Precis of Events and Their Names

Abstract

numbers in this abstract correspond to the chapter numbers in the book. 1. By names of events I mean sentence-nominals that refer to events. Following Vendler, I take it that these will be perfect and not imperfect nominals. Quisling's betrayal of Norway (perfect) was an event; Quisling's betraying Norway (imperfect) is a fact, namely the fact that Quisling betrayed Norway. Quisling's betraying Norway is different from his doing Norway a disservice; these are two facts. His betrayal of Norway was his disservice to Norway; there was only the one event. 2. According to the concept of fact, two imperfect nominals pick out the same fact only if they are logically equivalent to one another. Thus, the whole intrinsic nature of any fact can be read off from the nominal that refers to it: what you see is what you get. fact concept is coarser: according to it, the fact that De Gaulle shouts Vive le Quebec libre! is the fact that the tallest French politician shouts Vive le Quebec libre! if De Gaulle is the tallest French politician. So a Russellian fact name does not declare the whole intrinsic nature of the named fact. highlighted fact concept is finer than the Fregean one: it distinguishes the fact that it was Mary who stole the bicycle from the fact that it was the bicycle that Mary stole. I offer an account of what highlighting amounts to, in support of my conviction that it is not important. 3. Fact-causation statements-P's being the case led causally to Q's being the case-admit of two analyses. (i) NS analysis focuses on the idea that P's being the case is a necessary part of a sufficient condition for Q's being the case. This is adapted from Mackie's theory of INUS conditions, with the vowels removed because what they stand for should not occur in the analysis. For a little more on this, see 2.1 in my reply to reviewers. (ii) counterfactual analysis focuses on the statement that if P had not been the case Q would not have been the case. 4. Event causation statements-e.g., The explosion caused the firehave also been given two different analyses. (i) According to the relational analysis, ei caused e2 asserts that a certain triadic relation holds amongst