followed in the fifty years thereafter. For convenient reference, we have also included a short Appendix with some early works referred to in much of the literature.

The focus is represented by philosophical literature devoted explicitly to such questions as the following:

- Are events a kind of entity?

- If so, what are they? (For instance, are events particulars or universals, concrete or abstract?)

- How do they differ from other kinds of entity? (For instance, how do they differ from material objects, if at all? How do they differ from states of affairs, if at all?)

- What are their identity and individuation criteria?

- Are there any substantial differences between various kinds of event? (For instance, are actions a kind of event? What is the difference between mental and physical events, if any? Are facts, states, processes species of one single event category?)

- What position do events occupy in the causal network? How do they fit in the spatio-temporal framework?

- How does reference to or quantification over events affect the semantics of ordinary language? How does it feature in the construction of formal semantic models?

- How do semantic issues interact with metaphysical ones?

In addition, we have also included relevant entries from various collateral fields: the philosophy of action; the philosophy of mind; the philosophy of space, time, and causation; the logic of tense and time, and the treatment of tense and aspect in linguistics; situation theory; knowledge representation; planning and temporal reasoning in artificial intelligence. All of these are areas of research in which the notion of an event arguably has played and still plays a prominent role (whether positively, i.e., as something to be relied on for a proper treatment of the core issues, or negatively, as a concept to be eliminated from unadulterated philosophical or otherwise technical vocabulary). However, it would have hardly been possible to include every piece of work dealing in some way or another with the notion of an event. In regard to those collateral areas, the present bibliography is therefore only meant to give some indication of the main trends and contributions, but aims at no completeness. (In some cases, for instance, we have included anthologies and collective works, without itemising each relevant essay.) This limitation is even more drastic with respect to other allied areas such as psychology, decision and probability theory, or the philosophy of history: here too events play an important role, but it would have been impossible to give a reasonable coverage of this role without stretching the relevant parameters beyond bearable limits. Even so, the list includes some 1850 entries by over 900 authors, and gives a measure of the importance that the topic has registered in the literature.

The philosophical co-ordinates

The entries are listed in alphabetical/chronological order by author. This means the bibliography is offered as raw material: there is no topical subcategorization. Such a categorization might have been effective in serving the purpose of a guided tour through the literature, but it would have also incorporated a conspicuous amount of arbitrariness, which could have only been mitigated (and then only partially) at the cost of overwhelming repetitions and cross-indexing. We have preferred keeping this to a minimum. Our annotations along with the comprehensive apparatus of subject and name indexes included in the last part of the volume should help provide quick access to the topics of interest.

Some major guidelines, however, have been followed in the compilation. They correspond to four main co-ordinates within which it seems possible to stake out--at least in part--the multiform spectrum of philosophical positions contemplated in the literature:

1. Realists vs. non-realists. A first obvious co-ordinate, corresponding to a major line of research, is the degree of reality that different theories ascribe to events. On one side is the realist position, viewing events as part of our basic ontological inventory--objects of reference and quantification. This is the view advocated by Reichenbach and Davidson and accepted by the majority of authors (though sometimes for very different reasons and within the framework of radically different metaphysical conceptions). On the other side we find the non-realist’s position: it denies existence to events in favor of ontological parsimony, arguing that every seemingly event-committing sentence can in principle be paraphrased in terms of event-free ones. This view has been defended, for instance, by T. Horgan, R. Trenholme, and B. Aune in the 70’s, and underlies much of the work in the field of adverbial modification pioneered by R. Clark and R. Montague. In between these two opposite positions are those authors who avoid the language of reduction, but also deny that events and objects are co-ordinate and equally basic. We find here philosophers in the tradition of P. F. Strawson, but also authors such as J. Kim, L. B. Lombard, and J. Bennett, who maintain some form of dependency or supervenience of events over material substances or entities of other sorts. We find also philosophers who defend the primacy of events over objects: this is a view that is rooted in the early work of B. Russell and A. N. Whitehead, and which has been explored, e.g., in some works of R. M. Martin.

2. Particularists vs. recurrentists; concretists vs. abstractists. A second way of scanning the variety of metaphysical theories of events is with reference to the distinction between the conception of events as spatio-temporal particulars versus their conception as recurrable entities, entities which can occur more than once. The latter view is exemplified by R. Chisholm’s early writings, according to which events are fact-like entities--a species of states of affairs, differing from propositions only in their being time-bound. The opposite, particularist view is most explicitly exemplified by Davidson’s own seminal writings as well as by such authors as M. Brand, P. van Inwagen, or D. H. Mellor. A better picture, however, is obtained by further distinguishing a continuum of particularist positions based on the degree of "concreteness" that they assign to events, i.e., the degree to which they view events as soaking up the content of the spatio-temporal region at which they occur. At one extreme, authors like W. V. O. Quine push the concretist conception as far as possible by denying any categorial distinction among spatio-temporal entities and eventually assimilating events to material objects. The other extreme is not explicitly represented by any author, but corresponds ideally to the view that there is no lower bound on the abstractness (lack of content) of events. In between these two extreme positions we have a variety of intermediate conceptions, corresponding to the majority of official positions: each of them sees events as spatio-temporal entities, but with various constraints on the lower limit on how concrete an event can be. For instance, Davidsonian events are all rather thick, though never as thick as to coincide with the material objects with which they may happen to be co-localized; Kimean events, by contrast, may be highly abstract, though presumably never as abstract as to leave their spatio-temporal regions entirely unqualified: events are exemplifications of properties by objects at times (i.e., they are tropes, on some recent variants of this account), and the constituent objects and properties impose some constraints on what can possibly go on at the relevant spatio-temporal location. Lastly, it is fair to add that a number of authors--mostly concerned with the application of the event concept to problems in the semantics of natural language, the logic of temporal discourse, or the representation of temporal knowledge--do not take any stand with respect to the concrete-abstract continuum, treating events as somewhat underspecified "bare" entities subject to first-order reference and quantification.

