THE MATTER OF EVENTS
THOMAS CROWTHER
I
N THIS PAPER, I aim to develop a framework for thinking about
matters of temporal ontology that enables us to understand a
distinction between two categories of time-occupiers; a distinction
often characterized as that between processes and accomplishments.
After broadly characterizing this distinction, I argue that existing
attempts to explain and understand this distinction fail. I maintain
that the route to understanding this distinction is to further develop an
analogy between spatial and temporal notions suggested in a number
of places in the literature; for example by Alexander Mourelatos and
1
Barry Taylor. When this analogy is satisfactorily developed, it is
possible to explain what correctness there is in existing attempts to
characterize this distinction, and to explain some further puzzling
issues within temporal ontology. I conclude by commenting briefly on
a possible source of concern about the analogy.
I
In Metaphysics,  6 Aristotle draws a distinction between what he
2
calls energeia and kinesis. The distinction between energeia and
kinesis has standardly been interpreted as a distinction between active
occurrences which contain an end or purpose in themselves, and those
that do not. In the translation of W.D. Ross, some actions, like
3
“making thin,” “have a limit.” Making thin is “not an action, at least

Correspondence to: Thomas Crowther, Department of Philosophy,
Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square, London W8 5HN,
United Kingdom.
1
Alexander Mourelatos, “Events, Processes and States,” Linguistics and
Philosophy 2 (1978): 415–34; Barry Taylor, “Tense and Continuity,”
Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1977): 199–220.
2
Aristotle Metaphysics, book 9 chapter 6, 1048b18–37. All citations and
references to Aristotle are from Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle,
ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
3
Metaphysics 9.6, 1048b18–19.
The Review of Metaphysics 65 (September 2011): 3–39. Copyright © 2011 by The Review of
Metaphysics.
4
THOMAS CROWTHER
4
not a complete one (for it is not an end).” This type of occurrence can
be contrasted with one like “seeing” or “understanding”; a type of
5
movement “in which the end is present.” Aristotle, in this translation,
goes on to say: “Of these processes, we must call the one set
movements [kinesis] and the other actualities [energeia]. For every
movement is incomplete—making thin, learning, walking, building;
6
these are movements, and incomplete movements.” In characterizing
the notion of the completeness of movements in contrast to actualities,
Aristotle suggests that the unfolding of an incomplete movement does
not entail that a complete movement has occurred, though the
occurrence of an actuality does: “At the same time we are seeing and
have seen, are understanding and have understood, are thinking and
have thought; but it is not true that at the same time we are learning
7
and have learnt, or are being cured and have been cured.”
The nature of Aristotle’s own distinction between movements and
actualities is a matter of controversy in Aristotle scholarship about
8
which I make no commitment here. But the idea that there is a
distinction within the category of things which unfold over time—a
distinction that concerns the ways that those things occupy time—and
that something like this distinction is bequeathed to us by Aristotle’s
remarks in the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics, is a familiar
9
one.
4
Metaphysics 9.6, 1048b19–20.
Ibid., 1048b22–23.
6
Ibid., 1048b28–30.
7
Ibid., 1048b22–25.
8
See J. L. Ackrill, “Aristotle’s Distinction Between Energeia and Kinesis,”
in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. Renford Bambrough (London:
Routledge, 1965); Terry Penner, “Verbs and the Identity of Actions: A
Philosophical Exercise in the Interpretation of Aristotle,” in Ryle, ed. Oscar
Wood and George Pitcher (London: Macmillan, 1971), 393–460; Daniel W.
Graham, “States and Performances: Aristotle’s Test,” Philosophical Quarterly
30 (1980): 117–30; Alexander Mourelatos, “Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia
Distinction: A Marginal Note on Kathleen Gill’s Paper,” Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 23, no. 3 (1993): 385–8; and Myles F. Burnyeat, “Kinesis vs.
Energeia: A Much Read Passage in (but not of) Aristotle’s Metaphysics” in
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 34, ed. David Sedley (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2008).
9
See in particular Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 10, chapter 4.
5
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
5
th
In the 20 century philosophical literature, the establishment of
focus on the idea that there is a distinction between the ways that
things occupy periods of time is associated with the work of Gilbert
10
Ryle, Zeno Vendler, and Anthony Kenny. Building on the discussion
in Ryle, Vendler distinguishes between verbs that are capable of taking
11
the continuous tense and those which are not. I might intelligibly
answer the question “What are you doing?” with “I am running” or “I
am walking,” but not “I am knowing that p” or “I am believing that p.”
The latter verbs, he says, are statives; they single out a standing
condition or a state, a way that someone or something is or can be.
Like particular material objects, states such as knowledge and belief
do not have temporal duration in the sense of having temporal parts or
successive temporal phases over which they unfold. Running and
walking, by contrast, are things that exist by developing or unfolding
over a period of time. Given that such things exist by unfolding, it is
not possible to—for example—merely walk at an instant of time,
without doing so over some period of time. Where “” is a verb
12
employed in a genuine continuous tense predication:
(U) If S is ing at t, S is ing during a period of time tx-tn, such
that t is a time within that period.
Occupants of this category can be distinguished from achievements.
Unlike states, achievements—winning the race, finding one’s keys, or
reaching the summit—are things that have an occurrent mode of
existence. But, unlike walking and running, achievements do not exist
by unfolding over periods of time. They occur instantaneously.
