Canadian Journal of Philosophy

On the Metaphysical Distinction between Processes and Events

Author(s): Kathleen Gill
Source: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 365-384
Published by: Canadian Journal of Philosophy
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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 365
Volume 23, Number 3, September 1993, pp. 365 - 384

On theMetaphysical
DistinctionBetweenProcesses
and Events
KATHLEENGILL
St. Cloud StateUniversity
St. Cloud, MN 56301
USA

I Introduction

In the Metaphysics, Aristotlepointed out thatsome activitiesareengaged

in for theirown sake,while othersare directedat some end. The test for
distinguishingbetween them is to ask, 'At any time during a period in
which someone is Xing, is it also true that they have Xed?'If both are
true, the activity is being done for its own sake. If not, it is being done
for the sake of some end otherthan itself. Forexample,if I am thinking,
it is truethatI have thought.Butif I'mmakinga blouse, it is not truethat
I have made a blouse, at least not this particularblouse. That'snot true
until I have completed the project.1

1 See Aristotle's MetaphysicsIX.6. Except for the qualification that the blouse I have
not made be the one I'm working on, this account of Aristotle is taken from Jonathan
Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press 1988), 105. The need for the qualification is noted by T. Parsons in Events in
the Semanticsof English:A Study of SubatomicSemantics(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
1990), 183. Parsons also notes that 'A is Xing only if A has Xed' is doubtful for the
beginnings of certain processes, such as walking.
In comments on this paper, Mourelatos has pointed out that Aristotle's kine-
sis/energeia distinction does not correspond to the Kenny- Vendler distinction be-
tween performances and activities. He notes, for instance, that while activities are
not goal-directed, energeia'constitute at once both an ongoing engagement and the
fulfillment provided directly by that engagement/ Aristotle uses stative verbs as
examples of energeia, e.g., 'see,' 'understand,' 'be happy.' For a full account, see

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366 KathleenGill

Therehave been a numberof attemptsto deepen our understanding

of this distinction.AnthonyKennydevoted a chapterof Action,Emotion,
and Will to this issue, exploring the effect tense has on implication
relations, and using that as a basis for dividing verbs of action into
state-verbs,activity-verbsand performance-verbs.In more recentyears
the trend has been to generalizethese categoriesso as to include occur-
rences other than actions,i.e., occurrenceswhich do not involve inten-
tions. While interest in this area tends to focus primarilyon linguistic
issues, such as the categorizationof verbs, or on the logical analysis of
sentences,there has been some interestin related metaphysicalissues.
In 1978AlexanderMourelatospublished 'Events,Processes,and States/
a paper which has turned out to be quite influential, in which he
proposes an ontological trichotomyof occurrences.2In his view, proc-
esses and events form distinctcategorieswithin the generalcategoryof
occurrences.In this paper I will examine the reasoning underlying
Mourelatos'sclaim,arguingthat the differencesbetween processesand
events cannot provide the basis for an ontologicalsubcategorizationof
occurrences.

II Mourelatos'sAccount

In Mourelatos'sview, two featuresarecentralin distinguishingbetween

processesand events.Processesarecharacterizedas being homogeneous
and only indirectlycountable,while events are characterizedas being
heterogeneousand directly countable.Mourelatosdiscusses these fea-
tures in the contextof an analogy between objects(which I will use as a
general term including both stuff and things) and occurrences.The
analogy rests on a comparisonbetween count nouns and mass nouns,
on the object side, and on the side of occurrences,the nominalized
versionsof event and processpredications.I'llbegin a descriptionof the
analogyby laying out the basic characteristicsof count and mass nouns.
Count nouns are commonly distinguishedby means of certainchar-
acteristicgrammaticalfeatures;they take the indefinite article'a/ they

Daniel W. Graham, 'States and Performances: Aristotle's Test/ The Philosophical

Quarterly30 (1980) 117-30.

2 Alexander Mourelatos, 'Events, Processes, and States,' Linguistics and Philosophy2

(1978) 415-34. Page numbers used in these notes correspond to the reprinted version,
which appears in P. Tedeschi and A. Zaenen, eds., Syntax and Semantics(San Diego,
CA: Academic Press 1981). As the title suggests, Mourelatos's trichotomy is formed
by distinguishing among events, processes, and states.

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 367

formthe pluralwithout a changein meaning,they occurwith numerals,

they can be used with 'many' and 'few/ and they can be governed by
the informalversion of the existentialquantifier,i.e., the phrase'thereis
at least one/ Massnouns, on the otherhand, cannotbe used with 'many'
and 'few/ and insteadacceptwords like 'some' and 'much.'Massnouns
cannot be pluralized in the sense that when they are, they undergo a
change in meaning. Forinstance,in 'look at the wines on that shelf the
reference shifts from wine to kinds of wine. (This suggests that the
distinctionis reallybetween mass and countsenses of nouns, ratherthan
betweenmass and countnouns,but, following Mourelatos,I will assume
that the phrases'massnoun' and 'countnoun' referto the mass sense of
the noun and the count sense of the noun.)3Massnouns don't acceptthe
indefinitearticle,and rejectthe phrase 'thereis at least one.'
Accordingto Mourelatos,these same featuresdistinguish the nomi-
nalized versions of process and event predications.Consider the sen-
tences:

(1) Johncapsized the boat.

(2) Marypushed the cartfor hours.

Mourelatos'snominalizedversions of these sentencesare:

(1') Therewas a capsizing of the boat by John.

(2') Forhours therewas pushing of the cartby Mary.