3. Unifiers vs. multipliers. The above classification pattern is closely related to a third, rather popular way of approaching the field of event theories, which is based on the underlying identity and individuation criteria. (Succeeding in making sense of assertions or denials of identity between entities of some sort is often considered a minimal prerequisite for the viability of a theory resting on the idea that there are entities of that sort, and in the case of events the issue has received particular attention.) Again we have here a wide spectrum of theories, though their exact assessment is often made difficult by the uncertain boundary between ontological and semantic issues of identity. At one end we have the "unifiers" (to use I. Thalberg’s fortunate term), initially represented by Anscombe and Davidson. This is the view that a single event can be referred to by significantly distinct linguistic expressions. In its most radical version, this view turns into Quine’s, which makes events so concrete as to leave no room for two events to occupy exactly the same spatio-temporal region. At the other end of the spectrum we have the "multipliers", who emphasize dissimilarities in meaning from one event-referring expression to another, inferring corresponding ontological distinctions. This view is chiefly associated with the writings of J. Kim and A. I. Goldman, and is typically affiliated with a conception of events as supervening on their participants. In between we have various intermediate positions. Generally speaking, these agree in their heart with the unifier’s intuitions, but acknowledge the legitimacy of various concerns underlying the multiplier’s approach. Among others, we find here accounts based on the part-whole structure of events (J. J. Thomson, I. Thalberg) or their modal properties (M. Brand, D. K. Lewis). Some theorists, such as J. Bennett, also subscribe in this regard to a sort of indeterminacy thesis, and regard the whole identity issue as resulting from impossible attempts to bridge the chasm between semantic and metaphysic issues.

4. Events and semantics. Finally, the fourth co-ordinate has to do with language, and more specifically with the role played by events within the framework of semantic theorizing. Although some authors would deny that there is any semantic way to argue for the existence of events, others view events as comprising a necessary category of entities to be posited next to other categories (such as material objects) as the referents of quantified variables visible only in deep grammatical structure. This is the Davidsonian line of thought, leading to what T. Parsons has labelled "sub-atomic semantics"; but it is also the line of thought that grew out of the independent work of Z. Vendler and A. Kenny in the analysis of sentence nominals, leading to an extensive literature in the semantic account of Aktionsarten (action types) and related natural language phenomena. Though sometimes the focus of a vehement debate, such lines of reasoning have come to define an independent dimension within which most theories can now be appraised and compared to one another. Also in the cognitive sciences, and particularly in the domain of representation tools for Artificial Intelligence, the interplay between logical semantics and event ontology has been the battlefield of several proposals and developments.

Format and indexing criteria

In addition to the admittedly vague limits set by these concerns, the scope and range of the bibliography is defined by the typology of the literature that we have surveyed.

There are four main types of entry: monographs; journal articles; articles in collective volumes (including conference and workshop proceedings); collective volumes (including conference and workshop proceedings). In all cases, as already mentioned, all entries have been ordered alphabetically by the surname of the author(s) or (in the case of a collective volume) of the editor(s). Works by the same author(s) or editor(s) are listed chronologically under the surname; these are followed, again in chronological order, by their co-authored or co-edited works. (Co-authors or co-editors are always listed alphabetically by the first author/editor. There are no individual cross-references under the names of the second or subsequent authors, since the Index of Authors allows the user to locate all works by the same author. To facilitate quick author reference, a special Index to Second and Subsequent Authors, listing the names of all people appearing as second or subsequent authors or editors of titles registered as main entries, has also been included.) For the purpose of alphabetic ordering, hyphens and diacritics (including diaeresis) have been disregarded and unhyphenated complex surnames have been treated as single units. (This applies also to surnames beginning with ‘von’,‘van’, and the like.) If more than one work by the same author(s) or editor(s) has the same publication year, lower case letters are added in alphabetic order (as in ‘1967a’) to avoid ambiguity in case of cross-reference. Cross-references are always given by indicating the author(s) or editor(s) surname(s) (with initials, if necessary) followed by the year of publication of the referred title (with alphabetic tag, if applicable).

In addition to the above four categories, we have included some doctoral dissertations which have played a prominent role in the literature, but no attempt has been made to give a full coverage to this category. Occasionally (and with the same selection criteria) we have also included papers that appeared as technical reports, but unpublished manuscripts have been systematically omitted.

Some attempt has also been made to include reviews or references to reprints or later editions of books listed in the bibliography. Reviews are treated as regular entries, under the reviewer’s name. (A cross-reference is provided in the annotation under the reviewed work.) Reprints or later editions are listed together with the original edition, separated by a colon and in chronological order. (In case of ambiguity, page numbers of citations and excerpts must be taken to refer to the most recent reprint or edition.) Non-original editions in languages other than English are not included (though we always give the English translation of a title originally published in another language; in that case the translation is treated as a reprint, following the criteria indicated above).

As for the annotations, they are mostly given in the form of a short summary, sometimes accompanied by quotations from particularly significant passages. Inevitably, this may reflect our personal interpretation. Moreover, many articles or books registered here are not devoted specifically to the topic of events, and our annotations are correspondingly partial: we remark on the authors’ views only as far as events are concerned. Other annotations are simply cross-references, or excerpts from the authors’ own abstracts (as appearing at the beginning of an article, or as reported in The Philosopher’s Index). In any case, it is understood that the length of the annotation is never and by no means intended to be indicative of the value of the work. (We have tried to keep every annotation to a maximum of a dozen lines.)

For ease of reference, we have avoided all abbreviations in the titles of journals, collective volumes (such as conference proceedings), or publishers. Thus virtually each entry is self-contained. However, in the case of an article included in a collective volume which is listed as an independent entry (typically because of the number of relevant articles or because its publication represents a contribution of its own), the entry is given in abbreviated form by providing a cross-reference.

Many people helped us with this work in many ways. We would especially like to thank Andrea Bonomi and Bernard Katz. We are also grateful to an anonymous referee of the Philosophy Documentation Center for providing detailed comments on an earlier draft, and to George Leaman for his support during the final stages of this work.

We offer this bibliography together with our apologies for any omission and for any error of fact or interpretation that might have slipped in. We anticipate our thanks to anyone who will send us integrations, comments, corrections, or suggestions that might help us improve this work in view of an updated edition.

An Annotated Bibliography 1947 to 1997

1985 ‘Einzelding- und Ereignisontologie’ [‘The Ontology of Particulars and of Events’, in German], Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 39, 157-85.

On treating individual events as part of our basic ontological inventory. "Any such attempt may neither rely simply on scientific results, nor consist of suggestions to improve the scheme already at our disposal. On the other hand, there is the danger of falling into a positivism of factual use, a positivism of ordinary language. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of a philosophy of events" [pp. 160-61]. Includes a discussion of the views of Davidson, Quine, Strawson, and Moravcsik.