10
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Penguin, 1949), chapters 5
and 7, and Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 100–6;
Zeno Vendler, “Verbs and Times,” Philosophical Review 67 (1957): 143–60;
reprinted in a revised form in Zeno Vendler, Linguistics and Philosophy,
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967); Anthony Kenny, Action,
Emotion and Will (London: Routledge, 1963), chapter 8. Vendler and Kenny
independently arrive at a similar typology of verbs. For the purposes of
exposition of the key ideas, I focus on Vendler’s discussion (with a
terminological qualification I mention below).
11
See Ryle, The Concept of Mind and Vendler, “Verbs and Times.”
12
Proper continuous tense predications can be distinguished from
varieties of idiomatic uses of statives (for example, “I am loving it”).
6
THOMAS CROWTHER
Both Vendler and Kenny acknowledge the existence of a
distinction within the category of verbs capable of taking continuous
tense forms between activities or processes, like walking, running, and
drawing, and accomplishments, like walking to the shops, running a
mile, and drawing a picture of a house. The precise nature of this
distinction is one of the subjects of this paper. But to a first
approximation, processes like walking are things that are capable, in
principle, of continuing indefinitely, while accomplishments, like
walking to the shops, involve progress towards a point at which they
must terminate. Process and accomplishment verbs are distinguished
from one another, Vendler and Kenny suggest, by characteristic tests.
One such putative test concerns whether the relevant verbs can be
followed by “for a time” or “in a time.” I can say that I have run or I
have been running for an hour, or that I have walked for an hour. But I
cannot say that I ran a mile for an hour, nor that I walked to the shops
for an hour. I ran a mile in a certain amount of time, or walked to the
shops in a certain amount of time. This is taken to manifest the fact
that what Vendler and Kenny call activities or processes—things like
walking, running and drawing—go on for periods of time. They do not
take time, in the way that walking to the shops or running a mile—
13
what they call accomplishments or performances—do.
The idea of a distinction between process and accomplishment is
exploited in a variety of works across recent analytical philosophy,
most particularly in connection with the idea that distinctions in the
way that things occupy periods of time may help us to explain
14
important concepts within the philosophy of mind and action. But
13
When discussing the category that Vendler (in “Verbs and Times”) calls
an activity, I shall talk instead of processes. It is not necessary that those
goings on which can take imperfective form, which possess temporal parts,
and which yet lack a telic point, are things done by rational agents (let alone
things intentionally or purposefully done by them). Vendler’s activities I take
to be an agential genus of the species of atelic process. In this I follow
Mourelatos, “Events, Processes and States” (though not Mourelatos,
“Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia Distinction: A Marginal Note on Kathleen Gill’s
Paper”).
14
See, for example, Thomas Crowther, “Watching, Sight and the
Temporal Shape of Perceptual Activity,” The Philosophical Review 118, no. 1
(2009): 1–27, and “Perceptual Activity and the Will,” in Mental Actions, ed.
Lucy O’ Brien and Matthew Soteriou (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009);
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
7
the nature of the distinction between process and accomplishment is
highly problematic. Though it is natural to think that there is some
difference between things like running and walking, on the one hand,
and running a mile and walking to the shops on the other, it is hard to
elucidate the nature of the distinction in a satisfying way. In formal
semantics, there is intensive research on the explanation of
progressive and perfective verb aspect; a programme within which
15
Vendler and Kenny’s work has been influential.
But in analytic
metaphysics—with a few important exceptions—the nature of the
distinction between process and accomplishment, and of the more
general idea that there might be systematic differences in the ways
that temporal entities occupy periods of time, has been relatively
16
neglected.
Brian O’Shaughnessy, Consciousness and the World (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000) and “Trying and Acting,” in Mental Actions; Helen
Steward, The Ontology of Mind: Events, Processes and States (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997); Rowland Stout, “The Life of a Process,” in
Pragmatic Process Philosophy, ed. Guy DeBrock (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003);
Matthew Soteriou, “Mental Agency, Conscious Thinking, and Phenomenal
Character,” in Mental Actions; and Michael Thompson, Life and Action:
Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought (Harvard: Harvard
University Press, 2008).
15
See, for example, Emmon Bach, “The Algebra of Events,” Linguistics
and Philosophy 9, no. 1 (1986): 5–16; David Dowty, Word Meaning and
Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative
Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ (D. Reidel: Dordrecht, 1979); Frederick
Landman, “The Progressive,” Natural Language Semantics 1, no. 1 (1992): 1–
32; Manfred Krifka, “The Origins of Telicity,” in Events and Grammar, ed.
Susan Rothstein (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998); Henk J. Verkuyl, A Theory of
Aspectuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Terence
Parsons, Events in the Semantics of English (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990);
James Higginbotham, “On Events in Linguistic Semantics,” in Speaking of
Events, ed. James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi, and Achille Varzi (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 49–79. Susan Rothstein’s Structuring Events:
A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) is an
excellent survey of, and contribution to, the literature.
16
For exceptions see, for example, Barry Taylor, “Tense and Continuity”
and Modes of Occurrence: Verbs, Adverbs and Events in Aristotelian Society
Series, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); Mourelatos, “Events, Processes and
States”; Steward, The Ontology of Mind: Events, Processes and States;
Kathleen Gill, “On the Metaphysical Distinction Between Processes and
Events,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 3 (1993): 365–84; Rowland
8
THOMAS CROWTHER
It is my view that there is a metaphysical distinction between
processes and accomplishments, and that an understanding of the
distinction, as well as an understanding of the relations between
concepts drawn on in understanding this distinction, can help us to do
valuable philosophical work. I also believe that there remains a role
for an investigation of these temporal notions that is independent of
empirical work in formal semantics, and which draws on a range of
17
familiar metaphysical resources. That is what I hope to motivate in
what follows.