The fact that the indefinitearticleappearsin (1') but not (2') is takenby
Mourelatosas evidence that these nominalizedsentencesare analogous
in at least some respectsto sentencescontainingcount and mass nouns.
Sentenceslike (1') are labelled count-quantified,and sentences like (2')
are labelled mass-quantified.Then Mourelatos suggests this test for
identifying event predications:'all and only event predications are
equivalentto count-quantifiedexistentialconstructions.'4

3 F.J.Pelletier has argued that every mass noun can be given a count sense, and that
every count noun can be given a mass sense. 'Non-Singular Reference/ in F.J.
Pelletier, ed., Mass Terms:Some PhilosophicalProblems(Boston, MA: Reidel 1979),
1-14.

4 Mourelatos, 209

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368 KathleenGill

It may be that the Davidsonianconstrualof event sentencesused by

Mourelatosis the best analysis of logical form now being considered,
and that the noted similaritieswith count and mass expressions will
allow us to apply techniquesfor handlingnominalexpressionsto verbal
expressions.5But Mourelatosgoes further,suggesting that the analogy
has ontologicalimplicationsas well. He explicitlydraws the connection
betweenlinguisticand ontologicalfeatures,statingthat,while the count-
quantifiedtranscriptionsmay provide a 'simplecriterionof event predi-
cation,we could correspondinglysay, in ontologicalterms,that events
are those situations that can be directly or intrinsicallycounted.'6And
he goes on to draw the analogy,not between linguisticexpressions,but
between the referentsof those expressions.Thatis, the analogyis drawn
between events and things,on the one hand, and between processesand
stuff, on the other.
Mourelatosdoes not discuss in a generalway what it means to divide
phenomena into ontologicalcategories.I shall assume he believes that
occurrencesform an ontologicalcategorydistinctfrom, e.g., properties
and objects. So his explicit proposal is that, within the category of
occurrences,there are some fundamentalfeaturesupon which to base
an ontological subcategorization.It seems reasonableto require that
these subcategoriesbe mutually exclusive. I shall also assume that for
Mourelatosthe idea of an ontologicalsubcategorizationis interchange-
able in this contextwith the idea of a metaphysicalsubcategorization.It
is possible to distinguish between ontology and metaphysics.Pelletier
& Schubert,for instance, develop logical analyses of count and mass
expressionswhich involve ontologies containingdistinctentities corre-
sponding to these expressions, yet explicitly refrainfrom any claims
about the metaphysical relationship between them.7 I believe that
Mourelatos is making a metaphysical claim (because of the kind of

5 Galton (The Logicof Aspect [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984], 28) is not very hopeful
about this, stating that the parallel, though often noted, is unhelpful because no
logical analysis of mass and count nouns has yet been developed. However, it is
evident that considerable progress has been made recently in this area. See 'Mass
Expressions' by F.J. Pelletier and L.K. Schubert, in D. Gabbay, ed., Handbookof
PhilosophicalLogic (Boston, MA: Kluwer 1989). Parsons uses Davidson's analysis
(combined with Panini's) as a starting point for his own work, saying that 'the loss
of interest in [Davidson's] theory is understandable but mistaken' (5). See also Peter
Roeper's 'Abstraction for Events and Processes,' Journal of PhilosophicalLogic 16
(1987) 273-307.

6 Mourelatos, 209

7 See Pelletier and Schubert, 'Mass Expressions.'

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 369

emphasisfound in the passages noted above),and it is the metaphysical

relationshipbetween processes and events in which I am interested.I
will not argue againstthe substantialevidence in favor of recognizinga
grammaticaldistinctionbetween the language of processesand events.
Doubts about the distinctionarise when consideringissues of identity
and the underlying nature of occurrences,i.e., in the context of meta-
physical issues.
As noted above,Mourelatosbelieves thattherearetwo featureswhich
objects and occurrenceshave in common. These features provide the
basis for the analogy between the two types of entities, as well as the
subcategorizationof occurrences.One of these featuresis homogeneity.
Mourelatosborrows an example from Vendler:if 'Jonesis running'is
true for half an hour, then 'Jonesis running'is true during every time
stretchwithin that period. As Mourelatosputs it, 'any part of a process
is of the same nature as the whole.' Stuff is similarlyhomogeneous, in
the sense that,e.g., 'snow' applies to every subsectionof a unit of snow.8
The otherfeatureprocessesand stuff have in common is that they are
inherentlyindefinite.In the case of processes,this means thatthereis no
culminationor anticipatedresult,no terminal-point.In yet otherwords,
there is no state which marksthe completionof an episode of snowing
- at some point it finallyjust stops. In the case of stuff,being inherently
indefinitemeans failingto divide naturallyinto distinctindividuals.The
question 'How many snows fell this morning?'doesn't make sense. We
'count' snow indirectly, by means of amount. Processes are also
'counted'indirectly,throughspatialand temporalcontainers,e.g., 'How
much did it snow?' and 'How long did she swim?'
Events and things have the opposite featuresin common. According
to Mourelatos,events are heterogeneousin the sense that, e.g., 'I made
a blouse' typically applies only to the entire interval of its occurrence,
not to properpartsof thatinterval.Similarly,thingslikeblouses typically
do not have blouses as parts.And, unlikeprocessesand stuff,events and
things are directlycountable.It makes sense to ask 'How many sunsets
did you watch in August?'That'sbecause events have terminal-points
which marktheir completion,dividing them into distinctunits. Things
similarly divide into distinct units. 'How many cats are sitting on the
road tonight?'is meaningfulbecause cats are distinct entities;they are
directlycountable.