1985 On Verbs and Time, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Argues that "just as change and causation can be viewed conceptually as either instantaneous or continuous, inchoatives and process verbs whose meanings involve such notions appear in natural language as either event or process type verbs" [Abstract]. Includes a discussion of various issues in the semantics of the English progressive.

1986 ‘Verbs of Change, Causation, and Time’, Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Report No. CSLI-86-50.

Building on Dowty (1979), observes that the categories of inchoatives and causatives are not of uniform aspectual type. In particular, accomplishments are not to be identified with causatives, since there are causatives that meet tests for process verbs (as in ‘The man walked his dog for an hour’).

1975a ‘Causation, Transparency and Emphasis’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5, 1-23.

Causation is not relational, because this would imply that causal statements are referentially transparent in cause- and effect-positions, and they are not. Compare Dretske (1977) and Kim (1977).

1975b ‘The Object of Explanation’, in S. Körner, ed., Explanation, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 1-45.

A general analysis of such sentences as "Plato explained why Socrates died" or "Plato explained why Socrates died from drinking hemlock", favoring the view that the object of explanation is a complex consisting of an event, a description, and a question (or an indirect interrogative). It is observed that the controversy on event identity rests on a confusion. "Davidson is talking about one sort of thing and Kim and Goldman about another. There is the event of Socrates’ death, which, as Davidson urges, can be variously described as Socrates’ death or as Socrates’ death from drinking hemlock. But there is also what might be called the state of affairs which consists of Socrates’ having the property of having died, and this is different from the state of affairs of Socrates’ having the property of having died from drinking hemlock" [pp. 8-9].

1979 ‘The Causal Relation’, in P. A. French, T. Uehling, and H. K. Wettstein, eds. (1979), pp. 369-86; incorporated in Achinstein (1983), Chapter 6.

A defense of Achinstein (1975a) against various objections, including those of Levin (1976), Dretske (1977), and Kim (1977).

A theory of the explaining act, of the resulting explanation (the act’s "product"), and its ontological status. Includes a chapter on the nature of the causation, based on (1975a, 1979).

1965 ‘Aristotle’s Distinction Between Energeia and Kinêsis’, in R. Bambrough, ed., New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 121-41.

Classic reference for a comparison between Aristotle’s kinêsis/energeia distinction and the event typologies of Ryle (1949), Kenny (1963), and Vendler (1957). Detailed criticisms in Penner (1970). Related material in Graham (1980) and Mourelatos (1993).

1986 ‘Intention and Intentional Action: The Simple View’, Mind & Language, 1, 281-301.

A defense of the view that the intention to do an action is necessary for doing it intentionally.

1989 ‘The Role of Intention in Intentional Action’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 19, 511-32.

Defends a "control model" of intentional action and compares it with the competing model of Searle (1979, 1983).

1992 ‘The Intention/Volition Debate’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 22, 323-38.

"There is no need to incorporate volition--construed as something other than intending, trying, sensory feedback, or a combination thereof--into one’s theory of action" [p. 337].

1967 ‘On Seeing Bodily Movements as Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 4, 222-30.

"Perception by a person of what another is doing amounts, in the usual case, to perceiving a pattern of ‘fine shades of behavior’, each itself an (atomic) action unmistakably present, not just an ‘observed movement’" [p. 230].

1967 ‘A Logical Condition for the Redescription of Actions in Terms of Their Consequences’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1, 132-34.

1981 ‘An Interval-Based Representation of Temporal Knowledge’, Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-81), Vol. 1, Vancouver: IJCAI [Morgan Kaufmann], pp. 221-26.

One of the first attempts--and a very influential one--to incorporate temporal reasoning into Artificial Intelligence (see also McDermott 1982). Based on a many-sorted predicate calculus with variables ranging over an ontology including properties, time intervals, and events (these latter being assumed as primitive and said to occur over intervals of time).

1983 ‘Maintaining Knowledge about Temporal Intervals’, Communications of the ACM, 26, 823-43; reprinted in D. Weld and J. de Kleer, eds., Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems, San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1990, pp. 361-72.

An interval-based temporal logic (as in 1981). There are no time instants, for no event is truly instantaneous: "there seems to be a strong intuition that, given an event, we can always ‘turn up the magnification’ and look at its structure" [p. 363].

1984 ‘Towards a General Theory of Action and Time’, Artificial Intelligence, 23, 123-54; reprinted in J. F. Allen, J. Hendler, and A. Tate, eds. (1990), pp. 464-79.

An extension of the theory put forward in (1981, 1983). Treats processes as an intermediate category between events and properties (they may occur over subintervals, but not over every subinterval). See Sadri (1987) and Galton (1990) for critical examinations.

1991a ‘Temporal Reasoning and Planning’, in J. F. Allen, H. A. Kautz, R. N. Pelavin, and J. D. Tenenberg (1991), pp. 2-68.

An extensive survey of the main problems and lines of research in the field of temporal reasoning (including a review of Allen’s own research) with emphasis on applications to planning.

1991b ‘Time and Time Again: The Many Ways to Represent Time’, International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 6 [Special Issue on "Temporal Reasoning", Part A, K. M. Ford and F. D. Anger, eds.], 341-55.

Reviews some AI techniques for representing time. "Can one assume that a timestamp can be assigned to each event, or barring that, that the events are fully ordered? Or can we only assume that a partial ordering of events is known? Can events be simultaneous? Can they overlap in time and yet not be simultaneous? If they are not instantaneous, do we know the duration of events? Different answers to each of these questions allow very different representations of time" [p. 341, Abstract].

1994 ‘Actions and Events in Interval Temporal Logic’, Journal of Logic and Computation, 4, 531-79.

Presents a formalism--based on an interval temporal logic--for representing events and actions, viewed as "primarily linguistic or cognitive in nature" [p. 533]. (They are the way by which rational agents classify patterns of change. "The world does not really contain events" [ibid.].) The presentation includes a formal axiomatization of the structure of time periods as well as of the relationships between actions and events and their effects.

1985 ‘A Common-Sense Theory of Time’, Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-85), Vol. 1, Los Angeles: IJCAI [Morgan Kaufmann], pp. 528-31.