II
The distinction between processes (for example, walking,
running, and moving) and accomplishments (for example, walking to
the shops, running a mile, and moving six inches) is naturally loosely
characterized in terms of the thought that processes, but not
accomplishments, are in principle capable of continuing indefinitely
(even if, as it happens, every process does terminate). A difficulty for
this proposal, though, is that most taxonomies tend to locate the
notion of searching—looking for, or hunting for, or trying to find—in
the category of accomplishment. But in the absence of a philosophical
argument to show that all searching is successful, it is surely possible
for an agent to continue looking for something indefinitely, even in
principle.
A further thought often used to characterize the distinction is that
accomplishments, in contrast to processes, possess a terminal point, a
point at which what is going on must cease. According to this
suggestion, trying to find one’s keys is like walking to the shops and
running a mile, and unlike walking and running, in that there exists a
Stout, “Processes,” Philosophy 72, no. 279 (1997): 19–27 and “The Life of a
Process.”
17
Though the backdrop to some of the discussion here is the formal
semantic treatments of temporal sentences, a more sustained exploration of
the relation between the ontology outlined here and work on the formal
semantics of the progressive and the perfective will be undertaken
independently.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
9
point at which trying to find one’s keys necessarily terminates (that is,
finding one’s keys). But the distinction cannot just be drawn in terms
of the possession of a terminal point, at least where the notion of a
terminal point is understood in this way, for stopping ing is a
terminal point for process and accomplishment alike, and necessarily
so.
Susan Rothstein initially characterizes the distinction between
processes and accomplishments in terms of the idea that
accomplishments, but not processes, possess a terminal point
determined by “the nature of the eventuality” (that is, by the nature of
the process or accomplishment) or by “the description of the
18
eventuality,” at which such things must cease. Perhaps stopping ing
does not count as a terminal point that is determined by the nature of
the process or accomplishment, in the relevant sense (in the way that
having run a mile, or having found one’s keys does). But in the
absence of some further explanation of what it is for a terminal point
to be determined in this way, it is not obvious why it does not. Surely
it is in the nature of walking, for example, as something that goes on
throughout a period of time, that it can be terminated by stopping
walking.
Perhaps the distinction between process and accomplishment is
not so much whether these different goings on possess terminal
points, but whether the relevant unfolding time-occupier can be
understood as unfolding towards or progressing towards such a
terminal point. In the case of accomplishments, but not processes,
terminal points are telic points. For someone to be walking around,
say, by contrast with walking to the shops, is not for them to be doing
something that unfolds towards a telic point. But the nature of such
progression towards a telic point remains to be understood. Suppose
a walk that Bill took went on from t1 to t10, and was a walk around, to
nowhere in particular. Nevertheless, the walk must have gone on from
one point in time, and one physical location, to another point in time,
and a physical location (that may be the same) at which it stopped.
But it might seem that given these facts about Bill’s walk, we can then
understand what he was doing as involving progress towards that
18
Rothstein, Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical
Aspect, 7.
10
THOMAS CROWTHER
point of termination, the point at which his walk stopped, even though
all he was doing was walking. Responding to this by insisting that this
is because what he was doing was not really a process, but an
accomplishment, the accomplishment of walking from one point to
another, would be to abandon the distinction between process and
accomplishment as it is found in the literature, rather than explaining
what it consists in; for it will be true of anything that can be given in
answer to the question: “What is he/she/it doing?” that it is a ing from
one point to another, in this sense.
The work of Ryle, Kenny, and Vendler contains a range of
different Aristotelian tests that purport to divide processes from
accomplishments,
or
to
distinguish
process-verbs
from
accomplishment-verbs. Perhaps these tests can help to illuminate the
rationale for the distinction. One familiar proposal is that process
verbs in the progressive or imperfective form exhibit perfective
entailments that accomplishment verbs do not. If S is walking at t,
then S (had) walked at t. But accomplishment verbs manifest the socalled imperfective paradox; if S is walking to the shops at t then S
19
had not walked to the shops at t.
A related idea is that processes are homogeneous in a way that
accomplishments are not.
Suppose we take the property of
homogeneity to be determined by the following:
(H) ing is homogeneous iff if S ed from t1-t10, then for any time
t during t1-t10 S (had) ed at t.
Then the claim is that processes are clearly homogeneous, though
accomplishments are not. If S walked from t1-t10, then at any time
during t1-t10, S (had) walked at t. But it is not the case that, if S
walked to the shops from t1-t10, then at any time during t1-t10 he
(had) walked to the shops at that time. By t5, S had only walked part
of the way to the shops. Not every subinterval of t1-t10, a time during
19
For discussion of the imperfective paradox from the perspective of
formal semantics, see David Dowty, Word Meaning and Montague
Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and
in Montague’s PTQ; Taylor, Modes of Occurrence: Verbs, Adverbs and
Events; Krifka, “The Origins of Telicity”; Landman, “The Progressive”;
Rothstein, Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
11
which he walked to the shops, is a period of time during which he
walked to the shops.