8 Mourelatos, 204. The example is taken from Z. Vendler's Linguistics in Philosophy

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1967), 101.

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370 KathleenGill

III Taylor's Refinement

A numberof people other than Mourelatoshave suggested that homo-

geneity is a featurewhich sets processes apartfrom events. Dowty, for
instance, claims that activities (a type of process) are homogeneous,
meaning that the same sort of action may be found at any part of the
interval during which it occurs. In a similar vein, Galton claims that
processesare dissective,i.e., any stretchduring which a processobtains
can be broken down into substretchesat which it obtains. In contrast,
events are unitary:they may be broken down into phases, but these
phases are not of the same type as the original.9Perhapsthe most fully
developed use of the notion of homogeneity is found in BarryTaylor's
work,to which Mourelatosappealsin explicatinghis own view. Likethe
authorsnoted above,Taylorclaimsthatprocesspredicationsdifferfrom
event predicationsinsofaras they apply to subintervalsof the period of
application.Forexample,every subintervalof the time duringwhich the
earth moves is a time of the earth's moving. This accounts for the
characteristicimplicationof process predications.Since every subinter-
val is a time of moving, the inferencefrom 'the earthis moving' to 'the
earth has moved' is justified. (In order to justify this inference,Taylor
assumes not only that process predicationsapply to every subinterval,
but also that the intervalto which these predicatesapply have no first
moment, and he appeals to the density of moments. So for any period
within an interval,thereis some earlierperiod.)10Eventpredications,on
the other hand, typically don't apply to any proper subinterval.For
example,no subintervalof a period duringwhich a house is built is itself
a period during which that house is built: hence the failure of 'Janeis
building a house' to imply 'Janehas built a house.'
Taylorrefinesthis accountby employing the analogybetween occur-
rences and objects.Supposing gold to be homogeneous stuff, it is true
that every subintervalof space within the space occupied by gold is
occupied by gold as well. But stuff like fruitcakeis only more or less
homogeneous because there is some minimal space it must occupy
before it can be fruitcake;a single date does not count as fruitcake.
Similarly,thereare some occurrenceswhich aremore like fruitcakethan

9 This description of Dowty is taken from HJ. Verkuyl, 'Aspectual Classes and
Aspectual Composition/ Linguisticsand Philosophy12 (1989), 53. Also see Galton, 26.

10 Barry Taylor's work on this issue first appeared in Tense and Continuity/ Linguis-
tics and Philosophy1 (1977) 199-220. References here will be to the version found in
Taylor's Modes of Occurrence(Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell 1985), 58-80.

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 371

gold. Forinstance,'anysounds emittedin a microsecondduringa period

of chuckling (at the normal rate) hardly constitute chuckling them-
selves/ Instead,thereareminimalperiodsof chuckling,and 'it is natural
to identify the minimal periods of chucklingcarriedout at the normal
ratewith those which everydayempiricalcriteriacan identifyas such/11
On this basis, Taylor distinguishes between homogeneous process
predications(e.g., moves) and heterogeneousprocesspredications(e.g.,
chuckles). He then develops postulates which 'explicate the logical
properties'of the varioussortsof predicates.Inthe caseof heterogeneous
processpredications,thereis a firstminimalperiod within which it will
be true that 'x is chuckling/ but false that 'x has chuckled.'12
In orderto get clearabout what Tayloris doing, it is helpful to think
of him as employing two conceptuallydistinctnotions of homogeneity.
Thereis semantichomogeneity,which involves the truthof predications
applied to temporalintervalsand subintervals.And there is empirical
homogeneity, which involves the observationof structuralsimilarity.
We find this latternotion clearlypresentedby Verkuyl:

Now, if we identify - for the purpose of the explanation of the term "homogene-
ous" - one phase with a walking position pWi, then we observe on the computer
screen that the position pwi+i is structurally similar.13

In effect,Taylorclaimsthereis a correspondencebetween empiricaland

semantichomogeneity and heterogeneity;whereverhomogeneity/het-
erogeneityis empiricallyobserved,correspondingsemanticrestrictions
should be applied.
But the correspondencebetween empiricaland semantichomogene-
ity/heterogeneity is problematic.Think about 'polishing a shoe/ or
'hemming a pair of pants.' It could be argued that on the basis of the
empiricaltest, these activitiesturnout to be homogeneous,or at least no
moreheterogeneousthanotheractivitiescomposed of structurallysimi-
lar phases, like walking. But it seems quite inappropriateto adjust
semanticrestrictionsin accordancewith this outcome.Thatis, we would
not want to say that 'x is polishing a shoe' implies 'x has (completely)
polished a shoe/ aftersome firstminimalperiod.

11 Taylor, 71

12 Taylor, 73

13 HJ. Verkuyl, 'Thematic Relations and the Semantic Representation of Verbs Ex-
pressing Change/ Studies in Language2 (1978), 224

