ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Jaegwon Kim’s thesis that (merely) ‘Cambridge’ events are real events and can stand in a relation of non-causal dependence to other events. (Merely) ‘Cambridge’ events are (putative) events for whose existence it is sufficient that the truth-value of a proposition has changed. For example, when Xanthippe becomes a widow the proposition that she is the wife of Socrates changes its truth-value. From this it is supposed to follow that there exists the event of Xanthippe’s becoming a widow, over and above the event of Socrates’s dying. This chapter argues, in reply, that (merely) ‘Cambridge’ events are not events, and so cannot stand in a relation of dependence to other events. The chapter argues for this on the grounds that (merely) ‘Cambridge’ events can ‘happen’ to things that do not exist, and that there are too many (merely) ‘Cambridge’ events: when Socrates dies, events happen to everything. It is argued in conclusion that (merely) ‘Cambridge’ events are not real events at all, but logical consequences of events: while the one description ‘the death of Socrates’ describes an action or event, the other description ‘the widowing of Xanthippe’ describes the logical consequence of the event, not a separate event.