But homogeneity cannot be a criterion for distinguishing between
20
processes and accomplishments. David Dowty argues that not all
processes are homogeneous; some processes are only homogeneous
21
“down to minimal parts.”
The motional activities characteristic of humans (walking,
swimming, running, dancing, etc.) involve . . . complex patterns of
change of position, changes not just with respect to overall location
but changes with respect to positions of parts of the organism . . .
(N)ot every minimal subinterval (i.e. one consisting of more than a
moment) of such activities is also an interval of that activity. E.g.
small subintervals of the time of which x chuckles is true may not
be instances of chuckling themselves (though perhaps intervals of
x’s producing a glottal stop, etc.). Even particular sequences of
more simple changes of position can be required for some
activities. To take just one special sort of problem, there may be a
sequential series of simpler activities required to characterize a
certain complex activity, though no particular member of the
sequence need occur first. Consider the case of waltzing; what
minimal conditions must an interval meet for x waltzes to be true of
that interval? Now since the waltz involves sequences of three
steps, I believe it is reasonable to maintain that any interval at
which x takes less than three steps is not an interval at which x
waltzes is true . . . but merely an interval at which x makes certain
movements with his or her feet . . .
No doubt, a variety of other problematic cases would be uncovered
by an investigation of other sorts of activities.22
For one to have waltzed or to have walked or to have run, it is
necessary that one has taken a certain number of steps (and, we might
add, has taken them in a particular order). One has not walked if one
20
The case for the existence of nonhomogeneous processes is most
clearly associated with the work of Barry Taylor in “Tense and Continuity”
and Modes of Occurrence: Verbs, Adverbs and Events, and David Dowty in
Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times
in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ.
See Rothstein,
Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect and Krifka,
“The Origins of Telicity” for discussion.
21
David Dowty, Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The
Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s
PTQ, 166. For clarity, I here replace Dowty’s use of “activity” with “process.”
22
Ibid., 170–1.
12
THOMAS CROWTHER
had, by or at a certain time, merely taken a step. Neither has one
waltzed if one has merely taken the first of the steps in the tri-step
sequence that one needs to take in order to have waltzed a waltz. So if
one waltzed from t1-t10, it is not necessarily the case that at any time
during t1-t10 one had waltzed. For there is a time during t1-t10 at
which one had only just slid one’s left foot forward, or taken a graceful
step to the right with one’s right leg. So, though walking and waltzing
are paradigmatic processes, they fail to be homogeneous. They are
only homogeneous “down to minimal parts”; down to those periods of
time that, in the context, are sufficient for the complex of activities
involved to have gone on.
The fact that some processes are nonhomogeneous, once added
to another plausible principle concerning the occupation of time, also
shows that the nonentailments distinctive of the imperfective paradox
cannot be sufficient to constitute criteria for distinguishing between
processes and accomplishments either.
Though the kinds of cases discussed show that homogeneity
cannot be constitutive of processes as opposed to accomplishments, it
remains the case that if S was walking from t1-t10 then he was
walking during t1-t2, that is, the very time during which his first single
23
step was being taken.
Whether ing is a homogeneous or
nonhomogeneous process, or an accomplishment:
(I) If S ed from t1-t10 then at any time t during t1-t10 S was ing
at t.
If Jake walked from t1-t10, then he was walking at any time during that
period. But walking is a nonhomogeneous process. If Jake walked
from t1-t10 it is not necessarily the case that Jake (had) walked at any
time within t1-t10. So there will be times at which it is true of Jake
that he is walking at that time, and yet false of him that he (had)
walked at that time. Even if Jake (had) only lifted his left leg at (by) t,
if Jake did walk from t1-t10 then he nevertheless was walking at t; he
wasn’t merely raising his left leg at t. We ought to say that in such a
24
case, Jake was raising his left leg at that time in walking at that time.
23
Compare here Vendler, “Verbs and Times” and Anthony Kenny, Action,
Emotion and Will.
24
A tempting line of thought can make it seem compulsory to resist this.
Suppose that S took a step from t1-t2, then stopped what he was doing at t2,
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
13
So it cannot be sufficient to distinguish some time-occupier (singled
out here by “ing”) as an accomplishment, as opposed to a process,
that S is ing at t does not entail that S has ed at t. For this is true of
walking, as well as walking to the shops.
Further, given the existence of nonhomogeneous processes, the
patterns of applicability that Vendler notes in connection with “go on
for,” “takes time” and “s in a certain amount of time,” and the
patterns of propriety of the questions: “How long did it take?” or “For
how long?” cannot be diagnostic either.
In the case of
nonhomogeneous processes, there is an event that is necessary for this
process to be going on. In the case of walking, for example, it is
necessary to have completed the cycle of right leg left leg movements
to be walking. But given the background of events of this kind, and
some further context (say, a soldier recovering from serious leg injury
who performs the required cycle of right leg left leg movement
extremely painfully and slowly) the question: “How long did it take
him to walk?” seems perfectly acceptable. And in connection with
such cases, we might also say that it took him a long time to walk this
morning (by comparison with how long it took him yesterday
morning), or that he walked this morning in fifteen seconds.
