Event (philosophy)

In philosophy, events are objects in time or instantiations of properties in objects. On some views, only changes in the form of acquiring or losing a property can constitute events, like the lawn's becoming dry. According to others, there are also events that involve nothing but the retaining of a property, e.g. the lawn's staying wet. Events are usually defined as particulars that, unlike universals, cannot repeat at different times. Processes are complex events constituted by a sequence of events. But even simple events can be conceived as complex entities involving an object, a time and the property exemplified by the object at this time. Traditionally, metaphysicians tended to emphasize static being over dynamic events. This tendency has been opposed by so-called process philosophy or process ontology, which ascribes ontological primacy to events and processes. Jaegwon Kim theorized that events are structured. They are composed of three things: object(s) , a property and time or a temporal interval . Events are defined using the operation . A unique event is defined by two principles: a) the existence condition and b) the identity condition. The existence condition states “ exists if and only if object exemplifies the -adic at time .” This means a unique event exists if the above is met. The identity condition states “ is if and only if , and .” Kim uses these to define events under five conditions: One, they are unrepeatable, unchangeable particulars that include changes and the states and conditions of that event. Two, they have a semi-temporal location. Three, only their constructive property creates distinct events. Four, holding a constructive property as a generic event creates a type-token relationship between events, and events are not limited to their three requirements (i.e. ). Critics of this theory such as Myles Brand have suggested that the theory be modified so that an event had a spatiotemporal region; consider the event of a flash of lightning.