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372 KathleenGill

Taylor's methodology also seems problematicwhen we consider a

case such as 'a leaf's growing.' Suppose we have the equipmentneces-
sary to observe this process close up. Ratherthan observinghomogene-
ity, we would see a cluster of complex (i.e., heterogeneous)processes.
Thegrowing leaf might well seem moresimilarto an event like 'building
a house' thanthe homogeneousprocess'a ball's falling.'Butthis empiri-
cal heterogeneityis in conflictwith the apparentsemantichomogeneity
of the example; if the leaf is growing, then it is true that the leaf has
grown. To make the logical properties correspond to the empirical
heterogeneity,Taylorwould have to stipulate that 'the leaf is growing'
does not imply that 'the leaf has grown,' and that seems unacceptable;
in effect it conflatesthe idea of growing up (i.e., completingthe growth
process)with growing.
While these cases do not really have the force of counterexamples,I
believe they do show that the idea of empirical homogeneity is very
difficultto apply to occurrences.And that should come as no surprise.
As Taylorhimself points out, on a microscopicview of things,even gold
turns out to be heterogeneous.14But while he seems content to simply
shrug this problem off, clarifying the use of the empirical test seems
necessary for using, and trusting,Taylor'smethodology. I think these
examples also show how weak the inclination is to adjust semantic
intuitionsso thatthey correspondto the empiricaltest.Thissuggests that
Taylorhas failed to identify the feature(s)which do(es) in fact underlie
our semanticintuitions.
The problematicnature of the empiricaltest is seen quite clearly in
cases like 'the erosion of traditionalreligious authority,''the evolution
of the domestic cat,' and 'the rise of the middle class.' Using my own
intuitionsin applying the semantictest, I'd say that these examples are
homogeneous processes;if it is true that the middle class is rising, then
it is true that the middle class has risen. Empirically,however, it's clear
that these occurrencesare tremendouslycomplex. I don't see any sense
in handlingthis in a way thatparallelsTaylor'streatmentof 'chuckling,'
i.e., by stipulating that there is some intervalof time during which the
inference won't hold, since, unlike 'chuckling,'these examples don't
have even the appearanceof homogeneity.In these cases it is clearthat
the inferenceis not based on an empiricalbeliefabouthomogeneity.And
yet these areobservableoccurrences.To makehis view plausible,Taylor
needs to explainwhy thereshouldbe correspondencebetweenempirical
and semantic homogeneity in some cases but not in others, as well as

14 Taylor, 69

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 373

provide an explanationfor the logicalpropertiesof those cases in which

thereis no correspondence.
We see, therefore,that applying the idea of homogeneity to the 'in-
sides' of occurrencesis problematic.We shallnow find thatapplyingthe
idea to the fusion of occurrencesis equally problematic.
V.C. Chappellhas suggested that the chief propertywhich sets stuff
apart from things is that a parcel of stuff can be combined with other
parcelsof the same kind so as to form one single parcelof that kind. A
parcel of gold can be fused with other parcels of gold to form a single
parcelof gold, but there is no way of putting a cat togetherwith other
cats to form a single cat.15
But consider the process of fading. We can't literally combine the
fading of the chairwith the fading of the curtain.One problemhere is
the fact that distinct objectsare undergoing the process. This brings to
the surface an importantdifferencebetween the ontological status of
objectsand occurrences;at least some occurrencesseem to be ontologi-
cally dependentupon objects.The processescan'tbe combinedbecause
the objectsto which they are happeningcan'tbe combined.
Theproblemisn't resolved,however,by limitingourselvesto a single
object.Suppose 'my cat's pondering the food situation' occurredthis
morning,and againthis afternoon.Inwhat sense canthesebe combined?
It might be thought that we can combine these occurrencessimply by
placing an 'and' between them. But we don't get any insight into that
operation,or into the natureof occurrences,by thinkingabout the way
parcelsof gold can be combined.
It seems, therefore,that with respectto the homogeneity feature,this
version of the analogybetween stuff vs. things and processesvs. events
is unhelpful,and probablymisleading.

IV An Alternative Version of the Analogy

One featureof the stuff/ thing distinctionwe need to take into account
is the fact that a single entity may have both a mass aspect and a count
aspect.Forinstance,a mud puddle, a sand castle,and a gold statueeach
have both aspects. On the face of it, this seems to undermineMourela-
tos's effortsto divide occurrencesinto mutually exclusive categorieson
the basis of these features,or featuresanalogous to these. Notice, how-
ever, that with this construal of the mass/count distinction we are

15 V.C. Chappell, 'Stuff and Things/ Proceedingsof the AristotelianSociety (1970) 71

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374 KathleenGill

shifting from 'is sand' to 'is made of sand.' Although this shift presents
some immediatedifficultiesfor the analogy,I believe it ultimatelyleads
us to a more accurateview of the situation.
Clearly'beingmade of sand' and 'beinga castle'are not incompatible
properties;the sand castlehas both of them. Butthis means that they do
not designate comparableproperties,i.e., a propertyof the same type.
For example, some propertiescomparableto 'being made of sand' are
'being made of paper' and 'being made of ice.' These properties are
mutually exclusive,but they do not strikeme as suitablecandidatesfor
a division into ontological subcategories. Similarly, 'being a castle/
'being a puddle,' and Toeinga statue' are comparableand incompatible
properties.But again, I don't think anyone would want to claim that
these form ontological subcategories.So, while it seems plausible to
assumethatthe formationof ontologicalsubcategoriesought to be based
upon comparableproperties,and necessarythatthey be mutuallyexclu-
sive, we don't seem to be able to get these featuresout of this version of
the stuff/thing distinction.
This issue emerges clearly, although it is not addressed, in John
Wallace'saccountof the analogy:

In the case of some verbs the "how many times?" question makes less than perfect
sense. There appears to be in general no way of making sense of, e.g., "How many
times did Jones walk yesterday?" These observations suggest a distinction between
mass verbs and count verbs parallel to the distinction between mass nouns and
count nouns. "Walk from Kingston to Princeton" is parallel to "mud puddle."
"Walk" goes with "mud," and "from Kingston to Princeton" goes with "puddle."
One and the same puddle may be at one time mud and at another time water; one
and the same progress from Kingston may be at one time walking and at another
time running.
These remarks have implications for the question of what there is. Let us
introduce explicitly the idea of an attribute being a sortal attribute, or in Frege's
terminology, a unit relative to a finite number, a (a is a cow) ... a (a is a progress from
Kingston to Princeton) are units in this sense; a (a is of mud at t), a (a is of walking
at t) are not units.16