A different suggestion is that what distinguishes processes from
accomplishments might be that processes, unlike quantized
and hence did not go on to do what is necessary in order to walk. So,
throughout t1-t2, S was not walking, but merely taking a single step. Now,
suppose a case in which S took a step and then went on to accomplish, from
t2-t10, what is necessary in order to have walked. In this case, even though S
completed the cycle of activities necessary to have walked, and so walked
from t1-t10, it cannot be the case that S was walking throughout every
subinterval of that time. For, throughout t1-t2 there is nothing going on in the
case in which S did walk, which did not also go on in the case in which he did
not go on to do so. What S was doing in both cases, throughout t1-t2, then,
was just taking a single step with his left leg, not walking. The correct
response is to resist the idea that throughout t1-t2, there is nothing going on in
the case in which S did walk which did not go on in the case in which he did
do so. In case he did, he was walking at that time, in taking a step. What the
argument fails to be sufficiently sensitive to is that, what is going on at a time,
or over an interval of time, can be determined by what goes on over a larger
period of time, within which the interval, or time, is contained.
14
THOMAS CROWTHER
25
accomplishments, are cumulative.
The intuition is that the
accumulation of stretches of process of the same kind yields, or at
least, may yield, a larger stretch of the same process, but that
accumulating accomplishments does not. The accumulation of
accomplishments only yields a series of accomplishments. Here is
Susan Rothstein sketching the intuition that underpins this criterion:
“Two events of running can be summed to form a plural event, but
they can also, in the appropriate contexts (usually temporal
adjacency), be put together to make a new singular event. Thus an
event of running from 2pm to 3pm, and an event of running from 3pm
to 4pm can be seen either as two distinct events of running or as a
single event of running from 2pm to 4pm . . . While two events in run
can form a singular event in run, two distinct events in eat three
apples cannot be put together to form a new singular event in eat three
26
apples.”
But there is something puzzling about these suggestions. If there
was an event of running from 2pm to 3pm, and an event of running
from 3pm to 4pm, then there was no time from 2pm to 4pm at which
running was not taking place. Given that there was no time from 2pm
to 4pm at which the runner was not running, though, there is a
perfectly good sense in which one might justifiably resist describing
what went on from 2pm to 4pm as involving two distinct events of
running. If we are to assume that the runner stopped running at 4pm
then there is a single run that the runner ran from 2pm that terminated
at 4pm. (If the running had not stopped at 4pm, then there is a single
event of running that was in progress from 2pm to 4pm and was still in
progress at 4pm.) In such a case it ought not to be denied that there
are two distinct periods of time during which running was going on,
one that went on from 2pm to 3pm, and another that went on from
3pm to 4pm. For there is a period of running from t1-tn just in case
25
In the literature in linguistics, the claim is most clearly associated with
the work of Manfred Krifka. See, for example, Krifka, “The Origins of
Telicity.” For discussion see Rothstein, Structuring Events: A Study in the
Semantics of Lexical Aspect. Rothstein follows Krifka in taking cumulativity
to be the feature of processes that distinguishes them from accomplishments.
Rothstein suggestively describes cumulativity as upwards homogeneity.
26
Rothstein, Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical
Aspect, 9.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
15
there is running from t1-tn. Given this, it is true that, if there is a
period of running from 2pm to 3pm and if there is a period of running
from 2pm to 4pm, then there is a period of running from 2pm to 4pm.
But if this is what the cumulativity of process amounts to, this fact
clearly cannot be used to ground a distinction between processes and
accomplishments. For if there was a period of running to the shops
from 2pm to 3pm and a period of running to the shops from 3pm to
4pm, then so also there was a period of running to the shops from 2pm
to 4pm. Correlatively, though it is true that distinct events of running
to the shops can never sum to form a single event of running to the
shops, it is also true that distinct events of running can never sum to
form a single run, either. If I ran, paused for the briefest moment, and
then ran again, then there are, at least on the face of it, two distinct
events of running. But these two events cannot, at least not without
shifting to some different notion of a run, constitute the same event of
running.
The thoughts that were used to initially characterize the
distinction between process and accomplishment do not seem to take
us nearer to understanding the nature of the distinction between these
two temporal categories, and their place in the metaphysics of timeoccupation. And the usual tests offered in the literature to distinguish
between processes and accomplishments do not seem to carve the
distinction between process and accomplishment in the right place.
III
An observation made by a number of writers, amongst them,
Barry Taylor and Alexander Mourelatos, is that there are basic
27
similarities between process verbs and substance stuff terms. The
27
See for example his discussion in Taylor, Modes of Occurrence: Verbs,
Adverbs and Events, chapter 3. The idea of an analogy between the ontology
of time-occupiers and the concept of mass and mass terms is a familiar
feature of the semantic and metaphysical literature. See amongst others
Mourelatos, “Events, Processes and States”; Taylor, “Tense and Continuity”;
Emmon Bach, “The Algebra of Events”; David Dowty, Word Meaning and
Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative
Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ; Anthony Galton, The Logic of Aspect
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Steward, The Ontology of Mind: Events,
16
THOMAS CROWTHER
route to understanding the relation between processes and
accomplishments—as well as, I claim, to understanding the relation of
processes and accomplishments to other temporal categories—is to
pursue and develop this analogy between spatial and temporal notions.