Proposes a theory of commonsense knowledge about time exploiting the interval-based theory of Allen (1981, 1983, 1984).

1989 ‘Moments and Points in an Interval-Based Temporal Logic’, Computational Intelligence, 5, 225-38.

Presents a new axiomatization of the theory of Allen and explores the relationships between interval-based and point-based theories. "The interval-based theory starts with intuitions about time as reflected in natural language. Time in natural language is intimately associated with events. When an event occurs, it defines a time. Temporal ordering is simply an abstraction derived from the ordering of event occurrences". Still, the theory "maintains a distinction between events and times. Fort instance, in an event logic [without explicit time, such as Kamp’s 1979], two events may be exactly simultaneous and yet not be equal" [p. 225].

Includes J. F. Allen (1984), Hanks and McDermott (1987), Lifschitz (1987a), and McDermott (1978).

A comprehensive reader on planning and related AI applications. Includes J. F. Allen (1991a), Kautz (1991), and Pelavin (1991).

Makes use of a bounded/nonbounded aspectual distinction germane in many ways to the accomplishment/activity (Vendler 1957) or performance/ activity (Kenny 1963) distinctions.

1972 ‘Response to Weitz’s "The Concept of a Human Action"’, Philosophical Exchange, 1, 239-47.

A criticism of Weitz (1972): one should not try to set the problems of action theory by seeking general application criteria for the ordinary term ‘human action’. The term ‘action’ is often a mass noun.

A criticism of Horgan’s (1978) eliminative strategy. In addition to specific objections, it is argued that "the basic issue between Horgan and his opponents is really a conflict between competing principles of parsimony [...] Horgan will brandish Occam’s Razor and deplore the proliferation of entities [...] But Horgan’s opponent might deplore analyses which involve the proliferation of special, nontruthfunctional sentential connectives such as Horgan’s causal connective and generational connective. The opponent can brandish what might be called Russell’s Razor: Do not multiply logical connectives or logical apparatus in general beyond necessity" [pp. 306-7].

1995 Time, Space and Movement: Meaning and Knowledge in the Sensible World. Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop, Toulouse: COREP.

Includes Amsili and Le Draoulec (1995), Casati (1995), Glasbey (1995), Krifka (1995), Reboul (1995), C. S. Smith (1995), and Verkuyl (1995b).

1995 ‘Contribution to the Event Negation Problem’, in P. Amsili, M. Borillo, and L. Vieu, eds. (1995), Part A, pp. 17-29.

On the treatment of negated event sentences within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory.

1972 Aktionalität im Deutschen: Eine Untersuchung unter Vergleich mit dem Russischen Aspektsystem [Actionality in German: An Investigation with Reference to the Aspectual System of Russian, in German], Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Extensive discussion of aspect-related phenomena. In relation to the activity-accomplishment (performance) distinction of Vendler (1957) and Kenny (1963), a twofold distinction is examined between situations, processes, actions that are directed toward attaining a goal (‘John was writing a letter’ versus ‘John was writing’) and those which actually reach the goal (‘John wrote a letter’ versus ‘John was writing a letter’). See Dahl (1981) for discussion.

1983 The Explanation of Actions: A Critical Analysis of Donald Davidson’s Theory, Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Albany.

An attempt to provide a coherent systematic account of Davidson’s theory of explaining human actions in the context of his theory of meaning and truth.

1968 Action and Bodily Movement, Doctoral Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A comparison of Anscombe’s and Davidson’s thesis of the redescribability of actions, pointing out some differences. "We can say that we have one action under different descriptions if the descriptions are related as descriptions of means to descriptions of ends. It is only when this important qualification is left out that what [Anscombe] says can be made to look artificially like what Davidson says" [p. 253]. Davidson’s view is open to objections that Anscombe’s escapes.

1977/8 ‘How Basic Are Basic Actions?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 78, 195-213.

Argues that the only philosophically interesting notion of basicness is that of "causal basicness", and that the notion of a basic action can play no useful role in an account of action and agency.

"An action is not called intentional in virtue of any extra feature which exists when it is performed" [p. 28]. What distinguishes intentional from non-intentional actions is that the former are "actions to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application". It is argued that "a single action can have many different descriptions, e.g. ‘sawing a plank’, ‘sawing oak’, ‘sawing one of Smith’s planks’, ‘making a squeaky noise with the saw’, ‘making a great deal of sawdust’ and so on", and that an agent "may know that he is doing a thing under one description, and not under another" [p. 11]. An influential point of view.

1963 ‘The Two Kinds of Error in Action’, The Journal of Philosophy, 60, 393-401.

Consent is always consent to something "under a description". Thus, if somebody signed a property transfer, it is possible that "under the description ‘signing the document presented by so and so’ there was consent to what took place; under the description ‘signing a property transfer’ there was not" [p. 393].

1969a ‘Causality and Extensionality’, The Journal of Philosophy, 66, 152-59; reprinted in Anscombe (1981b), pp. 173-79.

A discussion of the "slingshot" argument. "I find it harmless to say that causal statements are intensional. But our considerations lead to raising the following question: What is at stake in maintaining or denying that an effect is properly described or presented in a proposition? [...] Whatever it is, in this issue one side is probably correctly represented by the insistence on the proposition but I suspect (my hunch is) that the other side is the right one, but is not correctly represented by objecting to the presentation in a proposition" [pp. 178-79].

1969b ‘Before and After’, The Philosophical Review, 73, 3-24; reprinted in Anscombe (1981b), pp. 180-95.

Includes a discussion of events as the terms of the two temporal relations before and after and an analysis of those relations in the case of instantaneous events. "Though we cannot think of an instantaneous event falling within our experience that is not a terminus of something that takes time, we can think of plenty of events that are such termini". Thus, "Russell [...] was wrong in saying that no instantaneous events occur within our experience, because he had a false picture of what that would be like, like people who suppose that a point that could be seen would be an extensionless dot" [p. 193].

1979a ‘Under a Description’, Noûs, 13, 219-33; reprinted in Anscombe (1981b), pp. 208-19, and in R. Casati and A. C. Varzi, eds. (1996), pp. 303-17.