On this construal,'is a progressfromKingstonto Princeton'is analogous

to Iseing a castle/ i.e., it indicates the type of thing it is, while 'is of
walking' is analogous to 'being made of sand.' So it looks as though
Wallacedoes use the analogyto identifysomethingat least similarto the
composition/kind dichotomy. It is not clear to me, however, exactly

16 John Wallace, 'Some Logical Roles of Adverbs/ TheJournalof Philosophy68 (1971)

704

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 375

what the distinctionis, nor what he takesthe ontologicalimplicationsof

it to be. He goes on to say:

One stunning result in ontology would be to find a finite sequence of units that
together cover the universe.... I do not have such a list. It seems clear and instructive
that if one did have such a list the concept of walking would not appear in it, but
the essentially propositional concept of motion to blah from bluh would appear in
it.17

Here Wallaceis suggesting the formationof a generalcategorizationof

occurrences.Thoughfor him the importantfeatureseems to be the idea
of a propositionalconcept,I'd like to try focusingon motion as a general
category.Recallthatmotion is one of the threetypes of changeidentified
by Aristotle, the other two being change in quality and existential
changes.18Thinking in terms of changes has several apparentadvan-
tages. For one thing, it seems as though, if we are going to think about
what occurrencesare 'made of/ of what the 'stuff of occurrencesmight
be, changes are an obvious candidate. Furthermore,the concept of
change involves an appeal to objects,properties,and times;and so this
approachwould enable us to acknowledge the metaphysicalnature of
occurrences,i.e., theirapparentdependenceupon objectsand properties
over time.19
Let'stentativelysuppose, then, that 'change'provides a generalcon-
ceptionof what the stuff,or composition,of occurrencesmightbe. Then,
in orderto pursue the analogy along the lines suggested by Wallace,we
need to find some generalconceptionof an occurrence'stype or kind. In
some cases, an object'stype seems to be determined primarilyby its
shape, e.g., a castle.This seems unhelpfulwhen applied to occurrences.
In other cases, the object'stype is determinedprimarilyby its function,
purpose,or end, e.g., a kidney.Thismay have a counterpartin the realm
of occurrences,i.e., in the means/end relationship.Wallace'sdistinction
between 'walking'and 'progressfromKingstonto Princeton'seems, for
instance, most naturallyconstrued as a means/end relationship.Gal-

17 Wallace, 705

18 See A.R. Lacey, 'The Eleatics and Aristotle on Some Problems of Change/ Journalof
the History of Ideas26 (1965) 451-68.

19 Galton states that 'Events ... essentially involve change' (27). And Larry Lombard,
in Events: A Metaphysical Study (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1986),
provides a discussion of events in terms of an object's changing. In Events and Their
Names (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett 1988), Jonathan Bennett defends the view that
events are supervenient on spatiotemporal zones.

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376 KathleenGill

ton's view also seems to support such a construal. He distinguishes

between telic and atelicoccurrences,where telicitymeans 'admittingthe
notion of completion.' Some telic events have atelic and telic compo-
nents. So, for instance,'the house has burned down' has the atelic 'the
house is burning down' and the telic 'the house has been destroyed'as
components.The telic component,he suggests, tells us what has hap-
pened: it tells us something about how the occurrencefits into a wider
context.The atelic componentdescribesthe way it happened:it tells us
somethingabout the immediatetextureof the occurrence.This descrip-
tion of the atelic component fits the idea of a means, and the telic
componentmay be construedin termsof an end.
Galtonalso distinguishesbetween reducibleand irreducibletelic oc-
currences.An example of the latter is 'Johnhas gone home.' 'Going,'
Galtonexplains,'is not an activitywhich canbe identifiedapartfromthe
notion of a destination or point of departure.'Irreduciblytelic occur-
rences are divided into those which have either a teleological or an
aetiologicalcharacter.

An aetiological event is one in which each successive phase stands in a direct causal
relationship with what precedes it. Thus any particular stage in the burning of a
house is how it is because of the earlier stages.... With teleological events, on the
other hand, the successive phases of the action need not stand in a direct causal
interrelationship; instead they are related to each other indirectly by virtue of their
common relationship to the aim or goal towards which the actor's intention is
directed.20

Here we have a very general frameworkwithin which to interpretthe

means/end relationship.That is, 'ends' are either states aimed at by
means of intentions,and which in some sense tie togetherthe string of
changes (and states) leading up to them, or 'ends' tie such a series
togetherinsofaras they are the culminationof causalprocesses.'Means'
are the changeswhich may culminatein these ways.
With this formulationof the issue in mind, let's turn to the second
feature upon which Mourelatosbases the analogy, i.e., the distinction
between measuringand counting.