Mass terms are those that, like “snow,” “rain,” and “gold,” are not
28
count-quantifiable but only mass-quantifiable. (Masses, I shall take it,
are what mass terms refer to.) Without significant shift in the meaning
of “gold,” there cannot be golds, two golds, more than one gold, or a
gold. In cases in which a term such as this does take a plural form, it
involves some shift in meaning from the nonpluralized form. Golds for
example, are kinds or types of gold (for example red gold, yellow gold,
and so forth) or else gold things (for example gold medals). Unless
such a shift in meaning has taken place the question “How many golds
are there?” is unintelligible. But there may be amounts of gold: there
may be some gold, much gold, heaps or piles of gold, or not very much
gold. In the case of mass terms like gold, one cannot intelligibly ask
“How many?” only “How much?”
The paradigmatic examples of masses are space-occupying stuffs:
things like gold, bronze, water, and snow. But not all mass is stuff, at
least in the sense of space-occupying stuff. What things are doing
throughout a period of time, or what they are engaged in throughout a
period of time, are like masses or substance-stuffs in not being countquantifiable, only mass quantifiable. There can no more be two
walkings or three runnings than there can be two golds or more than
one rain. At least without significant departure from the process verb
sense of the word, one cannot intelligibly ask: “How many runnings
were there?” But there may have been a little light running, a
considerable amount of running, or more running than was good for
me. This is true not only of the semantic values of process verbs in
Processes and States; Rothstein, Structuring Events: A Study in the
Semantics of Lexical Aspect.
28
See the essays in Francis Pelletier, ed., Mass Terms: Some
Philosophical Problems (Reidel: Dordrecht, 1979); Dean Zimmerman,
“Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution,” Philosophical Review,
104, no. 1 (1995): 53–110; Kathrin Koslicki, “The Semantics of Mass
Predicates,” Nous 33, no. 1 (1999): 46–91; Helen M. Cartwright, “Some
Remarks about Mass Nouns and Plurality,” Synthese 31, nos. 3/4 (1975): 395–
410; “Amounts and Measures of Amount,” Nous 9, no. 2 (1975): 143–64.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
17
their imperfective form, but also of the semantic values of
accomplishment verbs in that form. There cannot be two walking to
the shops(s) or three running a mile(s), and it does not make sense to
ask how many walking to the shops(s) there were. Though there
cannot be two walking to the shops(s), walking to the shops admits of
mass quantification: there may be more walking to the shops, less
walking to the shops, or enough walking to the shops.
What things are doing throughout periods of time and substancestuff are constituents of the same basic ontological category; they
could be thought of as temporal and spatial masses. What things are
doing is time-occupying stuff.
Both substance-stuffs and time-occupying stuffs, respectively, fill
out space and time in the same way. If S is ing at a time t, then there
must be a period of time from t1-tn such that S is ing from t1-tn and t
is within that period of time. That was the principle of timeoccupation spelled out as (U), above. Likewise, where they are
present, substance-stuffs necessarily occupy regions of space. If there
is gold at place p, then there must be a set of places p1-pn (a region of
space) such that there is gold from p1-pn and p is within p1-pn. Where
they are present, even the smallest amounts of mass must occupy
regions of space; masses are spread out around a region of space in
the way that what something is doing must go on throughout a period
of time.
Though it is significant that there is an analogy between the
notions of substance-stuff and time-occupying process and
accomplishment, this thought is only one aspect of a more complete
structural analogy. While there is discussion that acknowledges the
existence of this analogy, what has not emerged clearly enough from
those treatments is the idea that the relation between physical stuffs
and space-occupying particulars can provide a model for the relation
between temporal stuffs and time-occupying particulars that helps us
to articulate a rationale for the distinction between process and
29
accomplishment.
29
In the course of mentioning the analogy between spatial stuffs and
temporal processes, Daniel Graham attributes to Aristotle the thought that
“motion events are comprised of motion processes.”
Understanding
“comprises” as “is made of” or “is constituted from,” this is just the aspect of
the analogy I aim to develop. Whether Aristotle himself held this view is
18
THOMAS CROWTHER
Space-occupying material particulars are distinct from masses, for
reasons just given; unlike masses, space-occupying particulars are
countable; there can be two trees, more than one human being, and
several lumps of gold. But though they are nonidentical with them,
space-occupying material particulars consist of—are made of, or
composed of—space-occupying stuff. Some gold medal, then, is gold
stuff not in being identical with that stuff, but in virtue of the fact that
gold is the stuff the medal is made of. Space-occupying spatial
particulars do not consist of mere spatial boundaries or a set of things
that mark limits of the thing, but fill out the space that they occupy.
The way that those particulars fill out the space that they occupy is
determined by the stuff from which it is made, and how that stuff is
arranged throughout that space.
There are different notions of spatial boundary that have
application to spatial particulars. There are the spatial boundaries of
complete space-occupying particulars. The spatial boundaries of
space-occupying particulars cannot be mere sets of spatial points, or
spatial locations, at least where those locations are understood as
determined by an absolute frame of reference. The spatial boundaries
of a particular move when the space-occupying particular whose
boundary it is moves. But the relevant set of points in an absolute
space or a set of spatial locations in such a space does not. Against the
idea that such spatial boundaries can be identified with any set of
points in space, whether determined with respect to an absolute or
relative frame of reference, is the fact that the spatial boundaries of a
space-occupying particular have spatial locations. It is unclear how
such boundaries can have a spatial location if they are identical with
these locations. Spatial boundaries are understandable in terms of the
notion of a particular kind of change. If there is a space-occupying
particular, O, from p1, p2 . . . pn, then the set of places p1, p2 . . . pn is
the set of places at which there is a change in the way that space is
occupied; from the presence of that spatial particular to its absence.