Replies to several objections ("misunderstandings") put forward against the view of (1957), according to which one and the same event may be singled out by different descriptions. Authors discussed include A. I. Goldman, D. Bennett, and J. J. Thomson. Moreover, it is pointed out that "while I am in agreement with Davidson that there are many descriptions of an action, we part company when it comes to his ‘theory of event-identity’. Or again, his theory of adverbial modification. This really doesn’t go at all well with the idea of many descriptions. For the adverbial modification that suits one verb may not consort well with another, and yet the two verbs may occur in different descriptions of the same action" [p. 232].

1979b ‘Chisholm on Action’, Grazer philosophische Studien, 7/8 [special issue "Essays in the Philosophy of R. M. Chisholm", also published as E. Sosa, ed. (1979)], 205-13.

On how Chisholm’s theory of action can deal with the fact that one can produce neuro-physiological changes by moving a limb.

1981b The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe. Volume 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

1983 ‘The Causation of Action’, in C. Ginet and S. Shoemaker, eds., Knowledge and Mind. Philosophical Essays, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 174-90.

1987 ‘Attributions of Intentional Action’, Philosophical Studies, 51, 311-23.

Argues that Davidson’s (1967a) analysis of adverbs as predicates of events can be extended to intensional adverbs such as ‘intentionally’ as long as one is a realist about mental representations.

1994 ‘The Inadequacy of Anomalous Monism as a Realist Theory of Mind’, in Preyer, G., Siebelt, F., and Ulfig, A., eds. (1994), pp. 223-53.

Argues that Davidson’s principle of the anomalism of the mental rests on "a profoundly anti-naturalistic--indeed, anti-realistic--conception of the mental", and that anomalous monism is therefore "unable to satisfy minimal desiderata of an adequate naturalistic mentalism" [p. 224].

1976 ‘Mereology, Time, Action and Meaning’, in B. Kantscheider, ed., Sprache und Erkenntnis, Innsbruck: AMOE, pp. 189-233.

1982 ‘Some Remarks on Ontology’, in J. Agassi and R. S. Cohen, eds., Scientific Philosophy Today. Essays in Honor of Mario Bunge, Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 1-44.

Critical study of Bunge’s view on ontology as presented in (1977b). Includes a discussion of Bunge’s theory of processes and events [pp. 34ff].

1979 ‘Mental Particulars, Mental Events, and the Bundle Theory’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 9, 109-20.

Regards experiences as events so as to argue inter alia that the bundle theory does not imply the possibility of experiences apart from experiencers.

1974 ‘A New Approach to the Logical Theory of Actions and Causality’, in S. Stenlund, ed., Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis. Essays Dedicated to Stig Kanger on His Fiftieth Birthday, Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 73-91.

A formal theory of the bringing-about relation. Germane to the work by Pörn (1971, 1974).

1976 ‘Formal Semantics for Verb Tenses as Analyzed by Reichenbach’, in T. van Dijk, ed., Pragmatics of Language and Literature, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 229-36.

A reconstruction of Reichenbach’s (1947) analysis of English tenses within the framework of a "double-indexed" semantics.

1977 ‘On the Analysis of Some Accomplishment and Activity Verbs’, in C. Rohrer, ed. (1977), pp. 31-65.

An analysis of compound accomplishment and activity verb phrases (in the sense of Vendler 1957), such as ‘to draw a circle’ or ‘to push a cart’, using the system of tense logic first given in Åqvist and Guenthner (1978).

1978 ‘Fundamentals of a Theory of Verb Aspect and Events within the Setting of an Improved Tense Logic’, in F. Guenthner and C. Rohrer, eds., Studies in Formal Semantics: Intentionality, Temporality, Negation, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 167-99.

The first part develops a formal semantic account of tense logic; on that basis, in the second part the notion of an event is subjected to an analytic treatment, including a classification of so-called finite generic events and a formal account of the trichotomy of the beginning, the middle, and the end of any event. An extended language with operators corresponding to such locutions as ‘it begins to be the case that ... by its being the case that---" is also presented.

1966 Critical Notice of R. Taylor (1965), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 44, 231-40.

1975 ‘Beliefs and Desires as Causes of Action: A Reply to Donald Davidson’, Philosophical Papers, 4, 1-8.

An attempt to solve various problems arising from the view that beliefs and desires are causes of actions. Discussion of Davidson’s (1963) statement of that view.

1993 ‘A World of States of Affairs’, in J. Tomberlin, ed., Philosophy of Language (Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 7), Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, pp. 429-40.

The world (=space-time manifold) is a vaste assemblage of states of affairs, having individuals and properties as constituents.

1993 ‘A Unified Framework for Representing Time, Actions and Plans’, in F. Anger, H. Guesgen, and J. van Benthem, eds., Proceedings of the Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Reasoning. 13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Chambéry: IJCAI, pp. 193-217.

An AI approach to reasoning about time, actions, and plans. Following J. F. Allen’s (1984) account, an action is represented by describing what is true while the action is occurring: "An action is defined by means of temporal constraints on the world states, which pertain to the action itself, and on other more elementary actions occurring over time" [p. 193, Abstract].

1994 ‘A Computational Account for a Description Logic of Time and Action’, in J. Doyle, E. Sandewall, and P. Torasso, eds., Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (KR94), San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 3‑14.

1993 Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse. A Philosophical Semantics for Natural Language Metaphysics, Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Rich semantic analysis of the patterns of reference to abstract entities (propositions, properties, states of affairs, facts) integrated by an account of the semantics of discourse structure to analyse anaphoric reference. The analysis is pursued "in tandem" with a study of reference to concrete entities such as states and events (E. Bach’s "eventualities"). Indeed it is suggested that there is a spectrum of world immanence, with eventualities and propositions at the two ends, and entities such as facts and states of affairs taking an intermediate position: "like events, [they] have causal efficacy but, like propositions, [they] do not take spatio-temporal modification felicitously" [p. 2]. It is also suggested that these entities are closely correlated, as "natural language metaphysics slides easily from ‘semi-concrete’ eventualities to abstract entities" [p. 214]. Other topics include identity and individuation, the typology of eventualities, event negation, and much more.

On the differences between situation semantics (Barwise 1981, Barwise and Perry 1981b, 1983) and event-based semantics (Higginbotham 1983) for naked infinitives. It is argued that the latter "neither accounts for the relevant usages nor succeeds, on its own terms, in presenting coherent semantics for N[aked] I[nfinitive] perception verbs" [p. 57]. A version of the situation-based theory is presented and defended.

1985b ‘How Extensional is Extensional Perception?’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 8, 203-28.

