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Ratiocination

Russell on Writing


Eric Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell) famously gave some advice about writing (quite good advice, I think). I'm pleased to see that Bertrand Russell has something quite similar to say as well:

There are some simple maxims which I think might be commended to writers of expository prose.

First: never use a long word if a short word will do.

Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in a different sentence.

Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

Take, say, such a sentence as the following, which might occur in a work on sociology: `Human beings are completely exempt from undesirable behaviour-patterns only when certain prerequisites, not satisfied except in a small percentage of actual cases, have, through some fortuitous concourse of favourable circumstances, whether congenital or environmental, chanced to combine in producing an individual in whom many factors deviate from the norm in a socially advantageous manner.' Let us see if we can translate this sentence into English. I suggest the following: `All men are scoundrels, or at any rate almost all. The men who are not must have had unusual luck, both in their birth and in their upbringing.' This is shorter and more intelligible, and says just the same thing.

- Bertrand Russell (in `How I Write')

Events


I subscribe to a Quinean meta-ontology. I'm committed to Fs existing just in the case that I'm committed to the truth of sentences like `there are Fs' or `there is an x such that Fx.' With this in mind, I'll try in this post to indicate why I believe in events and what I take them to be. This sort of endeavor, is of course, subject to the usual qualifications and hemming and hawing--it's metaphysics, after all. But onward I press. Here's a sentence I think expresses a truth:

S. Something happened yesterday that got me to thinking.

The canonical translation of S into the quantifier-variable idiom looks something like this:

T. There is an x such that x happened yesterday and x got me to thinking.

T has existential import. And in light of this, the Quinean who affirms S has two options. First, she may try to translate S into another sentence U such that U doesn't commit her to the existence of things that happen or things that get me to thinking. Second, she may accept T--and thereby accept the existence of things that happen and that get me to thinking.

I'd like to be able to take the former route. But I can't. At least, I know of no translation algorithm which will let me accept sentences like S without accepting sentences like T. So I'm committed to the existence of things that happen and things that get me to thinking. Let's follow tradition and call these things events.

What are events? Well, I take it that no abstract object enters into any causal relation. And it seems that getting someone to thinking (in the sense at hand) involves causing someong to think. So an account of events (where a paradigmatic event is something that could happen and could get someone to thinking) must say that events are concrete things. Events can cause things. So much the worse for Chisholm-events and Lewis-events. Events are concrete. And they happen. What more can we say about them?

Suppose that the B-series relations (before, later than, simultaneous with) are instanced. Events are prime candidates here. It's the things that happen that enter into these relations, so events are among the things bearing the B-series relations.

Here are two payoffs to this sketch of a theory of events.

First, we have the resources to say what a time is. Times just are sums of simultaneous events. Better (do without merelogical committments whenever possible, I say--which is nearly always), times are events arranged timewise. Here's a first pass at what this would mean: events e1... en are arranged time-wise just in the case that e1... en stand in the (variably polyadic) simultaneity relation to each other and no event e1... en stands in the simultaneity relation to some event e* such that e* is not simultaneous with e1... en. Alternatively (if it turns out that events can't endure and that simultanaity is in fact an equivalence relation), we have this simpler formulation: events e1... en are arranged time-wise just in the case that e1... en stand in the (variably polyadic) simultaneity relation to each other.

Times appear to stand in the B-series relations, and we now have an explanation for how this works. Times stand in those relations because their parts (events) stand in those relations.

Second, we the resources to say something about causation. Events are among the relata of the causal relation (suppose with me that there's just one causal relation). This is a modest result (most who have believed in a causal relation have thought that its relata include events)--but an interesting one anyways.

So there you have it: a bare-bones theory of events, minimally motivated and quickly sketched. There are events. They are concrete. And they're among the things that happen, that enter into causal relations, and that enter into B-series relations.

Relief


I recently received word that I passed my comprehensive exams in the history of philosophy (`good' in both). This is, to say the least, a relief. While I read no primary texts in preparation for the exam, it was a lot of work and something I'm glad to have behind me. Next up: finishing coursework and then oral examinations in my areas of research!