Spatial boundaries are, at least, changes in the pattern of distribution
of space-occupying stuff that constitutes an object, from its presence
something I don’t take a view on here. See Daniel W. Graham, Clarendon
Aristotle Series: Aristotle’s Physics Book 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999),
191–2.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
19
to its absence. The stuff of which a particular is made is absent at the
position of the temporal boundary (or the set of places that is the set
of places at which the boundary is located) because a position (or set
of places) is not within a region of space throughout which the
relevant stuff is present. Understanding a spatial boundary of a
complete spatial particular as a change in the occupation of space
does not entail that the change is something that occurs in time.
Where the spatial boundary is the spatial boundary of a complete
spatial particular, the change consists in the fact that there is spaceoccupying stuff that composes a complete O throughout the region p1,
p2, p3 . . . px, and there is a region around p1, p2, p3 . . . px such that
there is no space-occupying stuff that composes an O within that
region.
There are also the spatial boundaries between the nondetached
spatial parts of complete space-occupying particulars. There are
different ways that this notion might be understood, corresponding to
which are two different ways of determining a spatial part of a
complete space-occupying particular. First, there is the spatial
boundary between nondetached spatial parts of a particular, where
those spatial parts are determined by features of, or properties of, the
complete spatial particular; for example, the spatial boundary between
the stem and the roots of a particular plant, or the boundary between
the neck and the upper torso of a particular human being.
Alternatively, there may be the spatial boundary between the
nondetached spatial parts of a spatial particular where the relevant
notion of spatial parthood is determined, not by features of the
complete particular, but just by distinctions within the region of space
that the particular occupies (where this spatial region is determined
with respect to the spatial boundaries of the spatial particular, rather
than by its position in absolute space). So, in this sense, there may be
the spatial boundary between that spatial part of the object that falls
within (occupies) p1, p2 . . . pn, and that spatial part of the object that
falls within (occupies) p3, p4 . . . px.
An ontology of this kind affords a suggestion for filling out the
suggested analogy between spatial and temporal notions. Events
understood as dated, particular occurrences, which occupy durations
of time, are temporal particulars. Events in this sense are particular,
completed, quantities of time-occupying stuff. These time-occupying
20
THOMAS CROWTHER
temporal particulars are distinct from time-occupying stuffs. They are
countable, and cannot be mass-quantified. There can be more than
one walk or more than one walk to the shops. There cannot be more
30
(a) walk or less (a) walk to the shops. Events are not identical with
stuffs, whether walking or walking to the shops; they are temporal
particulars that are composed of, or made out of, these time-occupying
stuffs. A particular walk that I walked this morning is not identical
with walking, but constituted from the process of walking. A walk
from t1 to t2 is a particular that fills out the period of time it occupies,
and fills it out in being constituted from time-occupying stuff—
walking—that fills it out.
The analogy with spatial notions yields a corresponding
conception of the category of achievements modelled in terms of the
notion of a spatial boundary. Achievements are temporal boundaries.
And there are distinct types of temporal boundary that are relevant to
the case of complete temporal particulars. One type of temporal
boundary is the temporal boundary of a bounded temporal particular.
By analogy with the corresponding spatial notion, the boundaries of
temporal particulars are not times, but are located at times. A
temporal boundary of a temporal particular is a change in the
occupation of time by the time-occupying stuffs of which temporal
particulars are constituted: from the presence of that stuff to its
absence. Any time at which there is such a change is not a time at
which the stuff from which the relevant particular is made is present;
for (contrary to (U)) there is not a region of time that t falls within
such that there is time-occupying stuff throughout that region. This
class of temporal boundaries consists of starts or stops of processes or
accomplishments. As well as the temporal boundaries of complete
temporal particulars, there are temporal boundaries between the
nondetached temporal parts of those temporal particulars. Some of
these temporal parts of temporal particulars are determined by
30
Such events are also sometimes picked out as a particular walking or a
particular walking to the shops. Again, here, there cannot be more than one
walking or more than one walking to the shops. This, clearly, does not
impugn the sense in which what things are doing cannot be countquantifiable. For walking and walking to the shops here are referents of
general nouns that are those things that were or will be done or completed by
some agent, not what someone was or will be doing.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
21
features or properties of the things which unfold over a period of time.
There is the achievement which is the temporal boundary between
particular temporal parts of the building of a bookcase, where that
boundary is intelligible in terms of the change from a phase of
correctly positioning the sides of the bookcase with relation to the top
and bottom, to banging nails into wood. This is a change between
temporal phases of the event, because the accomplishments out of
which the event is constituted are distinct types of accomplishment.
Alternatively, there are the temporal parts of the building of the
bookcase which are merely the changes from the phase of activity that
occurs from t1-t2, to that which occurs from t2-t3. Here, the
boundaries are the starts and stops of phases of activity, nondetached
temporal parts of the event, where those phases are determined just by
the fact that we can distinguish periods of time within the duration of
time over which the temporal particular occurred.
IV
Different categories of spatial particulars differ in their boundary
conditions. And this difference provides a clue to the nature of the
temporal distinction between processes and accomplishments. In
discussing the putative homogeneity of processes, Barry Taylor writes:
“[J]ust as every three-dimensional spatial area within a lump of
homogeneous gold is itself such a lump of gold, so every period within
31
a period of falling is itself a period of falling.” Now, there is a reading
according to which this is obviously false. It is simply not true that
every three-dimensional spatial area within a lump of gold is a lump of
gold. Every three-dimensional spatial area within a lump of gold is an
32
area in which there is a nondetached part of a lump of gold. What is
correct, though, is that there is a sense in which the spatial boundaries
of lumps, piles, heaps, chunks, pieces, bits, and blobs, of stuff are
promiscuous in the way that the spatial boundaries of gold rings,
horses, trees, and statues of Venus pulling on a slipper, are not.
