For the events "e" and "f" to be identical, They must have the 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 being closed by john = the door's becoming closed). Actions related by goldman's "causal generation" are therefore distinct, But those related (...) by his other three types of act-Generation are not. This conclusion requires abandonment of the view--Questionable on other grounds--That causal contexts are thoroughly extensional. (shrink)

In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

Despite important similarities, events differ from states of affairs. Recent theories of events (Davidson's, Kim's) have ignored the distinction, preferring to focus on relations of composition between events and states, indifferently conceived, and properties, objects, and times. It might be proposed, however, that events and states can be distinguished by their composition. I argue against a compositional approach, in favor of a modal approach, on which events are distinguished from states in virtue of being essentially dynamic. This view locates the (...) difference between events and states in their different existential statuses. While the view neither endorses nor forecloses dependency relations between events, states, and objects, it offers ways to do some of the explanatory work that recent theories assign to composition relations. (shrink)

I offer a clear conception of a temporal part that does not make the existence of temporal parts implausible. This can be done if (and only if) we think of physical objects as four dimensional, The fourth dimension being time. Unless we are willing to deny the existence of most spatial parts, Or willing to accept the possibility of coincident entities, Or accept something even more implausible, We should accept the existence of temporal parts.

This paper has two goals. The first is to formulate an adequate account of the semantics of the progressive aspect in English: the semantics of Agatha is making a cake, as opposed to Agatha makes a cake. This account presupposes a version of the so-called Aristotelian classification of verbs in English into EVENT, PROCESS and STATE verbs. The second goal of this paper is to refine this classification so as to account for the infamous category switch problem, the problem of (...) how it is that modification of a verb like run by an adverbial like to the store can turn a PROCESS phrase (run) into an EVENT phrase (run to the store). Views discussed include those of Aqvist, Bach, Bennett, Bennett and Partee, Dowry, Montague and Scott, and Vendler. (shrink)