20 Galton, 140

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 377

V Critique of Alternative Versions

The distinction between measuring and counting, and notions very

similarto them,e.g., indefiniteness/definiteness,termination/duration,
unboundedness/boundedness,holding/culmination, appearregularly
in the literatureon aspectand event sentences.Forinstance,Parsonsuses
'culminating'and 'holding'as technicalterms in analyzingsimple non-
progressive and progressive sentences which contain event predica-
tions. 'Marybuilt the bookcase'requiresfor its truththat the occurrence
picked out by the verb culminates,while 'Marywas building the book-
case' requiresonly that the activity picked out go on for awhile. And
Bennettties the idea of closed intervalsof time to performances,distin-
guishing1them fromactivities,which he ties to the idea of open intervals
of time.
Mourelatos describes the measuring/counting distinction, and its
connectionto the analogy,in the following way:

... in ontological terms ... events are those situations that can be directly or intrinsi-
cally counted. But there is reason to think that in ontology we could go further. For
it would seem that events are not merely countable but also fall under sorts that
provide a principle of count ... events thus occupy relatively to other situations a
position analogous to the one objects or things or substances occupy relatively to
stuffs and properties or qualities.... Moreover, just as we can collect and thus
individuate stuffs into such extrinsic containers as bottles or lumps or measures, we
can correspondingly collect and individuate activities into stretches, phases, stages
and the like.22

If I am interpretingMourelatos's comments correctly,there is some

tension between his characterizationof processes and the criterionhe
uses to pick them out. The criterion,as noted above, is that all and
only event predicationsare equivalent to count-quantifiedexistential
constructions.So, for instance, 'Therewas a walking around the block
by Linda' picks out an event. But this conflicts with the idea that
processes,like stuff, are individuatedby means of extrinsiccontainers,
i.e., by measuringratherthan counting;'aroundthe block' is just such
a container.It seems incoherentto claim that the distinctive featureof
processes is that they must be measured to be counted, but that, when

21 T. Parsons, 'The Progressive in English: Events, States and Processes/ Linguistics

and Philosophy12 (1989) 213-41; M. Bennett, 'Of Tense and Aspect: One Analysis/ in
Tedeschi and Zaenen, eds., Syntax and Semantics

22 Mourelatos, 209-10

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378 KathleenGill

measured, they become events. That the addition of the adverbial

phrase 'around the block' creates a different predicate, and even a
different type of predicate,is uncontroversial(though not necessarily
easy to formalize).Parsonsrefersto this phenomenonas the 'infamous
category switch/23The problem arises from Mourelatos'sontological
claim.
Butlet's tryfor a momentfollowing throughon the idea thatprocesses
can only be measured,and thatcountingby meansof measuringis quite
differentfrom having a principlefor counting. The 'principle'is some
intrinsicfeature which determines the point at which the event ends,
hence they are said to be directlycounted. By contrast,there might be
more or less of a certainprocess, and the limit is somehow externally
imposed, so they are said to be indirectly counted. What underlying
feature(s)might accountfor this?Some paradigmcases of events seem
to be counted by means of the things involved in them, as in 'writinga
letter'and 'buildinga bookcase.'Morespecifically,the goal of writing a
letteris the existenceof a letter,and so the event has as an end-pointthe
coming-into-existenceof the letter. And paradigm cases of processes
seem to fall underthe othertwo categoriesof changenoted by Aristotle.
Forinstance,'thefadingof the chair'is a changein quality,and 'theball's
falling' is a change in location. Since we are thinking of the 'stuff of
occurrencesas changes, it makes sense to try to categorizeoccurrences
on the basis of differencesbetween types of changes. And Aristotle's
accountcould serve as a startingpoint.
To pursue this line of reasoning,we would have to shift to a consid-
erationof types of properties,I think.How canwe explainthe differences
between types of changes?Well,a qualitysuch as 'beingorange'is a type
of propertywhich changesby degree,and so canbe measured.Location,
too, is a type of propertywhich can be measured.The durationof one's
existence can be measured, but existential change only involves the
coming-intoand going-out-ofexistence.
Developing the distinction in this way would result in a lack of
correspondencebetween the logicalanalysesof these sentencesand their
metaphysical categorization. Measured processes, such as 'walking
around the block,' would no longer be categorized as events, even
though these sentencesmight have the same logical propertiesas event
sentences.I'm not sure that would be acceptableto Mourelatos,but his
claim that measuringand countingmarkdistinctontologicalcategories

23 Parsons, Events in the Semanticsof English, 167

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 379

needs to be developed in some way, and thatclaim doesn't seem consis-

tent with the view that measuredprocessesare events.
As usual, however, problem cases are immediately apparent.Con-
sider 'the setting of the sun.' We can count sunsets, and thereis a sense,
I suppose, in which this is an existentialchange. But of course the sun
doesn't really go out of existence;it simply goes out of an observer's
range of perceptionin a certainkind of way. Should this be considered
an event or a process? Perhaps it would be appropriateto say that,
strictly speaking, it is a process;it's just convenient for us to speak as
though it were an event. In general, then, it would seem as though
deciding whether a given occurrenceis an event or a process would
involve an empiricalinvestigationas to whether it really does involve
an existential change. There are some notoriously difficult cases, e.g.,
those dealingwith the beginningand ending of human life. Butperhaps
those arejustunavoidablegrey areasaroundan otherwise'clearenough'
concept.
A differentproblem for this line of reasoningarises in the context of
event identity.Consider'writinga letter,'which is abouta thing coming
into existence,and is certainlytakenas a paradigminstanceof an event.
On one view of event identity, 'Lindais writing'and 'Lindais writing a
letter'can be made true and be a single occurrence.It seems as though
events,which aresupposed to be distinguishedby the factthatthey can't
be measured,canbe measuredafterall;one and the same occurrencecan
be described as a process as well as an event. Perhaps we could try
salvagingthe distinctionby (roughly)definingprocessesas those occur-
rencesforwhich thereis no truedescriptionwhich involves an existential
change.Butperhapsthe problemis really that 'Lindais writing a letter'
does not referto an event. Itstruthdoes not depend upon a letteractually
coming into existence.
It seems as though this line of reasoninghas led us ratherfarfromthe
originalintuitionsof Mourelatos,et al. The notion of an event has been
severely narrowedto fit the idea of an existentialchange. Excludedare
all measuredprocesses,even those such as 'walking to school,' since it
does not involve an existentialchange, and does seem to be a way of
measuringthe walking. Cases which seem to be straightforwardexam-
ples of events, such as 'the sun's setting' and 'writing a letter'are now
processes. I don't think these results are obviously wrong, but if the
conceptof an event canbe broadened,it should be. Thisnarrowversion,
though possibly coherent,just seems useless. It is totally detachedfrom
the grammaticaland logical propertiesof sentences, and it is hard to
imagine a rationalefor consideringthis distinctionmetaphysicallysig-
nificant.Let's try broadeningthe view by shifting to a considerationof
'definiteness.'

