Strawson's particular-based ontology and Broad's process view both treat events as irreducible wholes that genuinely persist through qualitative change without decomposition into parts.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Objects persist through qualitative change (e.g., a ball changes color), so events should too via the same metaphysical principle.
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2.Treating events as wholes avoids infinite regress problems that arise when decomposing events into temporal parts or sub-events.
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3.Our linguistic practice refers to single events ("the war") as unified entities despite internal changes, suggesting ontological irreducibility.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Events have internal temporal structure (beginning, middle, end) that decomposition into phases captures better than holistic views do.
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2.Qualitative change requires identity conditions distinguishing one event from another—holism provides no clear criterion for event individuation.
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3.Process views often contradict themselves by invoking event constituents (stages, aspects) while denying decomposition into real parts.
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Key Terms

Broad(as a reference to a historical philosopher who critiqued McTaggart): Charlie Dunbar Broad was a British philosopher known for analyzing other philosophers' arguments carefully and pointing out problems with their ideas, including McTaggart's theory of time.
Decomposition into parts(as used in philosophy of language): Breaking something down into its smaller, individual components to understand it piece by piece.
Ontology(Carnap argues this enterprise is based on a mistake): The philosophical discipline that tries to answer hard questions about what there really is.
Particular-based ontology(as Strawson's approach): A view that individual, concrete things (like a specific apple or person) are the most fundamental reality, rather than abstract ideas or general categories.
Persist(referring to whether mathematical structures continue to exist as physical objects change): Continue to exist over time without changing or being destroyed.
Process view(as Broad's approach): A perspective that treats change, events, and happening as the most basic features of reality, rather than static unchanging things.
Strawson: # Strawson Peter Strawson was a 20th-century British philosopher best known for challenging the traditional view that all meaningful statements must be either true or false. He argued that some statements—like "The present King of France is bald"—are neither true nor false because they fail to properly refer to anything that exists. His work fundamentally changed how philosophers think about language, meaning, and logic.
Wholes(as the containing structures): Complete things that are made up of smaller parts; in this context, the larger concepts or systems that dependent parts belong to.
irreducible(Personalist anthropology; distinguishes personhood from mere biological individuality): That which is unique and unrepeatable in each human being, by virtue of which a person is not merely an individual of a species but a personal subject.
qualitative change(e.g., a statue being painted): A change in which a continuing subject acquires a new, accidental feature without ceasing to exist.

Connections

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Consciousness & Mind1 linked

Events have internal temporal structure (beginning, middle, end) that decomposit...It is more natural to attribute temporally successive properties of an event to ...Objects persist through qualitative change (e.g., a ball changes color), so even...Our linguistic practice refers to single events ("the war") as unified entities ...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit