Recall that earlier in the course we distinguished between event types and specific token events. For instance, if I go running this Monday, that’s a specific token event. It took place in a particular place and time. But it also belongs to various types. It was a running event. It was an exercising event. It was an event in which I was doing something. It was an event in which some human was doing something on a Monday. And so on. There are many types that the event belongs to, some more specific, others more general. (Running events are more specific than just Exercise events.)
Remember also that we’re using “event” in a broad sense, so that even boring events like my being human on Monday still count as events. I was human before Monday, I was still human on Monday, and hopefully I’ll remain human after Monday. So my being human on Monday didn’t represent any kind of change. But many theorists will still count it as an event.
Some events you don’t participate in at all. (Some of them might still affect or interest you, or others not.) Among the events you participate in, some of them are actions you perform; others are not. My being human on Monday is an event I participate in, but it’s not an action I perform. Similarly, my having a pumping heart on Monday isn’t an action I perform. My running on Monday, on the other hand, was an action I perform.
Among the actions I perform, some of them are my intentional actions. These are things I do on purpose, or because I chose to do them. Running on Monday is a case of that. But there are also actions I perform unintentionally. For instance, if my running on Monday woke you up and made you irritable, then I woke you up and made you irritable. That’s something I did. But I didn’t mean to do it. Or consider my running shoes. Everytime I go running, I wear them down a bit. So when I went running, I wore down my running shoes. I even knew that was happening. But I wasn’t doing it on purpose. If there was a way to run without wearing down my shoes, I’d be all for it. As things stand, I just tolerated the fact that I was wearing down my shoes.
It seems plausible to say that by running on Monday, I also wore down my running shoes, and I also woke you up and made you irritable. These were all things I did. But it might be that only some of them were things I did intentionally or on purpose. In this example, the only thing I did intentionally was go running.
The preceding examples illustrate that: among the events you participate in, only some of them are your actions; and among those, only some of them are your intentional actions (things you do deliberately or on purpose).
They also illustrate: sometimes by doing some things, we also do other things. By running on Monday (in the way and at the time I did), I woke you up. One event is my running on Monday. Another(?) event is my waking you up.
Some philosophers (including Davidson) would count these as one and the same event, because they happened at the same time and place, with the same agent, and so on. They would say that the single token event can just be described in different ways. You could describe it as my running, or as my waking you up, or as my wearing down my shoes. You might say that the event was praiseworthy under some of these descriptions (it’s good to go running) but criticizable under others (it’s not good to wake up your neighbors).
Other philosophers would say they are different events that have a close connection to each other, because some of them were realized by or happened in virtue of others happening.
This debate parallels the debate philosophers have about whether a statue and the clay it’s made of are one object or two object with a close connection to each other, such as the one’s “being constituted by” the other. They’re not the same question (one is about events, the other about objects); but the discussion of these questions have much in common.
Another example we mentioned in class, and often occurs in the literature: when Socrates died, his wife Xanthippe became a widow. Was the event of Socrates’ dying the same event as the event of Xanthippe’s becoming a widow? Or are these different events that have a close connection to each other. Different philosophers will answer this differently.
We don’t need to settle these questions for ourselves. We’re just getting the feel of the philosophical terrain here.
Sometimes we talk about causal relations where what’s doing the causing is a thing. For example, I’m a thing, and I made you wake up early on Monday. That’s something I caused to happen. The large truck that drove through your neighborhood caused you to wake up early on Tuesday. Tuesday wasn’t my fault.
Other times we talk about causal relations where what’s doing the causing is a property. For example, on Monday it was my noisiness that woke you up. On Wednesday I woke you up too (sorry about that). But not because of my noisiness. I took special care to be quiet when I passed by your house on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I had eaten a lot of garlic the night before. I mean a lot of garlic. So on Wednesday it was my smelliness that woke you up.
We can also talk about causal relations involving properties like this: we can say, “Smelliness (being smelly) causes unpopularity (being unpopular).” That way of talking is easiest when it’s the same object that will have both properties. It’s harder to talk about the waking up causation in the same way, because the object which is noisy or smelly isn’t the same object as wakes up.
When we talk events as what’s doing the causing, this promises to be more general. Thus we can say, the event of my running on Monday, at the particular time and in the particular noisy way I did, caused the event of you waking up on Monday.
That’s an example of what philosophers call a singular causal statement or fact. It’s about one token event causing another token event.
We can also consider more general causal statements or facts. The claim that smelliness causes unpopularity is an example of that. It’s not just talking about my smelliness on Wednesday morning from eating too much garlic the night before. It’s about smelliness in general, and the effect it usually has. (Some claims can be generally true even if they have some exceptions.)
We can talk about general causal claims involving events too. Events of the type Running don’t generally cause events of the type Waking up the neighbors. (Thankfully.) But events of the more specific type Running Loudly and Early Down a Residential Street may generally cause Waking Up One’s Neighbors. Both the more specific and the more general Running types may generally cause Being More Healthy events. (Again, there can be exceptions. If you have bad knees, it’d be better not to run.)
As we know from our discussion above, when we have general claims, some of these will be lawful truths, others not.
A popular view among philosophers thinking about causation has been that whenever there is singular causation, it’s always underwritten by general laws. Thus, if it’s really true that my running on Monday woke you up, there has to be some type C of event that my running exemplified, and some type E of event that your waking exemplified, such that it’s a law that:
Events of type C generally or always cause events of type E.Let’s assume that the E type here is Waking Up One’s Neighbor. What is the C type? We just said that it can’t be Running. Often people (even me) run without waking up their neighbors. But this will be more plausible when C is a more specific type of event, like Running Loudly and Early Down a Residential Street.
Not everyone accepts this principle about how singular causation is related to laws. We’ll discuss some alternatives next class. But it has been a popular view, and it plays a central role in Davidson’s discussion, which we’ll go through in a moment.
Remember that for some philosophers, including Davidson, my running down the street on Monday was one and the same event as my wearing down my shoes on Monday. So if the former caused you to wake up, presumably the latter did too. That is, another singular causal truth is that:
My wearing down my shoes on Monday caused you to wake up on Monday.Davidson thinks for this to be true, it needs to be “backed” or “underwritten” or “subsumed” by a general law too. But you can’t read off which law just from the singular causal statement itself. The Monday event which was a wearing down my shoes belonged to many types. It caused you to wake up on Monday because some of those types generally cause waking-ups. It doesn’t have to be the type Wearing Down Shoes that does that. It could still be the type Running Loudly and Early Down a Residential Street. That’s a type that the token event in which I wore down my shoes on Monday also exemplifies.
Everybody agrees that events can belong to multiple types. But not everyone will agree that if token event d caused some effect, and token event d = token event c, then token event c also caused that effect. That is, some philosophers would resist the claim that “__ caused such-and-such” or “such-and-such happened because ___” are extensional expressions. They’d say these kinds of claims aren’t ones where Leibniz’s Law can properly/appropriately/legitimately/validly be applied.