ABSTRACT

Talk about properties pervades the contemporary debate about the nature of events and processes. Much of that debate followed the ‘events as property exemplifications’ view developed by Jaegwon Kim. However, such a view has proven to be problematic for a number of reasons. In this chapter, I will discuss for the most part different approaches that also have an important place for properties in a theory of events and processes. Many of such approaches follow an argument that at least can be traced back to Alexander Mourelatos and that has received renewed attention. Building on those results, some further proposals attempt to draw a distinction between processes and events on the basis of their modal properties, such as the property of being modally robust in virtue of form. It will be shown that such approaches move the debate beyond the Kimean framework in important ways, but at the same time involve a number of tensions at the ontological level that keep the debate open on an important number of fronts.