Argues that naked infinitive perception sentences are actually more extensional than Barwise and Perry’s (1981b, 1983) situation semantics allows.

1995 ‘A Typology and Discourse Semantics for Motion Verbs and Spatial PPs in French’, Journal of Semantics, 12, 163-209.

A semantic analysis of motion describing expressions based on an ontology of "eventualities" and spatio-temporal extensions.

1969 ‘The Accordion Effect Thesis’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 19, 337-42.

1986 ‘Acting for Reasons’, The Philosophical Review, 95, 511-46; reprinted as Chapter 6 of Audi (1993a), pp. 145-78.

Presents a theory of action for a reason (a discriminative response to, and not merely an effect of, a reason). Includes a comparison between fine-grained (unifying) and coarse-grained (multiplying) approaches to events; the account of acting for reasons is presented as neutral between the two approaches.

Chapter 6 [pp. 126-41] on how practical reasoning figures in the dynamics of action: "As a process constituted by a pattern of events, it [practical reasoning] is a candidate to account for the dynamics of actions based on it, above all for what causes them, and for how, in relation to causative events, they come about" [p. 127].

A collection of essays (including a reprint of Audi 1986) where action is viewed as "behavior that is intentional under some description". Includes a general introductory overview [pp. 1-32] where it is stated that "the principal contributions of the book can accommodate either the fine-grained or the coarse-grained ontology (or various intermediate views, such as the component approach)" [p. 3].

1993b ‘Mental Causation: Sustaining and Dynamic’, in J. Heil and A. R. Mele, eds. (1993), pp. 53-74.

After a critical assessment of various sources of doubt about the causal power of the mental, offers a positive account according to which (i) intentional dispositions such as reason states play the role of "sustaining" causation, whereas (ii) mental events play the role of "dynamic" causation, which is "a productive or at least eliciting relation between causative events and other events, those constituting their effects" [p. 74].

1979 ‘Agent Causality: A Model’, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, 28 [Issue on "Studies in Action Theory", ed. by R. C. Whittemore], 71-79.

"Agent causality is not somehow in competition with event causality. A person causes an event when certain events, related to this person i[n] certain ways, cause these events" [p. 79].

1976 ‘Relational Becoming’, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 2/2, 12-23.

1987 ‘Point-Eventism’, Reports on Philosophy, 11, 49-55; reprinted as ‘Appendix: Point-Eventism’ in Z. Augustynek, Time. Past, Present, Future (translated from the Polish by S. Semczuk and W. Strawinski), Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers; Warszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1991, pp. 120-27.

Outlines a formal ontological theory proclaiming that every empirical object is either an event or a set-theoretic construction thereof. Events are thought of as non-extended spatio-temporal particulars.

Compares alternative monistic ontologies, based on events and points, respectively.

1993b ‘Point Eventism. An Outline of a Certain Ontology’, in Z. Augustynek and J. J. Jadacki, Possible Ontologies [Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 29], Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Editions Rodopi, pp. 15-100.

1971 ‘Comments’, in R. Binkley, R. Bronaugh, and A. Marras, eds. (1971), pp. 69-75.

"Although we must acknowledge that [people and things] change or act in various ways, we do not also have to acknowledge the existence of things called ‘changes’ or ‘actions’. We may, of course, speak of changes or actions both in our technical and in our everyday discourse; but our speech in this regard should be viewed as a mere manner of speaking. Singular terms purporting to refer to events and actions [...] can in principle be eliminated from our discourse: though perhaps highly convenient to use, they are not actually needed to describe what is or exists" [p. 26].

An introduction to basic distinctions such as that between continuants and processes. Holds that "the ordinary view of the world can be understood as a thing or substance ontology in which events have only a derivative reality" [p. 133]. Favors a predicate modifier approach to adverbial modification.

On the grounds for the ontological commitments of a theory of human action, defending an "agent" theory. Includes a discussion of event identity criteria.

1950 ‘Truth’ (Symposium with P. F. Strawson), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 24, 111-28; reprinted in Austin (1961b), pp. 85-101 (enlarged edition 1970, pp. 117-33).

Argues that a statement is true when it corresponds to the facts, implying that facts are in the world. Criticisms in Strawson (1950), Shorter (1962), and Vendler (1967a); discussion in Tillman (1966) and Chisholm (1979c).

1956/7 ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57, 1-30; reprinted in Austin (1961b), pp. 123-52 (enlarged edition 1970, pp. 175-204). Also in D. A. Gustafson, ed., Essays in Philosophical Psychology, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964, pp. 1-29; in R. A. Ammerman, ed., Classics of Analytic Philosophy, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965, pp. 379-98; in M. Weitz, ed., Twentieth-Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition, New York: The Free Press, 1966, pp. 329-51; in A. R. White, ed. (1968), pp. 19-42; and in C. Lyas, ed., Philosophy and Linguistics, London: Macmillan, 1971, pp. 79-101.

"It is in principle always open to us, along various lines, to describe or refer to "what I did" in so many ways [...] How far, that is, are the motives, intentions and conventions to be part of the description of actions? [...] what is an or one or the action? For we can generally split up what might be named as one action in several distinct ways, into different stretches or phases or stages" [1961, pp. 148-49].

1961a ‘Unfair To Facts’, in Austin (1961b), pp. 102-22 (enlarged edition 1970, pp. 154-74).

Analysis of the locution "The fact that...". Suggests that "The collapse of the Germans is an event and is a fact". Criticisms in Vendler (1967a).

1961b Philosophical Papers (J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock, eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press (enlarged edition London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

1962 How to Do Things with Words (J. O. Urmson, ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (second revised edition, 1975, M. Sbisà and J. O. Urmson eds.).

On the description of actions: "The perlocutionary act always includes some consequences, as when we say ‘By doing x I was doing y’: we do bring in a greater or less stretch of ‘consequences’ always, some of which may be ‘unintentional’. There is no restriction to the minimum physical act at all. That we can import an arbitrarily long stretch of what might also be called the ‘consequences’ of our act into the nomenclature of the act itself is, or should be’ a fundamental commonplace of the theory of our language about all ‘action’ in general. Thus if asked ‘What did he do?’, we may reply either ‘He shot the donkey’ or ‘He fired a gun’ or ‘He pulled the trigger’ or ‘He moved his trigger finger’, and all may be correct" [pp. 107-8].