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380 KathleenGill

According to Mourelatos, the inherent indefiniteness of the time

stretchof activitiesis theirmost salientfeature.Thisindefinitenessis due
to the fact that 'they involve no culminationor anticipatedresult.'24'Is
writing' involves no anticipatedresult, and so refers to a process. 'Is
writing a letter/ on the other hand, does specify a result.Taylormakes
the idea of indefiniteness central to his account, by stipulating that
intervalsto which process predicatesapply are open-ended and open-
fronted.It is crucialto decide whetherthis is a metaphysicaldistinction,
or insteadreflectsepistemologicalor pragmaticconsiderations.Perhaps
we know, for instance,that 'Lindais writing'is true,but we don't know
whether she is writing something like a letter,or if she is, whether she
will finish it. Our use of 'Linda is writing' may simply reflect our
ignoranceaboutan occurrencewhich in factdoes, or will, have a definite
end-point.Unless one takes the view that occurrencesare abstractenti-
ties, the lackof informationaboutan end-pointin a descriptiondoes not
justify the conclusion that there is no definite end-point. Furthermore,
what criteriacould be used to distinguish between occurrenceswhich
have definiteend-pointsand those which do not?Shortof simply never
ending, how could a process not have a definiteend-point?
Ratherthan focusing simply on whether or not an occurrencehas a
definiteend-point,we could try thinkingaboutdifferentways an occur-
rencemight end. I thinkParsonsdoes this is in his account.Parsonsuses
the distinctionbetween 'culminating'and 'holding' to accountfor dif-
ferences between nonprogressive and progressive sentences, but he
does not use that as a basis for distinguishingbetween processes and
events. ForParsons,'the differencebetween processesand events is that
a processis actuallya series or amalgamof events. A walking processis
a bunch of overlappingwalking events - small ones, largeones, and so
on.... A running is an event that typically consists of "shorter"events
that are also runningsby the same person.' Processesconsist of events
which culminate,and the 'maximal'event that 'constitutes'the process
may or may not culminate:'...a running, like a street crossing, may
terminate before its culmination if something interferes.'25Similarly,
events which are not processes may or may not culminate. Even if
'Maryis building a bookcase'is true, she may never finish, so the event
will not culminate.26

24 Mourelatos, 204

25 Parsons, Events in the Semanticsof English, 184

26 Ibid., 24

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 381

It seems as though Parsonsis using a weak version of homogeneityto

distinguish between processes and events. That leads to the kind of
counterintuitiveresults discussed above. For instance,while 'run' is a
process verb, 'run to the store' is not a process phrase, it is an event
phrase.27So, if events and processes are consideredmutually exclusive
categories,then 'is running'and 'is runningto the store'cannotpossibly
be made true by a single occurrence,a result I reject.The apparent
homogeneityreflectsthe way the occurrenceis described,not the 'intrin-
sic' natureof the occurrence.In a similarvein, 'buildshouses' refersto a
process which is made up of a series of events, e.g., 'builds a house.' It
does not seem plausibleto put the occurrencewhich consistsof building
a house into a different ontological subcategorythan that occurrence
which consistsof building an unspecifiednumberof houses. And again,
assuminga certainview of event identity,'buildshouses' could be made
trueby the same occurrencethatmakes 'buildstwenty houses' true.The
latter, of course, is categorized on Parsons's view as an event, not a
process. It seems more plausible to locate the differencein the fact that
'builds a house' is a descriptionwhich does not provide information
abouta definiteend-point.In this case the distinctionis epistemological,
not ontological.
But, continuing the line of reasoning begun above, Parsons does
suggest at one point that processes are like states, and unlike events,
insofar as they apparentlyhave no naturalfinishing points.28A similar
point is made by CarlotaSmith, who, although she otherwise empha-
sizes the subjectivenature of aspect, states that 'the reason that telicity
is generally not open to aspectual choice is that humans see it as an
essential property.'29Whereas telic events have natural final points,
atelicevents have arbitraryfinal points at which activitymerely ceases.
The notion of 'completion' only applies to telic events, and they are
completewhen some resultantstate is achieved.Telicevents are further
classifiedon the basis of the types of results they bring about, and that
classification is a refined version of Aristotle's categorization of
changes.30

