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Processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Rowland Stout
Rowland Stout
Affiliation:
Oriel College, Oxford
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A natural picture to have of events and processes is of entities which extend through time and which have temporal parts, just as physical objects extend through space and have spatial parts. While accepting this picture of events, in this paper I want to present an alternative conception of processes as entities which, like physical objects, do not extend in time and do not have temporal parts, but rather persist in time. Processes and events belong to metaphysically distinct categories. Moreover the category of events is not the more basic of the two.

Type
Other
Information
Philosophy , Volume 72 , Issue 279 , January 1997 , pp. 19 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

References

2 Mourelatos, A. P. D., ‘Events, Processes and States’, Linguistics and Philosophy 2 (1978), 415–434;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGill, K., ‘On the Metaphysical Distinction Between Processes and Events’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993), 365–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Kenny, A., Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), ch. 7;Google ScholarVendler, Z., Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), ch. 4.Google Scholar

4 Mourelatos has since accepted that the use of the word ‘process’ was ‘a very bad choice’. See Mourelatos, A. P. D., ‘Aristotle's kinesis/energeia distinction’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993), 386. He also endorses Graham's contention that Aristotle's test was not designed for this sort of distinction at all.Google Scholar See Graham, D. W., ‘States and Performances: Aristotle's Test’, Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1980), 117–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Davidson, D., Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 105–187.Google Scholar

6 McCann, H. J., ‘Nominals, Facts and Two Conceptions of Events’, Philosophical Studies 35 (1979), 129–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Vendler, op. cit. ch. 5.

8 Evans, G., Collected Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 257–258.Google Scholar