Might Events be Propositions

By the term 'propositional object' I mean anything which is not an individual and is both a bearer of truth value and a possible object of someone's propositional attitude such as thinking that . . ., believing that . . ., remembering that . . ., intending that . . ., fearing that . and so on.' I assume that there are two sorts of propositional objects: propositions and states of affairs. A 'proposition' is a propositional object which is true or false once and for all, while a 'state of affairs' is a propositional object which may be true on some occasions and false on others. For instance, the sentence 'Socrates dies in 399 B.C.' expresses a proposition, while the sentence 'Socrates walks' expresses a state of affairs. The question I wish to investigate is whether the class of events may be reduced to a subclass of propositions in the sense just described. Such a view has interesting consequences for a variety of fundamental philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, scientific laws, explanation and prediction, human action, the freedom of the will, and the theory of the relation of mental events to behavior and to episodes in the brain or nervous system.z Fundamentally, a propositional object is a bearer of truth value which may be an object of thought or some other mental act. However, I am not claiming that the object of a mental act must be a proposition; on the contrary, it may be an individual. Thus if I think of Ronald

Epistemology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science

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