27 Ibid., 185

28 Ibid., 21

29 Carlota Smith, The Parameterof Aspect (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers
1991), 19

30 Ibid., 52

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382 KathleenGill

When applied to particularcases, we find that 'ate peas' is atelic

because, although the descriptionat least conversationallyimplies that
the activity terminated,thereis no apparentpoint of completion.How-
ever, 'ate her prescribednumber of peas' is telic. But again, basing an
ontological subcategorizationon this distinction seems inappropriate,
since 'ate peas' and 'ate her prescribednumberof peas' could, I believe,
be made true by a single occurrence.
More importantly,more needs to be said about what makes an end-
point natural, or the sense in which an event 'admits the notion of
completion.'I think it's clearthat Parsonshas some easy cases in mind;
'the building of the bookcase' has the existence of the bookcase as its
'natural'end. But what about 'the ball's falling'?Doesn't it have some-
thing like 'hittingthe ground'as a naturalend-point?Perhapsit is falling
throughspace,and, as long as the ball exists, it will continueto 'fall.'But
events can go on indefinitely in just the same way. My father was a
carpenter,so 'the remodeling of our house' went on right up until his
death. Quality changes also seem to have 'natural'end-points. 'The
fading of the chair' has as its natural end-point, its completion, the
shreddingof the fabric,or perhapsturningwhite.
I believe that we will make more headway in understanding the
differencesbetween processes and events by thinkingin terms of indi-
viduation ratherthan ontology. Whatsorts of principles,featuresof the
world, etc., guide the way we 'divide' our world up into distinctoccur-
rences?
Smith discusses some of the pragmaticconsiderationswhich effect
speakers'choiceswhen describingoccurrences.A state,for instance,can
be presentedas dynamicin orderto give a certainemphasisorvividness,
as in 'The river is smelling particularlybad today.' She claims that
'grammariansof all traditionshave recognized aspect as a domain in
which subjectivefactorsare of paramountimportance,'noting that 'the
same situation may be presented from one viewpoint or another,de-
pending on what kind of focus the speaker wishes to present.'31A
speakermay chose to focus on just part of an occurrenceby excluding,
forexample,any referenceto an end-point.ShequotesKampand Rohrer
as claimingthat the distinctionbetween events which lackor include an
end-point must be understood as pertaining not to real time, but to
conceptual or narrativetime.32Our choices are not arbitrary;they are

31 Ibid., 11

32 Ibid.; H. Kamp and C. Rohrer, A Discourse RepresentationTheoryAccount of Tensein

French(ms. 1989), 15-16

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 On the MetaphysicalDistinction Between Processesand Events 383

based on conventionswhich reflectour world and our experienceof it,

e.g., causationand perceptualsalience.Butthey do not simply mirroran
ontologicalsubcategorizationof occurrences.
In a similar vein, Castaneda has argued that there are 'layers of
conventionality'involved in our judgmentsabout the time and place of
humanaction.SupposeFrancescadecides to kill Romeoat 9:00a.m.,and
that Romeo eventually dies at midnight. Castaneda characterizes
Francesca'sactionin termsof a continuousflow of energy,energywhich
is distributedin many paths, leading to the breakingof glass and the
scratchingof her thumb, as well as to the death of Romeo. From this
continual flow of energy we select certain sequences of changes and
states for special consideration.'From the point of view of physical
reality,the changesin the positions of the air molecules scatteredby the
bullet arejust as much an effectof the energy releasedby the movement
of Francesca'sfingeras is the wound in Romeo'schest.Yetnormallywe
do not careaboutsuch scatteringsof moleculesand focus our intereston
Romeo's wound, on the damage to property, and on other effects on
humans.'33
More generally, we experience the physical world as an ongoing
causal flow through time. In describingoccurrenceswe pick out seg-
ments of thatflow. Again,thatsortof carvingup of our experienceis not
arbitrary.It reflectshuman experience,capacities,needs, and interests,
as well as the natureof the nonhumanworld. Butin principlethatcausal
flow could be segmented at any point. Any state which obtains at a
moment is the culminationof the causal processesleading up to it, and
so could be used as an end-pointwhich ties togetherprecedingchanges.
It seems to me, therefore,that the relevant philosophicalissue here is
individuation,i.e., an examinationof the guidelineswe use in separating
off our experienceinto distinctoccurrences,not ontology.

VI Conclusion

I have not argued that thereare no appropriateways of using a distinc-

tion between 'process'and 'event.'It seems clear,for instance,thatthere
are linguisticdifferencesthatneed to be explained.Furthermore,I have
reliedupon certainassumptionsaboutthe natureof ontologicalsubcate-
gorization.One of those assumptions I believe is uncontroversial,viz.,

33 Hector-Neri Castaneda, 'Conventional Aspects of Human Action, Its Time, and Its
Place/ Dialogue 19 (1980), 442

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384 KathleenGill

that such categoriesmust be mutuallyexclusive. Butin the background

is the controversialassumptionthat,in whateversense it is appropriate
to say 'thereare'occurrences,at least some occurrencesarephysical.It's
likely that my claims about identity are dependent upon that assump-
tion, and it may be the sourceof my skepticismtowardsthe project.It is
prima facie inappropriateto put physical occurrencesinto different
metaphysicalcategories.Justas physicalobjectsapparentlyforma meta-
physical subcategoryof objectsdistinctfrom, e.g., numbersor spiritual
objects or fictitious objects, so a more appropriatestarting point for
developing a metaphysicalsubcategorizationof occurrenceswould be
to distinguishphysicaloccurrencesfrom,e.g., negative,merelypossible,
or perhapsspiritualoccurrences.And even if all occurrencesareabstract,
why consider their subcategorizationmetaphysical?In general,why is
it appropriateor inappropriateto considera given level of categorization
metaphysical?At any rate,I hope I have at least convincedreadersthat
claims about the ontological distinctionbetween processes and events
ought to be examined carefully,and must be grounded on an explicit
metaphysicaltheory.
Received:August, 1991
Revised:September,1992

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