Do Events Exist?

Do Events Exist?

We have become accustomed to the idea of an “ontology of events”, either as a total world ontology or as part of our ontology. Are events all there is (no objects or substances), or are they just a part of what there is? Events exist—we think. Donald Davidson was a great proponent of a robust ontology of events, making use of them in the philosophy of mind (“Mental Events”) and philosophy of language (adverbs as predicates of events). Philosophers talk unhesitatingly about physical events. We quantify over events, commit ourselves existentially to them, treat them as ontologically on a par with physical objects. We think vaguely of them as beads on a string, ripples in water, notes in a tune. But are they real existents? Are they genuine particulars or individuals? Do they exist alongside ordinary objects as separate but co-equal constituents of reality? I am going to argue that their ontological credentials have been greatly exaggerated—there are no such things as events as commonly construed by philosophers. Not that no events ever occur—they happen all the time (see below)—but they are not the robust ontological baubles philosophers have supposed. There exists no such metaphysical category. The way philosophers use the word “event” is a misuse of that term, standing for nothing. The set of events in this sense is the empty set. The term “event” as a philosophical term of art is a meaningless term.

How is the word “event” used by non-philosophical speakers? The OED gives us this: “a thing that takes place—a public or social occasion”; it then cites contests in sports (athletic events). We are familiar with the phrases “event planner” and “It will be a great event”. Events are things like weddings, christenings, graduations, and birthday parties. They are not just anything that happens no matter how trivial and unnoticed. A tap dripping is not an event. Generally speaking, an event in this vernacular sense is something of human significance—something that matters (to us). Events are part of the human world, not the mind-independent objective world. Nothing is an event in the “absolute conception”—the world as it is independently of us (or other intelligent beings). This should set off alarm bells: philosophers have lifted this word from ordinary speech and tried to imbue it with a wider metaphysical meaning. The ordinary speaker would be bemused by the way philosophers have come to use the word. This linguistic move borrows a meaning from ordinary language but then stretches it beyond what it can bear. The fact is that we have no term of ordinary language with the extension intended by philosophers. The plain truth is that an event, properly so called, is something that happens that has meaning for humans. So, there are plenty of events, but they are not what philosophers have in mind—those things are not events at all.

We must then ask what philosophers mean by the term (they don’t generally tell us). Here we get no univocal answer; the alleged ontology has no clear definition. This comes out in two ways. First, theories of the nature of events differ: are they simply the instantiation of a single property at a time by an object, or are they autonomous particulars instantiating a range of properties? That debate has raged (or trickled) for years and I won’t go into it. Is it true that being red at time t is an event? Hardly. Do events simultaneously instantiate the range of properties that objects do? Nope. Second, no criterion of identity for this alleged class of particulars has been proposed that does the job; identity of causes and effects is patently circular. So, the class of events in the philosopher’s technical sense is ontologically ill-defined and theoretically elusive. The indicated conclusion is that that ontology is spurious. It survives because of examples like explosions and wars, but these are events in the vernacular sense, since they are of human significance. Of course, stuff happens all the time, most of it of no human interest or account, but this doesn’t warrant application of the word “event”; it is just things coming to have properties or changing properties. It was an event for me when I graduated or got married, but not when I took a breath at noon yesterday or buttered a piece of toast this morning. The big bang was an event, as was the extinction of the dinosaurs, because these strike us as momentous; they are not events for the universe objectively considered. Then too, an object changing its properties at a time is nothing over and above the object, its properties, and a time; there is not some further entity, an “event”, on top of these. Being an event in the ordinary sense is a projected property, an anthropocentric property; there are no objective events. The universe was not eventful before humans (or other intelligent beings) came along; it was just shit happening, or less than shit (since shit can be an event—but I digress).

These reflections prompt a striking (even scintillating) thought: there are only mental events—there are no physical events. For physical events, considered objectively, are not events at all, since they have no significance for us (think of stuff happening in some remote unknown galaxy). But many mental events really are events, because our minds matter to us—weddings are events because the emotions that go with them matter to us (they are the true events of the day). We might even venture to say that what happens to us mentally is always an event, so focused are we on our own mental life. That pain yesterday was an event because it really got my attention. Thus, we might be persuaded that every mental change is an event, though these events may vary in their salience or “eventitude”. But there are no physical events, i.e., mind-independent events that matter to no one. Physical events don’t exist while mental events are only too existent. We can be ontologically committed to mental events, as events, and commit no linguistic or conceptual solecism; but we cannot do the same with physical events, there being none. Not even a massive explosion on an unknown star is an event (event for whom?). There is a well-defined ontology of events (weddings, graduations, etc.), but it isn’t what philosophers need for their theories, viz. uneventful events. Thus, there can be no identity theory of mental events and physical events (types or tokens), no general event ontology, no causal relations between events, no behavioral events, no metaphysical theory of events, no quantum events—not in any robust sense anyway. Stuff happens, but this doesn’t consist in things called events coming and going. The lion sleeps in the jungle, but there is no event of the lion sleeping there; that was really a non-event. There are jungles, lions, and sleep, but no additional entity of lion-sleeping. It always felt odd to speak of an event of buttering the toast in the bathroom (Davidson); now we see why. The alleged ontology of events reifies property instantiation under cover of ordinary language.[1]

[1] Suppose we have an ontology of sense-data and nothing else. We then assume that sense-data are significant events in someone’s life, as is not unreasonable. Then we will think that the world consists of events in something like the ordinary sense. It will then be easy to pick up on this use of “event” and transfer it, illegitimately, to the physical world. Hence, a world consisting of physical events. Things no doubt change, but there is no event of changing, as this is understood by philosophers. Events are not an ontological category which we have only recently recognized by reflecting on the logical form of action sentences. They carry a strong whiff of Meinong, or of possible worlds.