On how events emerge and what determines their boundaries: "It is usually taken for granted that one knows what an event is or how events are demarcated. In this paper an explanation is offered for the emergence of events, the cut hypothesis, which states: ‘A sub-sequence of stimuli is cut out of a sequence to become a cognitive entity if it has been experienced many times in different contexts’, and three experiments to demonstrate the predictive power of the hypothesis are described" [p. 239, Abstract].

1980 ‘Tenses and Aspects as Functions on Verb-Phrases’, in C. Rohrer, ed. (1980), pp. 19-37.

Includes an discussion of the progressive originating with the question: What kinds of expressions are to be classified as having to do with states, processes, accomplishments, and achievements?

1981 ‘On Time, Tense and Aspect: An Essay in English Metaphysics’, in P. Cole, ed., Radical Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press, pp. 63-81.

An attempt to "dig out" the hidden metaphysical assumptions that are essential to an understanding of English tenses and aspects. Analyses time on the basis of Vendler’s (1957) fourfold classification of verb types into states, processes, accomplishments (or "protracted" events) and achievements ("instantaneous" events), collectively referred to as "eventualities". Analyses the latter both ontologically (using mereological notions) and from the perspective of linguistic theory.

1986a ‘The Algebra of Events’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 9 [Special Issue on "Tense and Aspect in Discourse", D. R. Dowty, ed.], 5-16; reprinted in R. Casati and A. C. Varzi, eds. (1996), pp. 497-508.

An extension of Link’s (1983) account of the count-mass-plural domain to the domain of "eventualities", yielding a characterization of the structure of semantic models whose (sorted) domains include events and processes. Based on the proportion events: processes = things: stuff, the proposal is made that events are analogous to singular and plural individuals, while bounded processes (bits of process) are analogous to the portions of matter that make up the ‘material extension’ of those individuals [p. 8].

1986b ‘Natural Language Metaphysics’, in R. Barcan-Marcus, G. J. W. Dorn, and P. Weingartner, eds., Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science VII, Amsterdam: North Holland, pp. 573-95.

Any "serious account of the semantics of natural language" leads to metaphysical questions such as "What do people talk as if there is?" and "What kinds of things and relations among them does one need in order to exhibit the structure of meanings that natural languages seem to have?" [p. 573]. Section 2 ("Eventology") argues that (i) "something like events" must be included in the domains of the model structures used for doing formal semantics, and (ii) one should provide a classification of these entities if one wants to do natural language semantics. "I don’t claim that it is impossible to construct them out of things otherwise needed, just that all the attempts to do so that I know about don’t seem to work" [p. 586].

1978 ‘A Representational Theory of Action’, Philosophical Studies, 34, 361-79.

Outlines a theory ("Representational Causalism") which seeks to do justice to the execution of action, intentional or not, by positing "executive representations for the duration of the action as the requisite psychological cause".

1980 ‘Actions Are Not Events’, Mind, 89, 114-20; reprinted in R. Casati and A. C. Varzi, eds. (1996), pp. 343-49.

Actions are not events. Rather, they are instances of a relation (bringing-about) between an agent and an event, as in von Wright (1963) and Chisholm (1964). Consequences: "We are not obliged to produce a theory of individuation of actions. Instances are not individuals and are not subject to quantification" [p. 119]. Moreover, "Since actions are not events, they do not enter straightforwardly into causal relations--they are neither causes nor effects. This is perfectly consistent with the Causal Theory of action, which does not say that actions are caused but only that an action is performed if a change is caused (in the right way) by a mental episode of the right sort" [p. 120].

1994 Tense, Aspect and Action. Empirical and Theoretical Contributions to Language Typology, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

1995 Universals and Property Instances. The Alphabet of Being, Oxford: Blackwell.

1971 ‘A Multiple-Aspect Theory of Time’, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 2, 163-71.

Every change--every becoming different--is an event, and some events completely include several others.

Argues that "in the narration and description of events and actions we do not employ exactly the same categories [...] Nevertheless, the theory here defended maintains that all kinds of action, including intentional ones, admit of causal or deterministic explanation" [p. 183].

Contra Chisholm, argues that the proper objects of intention are acts, not states of affairs.

1971 ‘The Search for Basic Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 8, 161-70.

Argues that there is no independently identifiable class of actions which may be said to be basic (in some interesting sense) with regard to other actions. Hence the very concept of a basic action is "of dubious value".

Rejects the view that bodily movements are basic actions in favor of a conception of basic actions as "exercises of competences" analysed as "moves" (not "movements").

1984 Language, Sense and Nonsense. A Critical Investigation into Modern Theories of Language, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

On Davidson’s (1967a) analysis of action sentences: "Why should the legitimacy of an inference a five-year-old has mastered turn on the intricacies of a novel extension of the predicate calculus? And if there are languages which lack devices for nominalizing verbs, is the inference not valid? Or are the ‘grounds’ of its validity beyond the comprehension of speakers of that language?" [p. 246].

1993 ‘Metaphysics and Mental Causation’, in J. Heil and A. R. Mele, eds. (1993), pp. 75-95.

An attempt to dissolve the problem of mental causation by rooting out and motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that lead to it, namely the thesis of the "causal closure of the physical" (= the thesis that "every instantiation of a micro-physical property that has a cause at t has a complete micro-physical cause at t" [p. 79]).

1982 ‘Propositions, Facts, and Events’, in W. Leinfellner, E. Kraemer, and J. Schank, eds., Language and Ontology. Proceedings of the 6th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, pp. 125-29.

Includes an account of propositions in which facts are truth-value-donors, the analysis focusing on the connection between facts and events "properly construed".

1972 Adverbial semantik. Die Konstitution logisch-semantischer Repräsentationen von Adverbialkonstruktionen [‘Adverbial Semantics. The Constitution of Logical-semantic Representations of Adverbial Constructions’, in German], Frankfurt: Athenäum; Eng. trans. published as The Grammar of Adverbials. A Study in the Semantics and Syntax of Adverbial Constructions, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1976.

An investigation into the logical structure of adverbial constructions, aiming at making inference properties that do not rely on lexical-semantic analysis formally explicit in the logical syntax. The proposed account is a modification of Davidson’s (1967a) event-based representation: a verb-nominalization is predicated about processes as well as about the individuals involved (agent, direct object, etc.). Compare T. Parsons (1980, 1985), Carlson (1984) and Dowty (1989) for related material.

1981 ‘Semantics and Syntax of Nominalizations’, in J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, and M. Stokhof, eds., Formal Methods in the Study of Language, Amsterdam: CWI, Centrum dor Mathematics and Computer Science, pp. 1-28.

1983 ‘Over de semantiek von nominalisaties’ [On the Semantics of Nominalizations’, in Dutch], Glot, 6, 1-29; revised English edition published as ‘On Aspectual Properties of Dutch and German Nominalizations’, in V. Lo Cascio and C. Vet, eds., Temporal Structure in Sentence and Discourse, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 7-39.

Objections to Kamp (1979) based on data from Dutch and German. Includes a topology-based classification of three main groups of verb phrases: process (interior of time interval), process with completion/result (interval with defined boundary), and completion/result (boundary of interval).

1988/9 ‘Tenses and Aspects in Discourse’, Theoretical Linguistics, 15, 135-94; incorporated in Chapter 2 of Bartsch (1995), pp. 127-210.

Gives a formal treatment of tense and aspect in German, using individuals and space-time regions as basic entities of the semantic models; situations (events, states, and properties) are construed as intensional entities represented as functions from possible worlds to regions.

1992 ‘Scopes of Tenses and Aspects in a Flexible Categorial Grammar’, Theoretical Linguistics, 18, 1-44; incorporated in Chapter 3 of Bartsch (1995), pp. 211-64.

Developments of the approach set out in (1988/9) within the framework of a "compositional" discourse representation theory.

1995 Situations, Tense, and Aspect. Dynamic Discourse Ontology and the Semantic Flexibility of the Temporal System in German and English, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

The first part of the book is devoted to an examination of some basic ontological issues in semantics. "We do not develop a situation semantics [...] Rather, we treat basic situations as entities within semantics. Over these entities, like over individuals, we can quantify and we can refer to them in predicating about them" [p. 6]. See especially § 1.1, where basic situations (events, states, and properties) are construed as intensional, functional entities in the spirit of (1988/9). Includes also a discussion of identity criteria, and of alternative ontologies (e.g., a Quinean ontology with only situations as basic entities: § 8.2). The second part of the book contains applications to the semantics of tense and aspect.

1981 ‘Scenes and Other Situations’, The Journal of Philosophy, 77, 369-97.

Argues that traditional model-theoretic semantics is incapable of accounting for the semantics of perceptual reports of the "naked infinitive" sort, and formulates an alternative situation-based account. (Further developed in Barwise and Perry 1981b, 1983). Compare Higginbotham (1983) and Vlach (1983) for replies in the spirit of Davidson’s (1967a) theory of action sentences.

1981a ‘Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations’, in P. A. French, T. Uehling, and H. K. Wettstein, eds., Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. VI), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 387-403; reprinted in A. P. Martinich, ed., The Philosophy of Language, Third Edition, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 369-81.

A preliminary sketch of situation semantics. Includes a defense against the "slingshot" argument (term introduced here for the first time, in view of the simplicity and minimum of accessories employed by the argument) and a brief outline of the semantics of perceptual reports presented in Barwise (1981).

1983 Situations and Attitudes, Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press / Bradford Books.

Full-fledged formulation of situation semantics. Events are treated as dynamic situations (as opposed to states of affairs). The proposed account is germane to that of Kim (1966, 1969, 1973a) and Goldman (1970): events (called "courses of events") are essentially sets of partial functions from spatio-temporal locations to "situation-types" defined by a tuple of objects standing or failing to stand in a certain relation. On the identity issue: "We can say that there is one actual event e, and that its factual parts e1, e2 and e3 correspond to its being several different types of events at once [...] But we could equally well say that all the events are actual and fit together in various ways into larger events. Depending on how we view the matter, we will see the situation structure that represents the world as having fewer or more actual events, but the same factual events" [pp. 67-68].

1986 Story, Performance, Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Events are "action structures, organized by relationships of causality, temporality, and other such linkages; narratives are verbal structures, organized by rules of discourse. Most commonly narratives are seen as "verbal icons of the events they represent, and the problem is one of determining the nature and extent of the isomorphism between them and the means by which this formal relationship is narratively achieved" [p. 5].

1986 ‘The Role of Event Expressions in Grammar’, Studies in Language, 10, 1-52.

There is a common core, shared by how-sentences and bare infinitives following perception verbs, that lies "in the fact that it must be event-expressions that are in the scope of the operator HOW or in the complement of a (non-epistemic) perception verb like see, hear, etc." [p. 5]. The event analysis is used to derive "a unified treatment of manner adverbs and predicative adjectives. The result of this [is] that the categorial distinction between some adverbs and adjectives becomes superfluous" [p. 5].

Includes a fact-based analysis of sentences such as ‘Mary is making pies’ which resembles Davidson’s (1967a) event-based analysis of action sentences. See Clark (1975).

1975 ‘Actions and Events: The Problem of Individuation’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 12, 263-76.

"For the events e and f to be identical, they must have same subject and spatio-temporal location, and their (participial) property descriptions must belong to the same ‘modification set’ (e.g. reddening, reddening slowly, reddening in July). The same criterion applies to actions, which are here treated strictly as a proper subclass of events (John’s closing the door = the door’s becoming closed). Actions related by Goldman’s ‘causal generation’ are therefore distinct, but those related by this and other three types of act-generation are not. This conclusion requires abandonment of the view--questionable on other grounds--that causal context are thoroughly extensional" [The Philosopher’s Index Abstract].

Includes reprints of Davidson (1967c), Gasking (1955), Humber and Madden (1971), and Pap (1957).

1974 ‘Singular Causal Statements: A Reconsideration’, Philosophical Forum, 5, 611-18.

1981 Hume and the Problem of Causation, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 7 on "Events, Facts, and the Extensionality of Causal Concepts" covers a number of modern accounts of causation and of its ontology (particular attention is devoted to the "slingshot" argument) and relates them to Hume’s philosophy. "The Humean will insist that the Titanic’s sinking and its sinking rapidly are two distinct spatiotemporally restricted particulars. The former is an event. The latter may not be so classified by ordinary thought, but it is surely as much a concrete particular item with its own causes an

Contents

Introduction

An Annotated Bibliography 1947 to 1997

A

B