31
Taylor, Modes of Occurrence: Verbs, Adverbs and Events, 70.
I here assume that the spatial boundary of the lump of gold itself does
not count as a spatial area within the lump.
32
22
THOMAS CROWTHER
According to our earlier discussion, a spatial boundary of a quantity of
substance-stuff is a change in the occupation of space from spaceoccupying stuff to its absence. Spatial boundaries are located at the
places at which there are such changes, the places at which there is a
change from some to no more space-occupying stuff of the relevant
kind. Then, any set of points in space at which there is a change in the
occupation of space from the presence of a certain kind of stuff, say,
bronze, to its absence, is the location of a spatial boundary of a lump
of, or a piece of, bronze. But it is not the case that any set of points in
space that are the locations of a spatial boundary of the presence of
bronze can be the spatial boundary of a bronze statue of Venus pulling
on a slipper. It may be that the spatial boundary is the boundary of
half of a bronze statue of Venus pulling on a slipper, or of a bronze
foot, or of a bronze doorknocker. Though lumps of bronze and bronze
statues are both space-occupying particular things, that is, they are
bounded and discrete entities made of space-occupying stuff, they
have different completion conditions. Any boundary, of the presence
of bronze and its absence, completes a lump of bronze. But it is not the
case that every change in the occupation of space by bronze completes
33
a bronze statue of Venus.
The fact that not every collection of points at which there stops
being bronze completes a bronze statue of Venus is a consequence of
the fact that, in order to be a statue of Venus, the stuff of which it is
made—the bronze—must be organized in the right way. In the case of
an artificial kind like a statue of Venus, there is potentially a quite
complex account that needs to be given about what is required for the
satisfaction of completion conditions; about what the sortal principle
of identity and individuation for particulars of that kind involve. Such
a statue must have the right shape; where its having that shape
consists, at least in part, of having nondetached spatial parts which are
shaped in the right ways and which relate to one another in the right
way. In addition, the particular must be a statue; so, it must be the
product of a particular kind of activity on the part of a producer. I
33
This can be expressed in terms of a point about the division of the
relevant thing. Carve away at a lump of bronze however one likes and one
will be left with lumps of bronze. But not any carving away at a statue of
Venus results in a statue of Venus.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
23
34
leave these details aside. In the case of natural kinds like trees, cats,
and dogs, the stuff of which those things are composed is organized
according to certain functional constraints involving characteristic
patterns of material coherence at a time, and over time, and distinctive
35
patterns of reproduction, amongst other things. For all such spatial
particulars, even if filling out space in a certain way may not be
sufficient for the existence of such a thing (plausibly, things like
bronze statues of Venus and Vermeer’s View of Delft), space must be
filled out in a certain way in order for such a complete spatial
36
particular to be present at a place. And, again, it is the sortal concept
or principle of explanation for things of that kind that determines how
it is that the matter must be organized and must fill out space for a
particular of that kind to be present.
In light of this, a natural thought is that processes and
accomplishments are to be understood as temporal analogues of the
spatial distinction between a particular that is a mere lump of F, and a
particular that is a G made of F, where Gs require F to be organized in
37
a characteristic way.
The temporal boundaries of a period of ing are the times at
which there is a change in the occupation of time from the presence of
ing to its absence. Those boundaries are the achievements which
34
See here David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), chapter 3, sections 3–5.
35
See ibid., chapters 2 and 3.
36
There are many further issues raised here that I cannot address here.
It is not implausible that the same thing is true of sortally-individuated
Aristotelian primary substances. An accidental arrangement of spaceoccupying stuff in the physical form of a human being is not obviously a
human being. Perhaps it is essential that a human being has a certain kind of
parental and genotypic origin. I make no commitment here about how this
issue is to be resolved. What is necessary at this point is only the claim that a
certain type of spatial form is necessary. I note only that the necessity of a
certain kind of origin does not make all such particulars artifacts, particulars
of artifactual kinds having an essential explanation in terms of the intentions
or aims of rational agents.
37
Taylor in Modes of Occurrence: Verbs, Adverbs and Events, 70, writes:
“[F]alling delimits time as a homogeneous stuff fills space, whereas stabbing
delimits time as a substance delimits space.” This is suggestive, but not quite
the account I endorse here. It is a stabbing that delimits time as a substance
delimits space.
24
THOMAS CROWTHER
constitute the starts and stops of a period of ing. Then, where ing
is a process, any set of temporal boundaries of ing are the
boundaries of a complete  event; a temporal particular made of ing.
For example, if S starts walking at t1 and stops walking at tn, then
there is a complete event, a walk, that S has walked (or that has
occurred) such that t1 and tn constitute its temporal boundaries.
Particular events which are composed of processes are temporal
chunks or lumps—stretches—of the temporal stuff that is process.
But where ing is an accomplishment, the completion of a  requires
not just that there are temporal boundaries which are starts and stops
of ing, but requires that the period of ing has a particular set of
temporal boundaries. If S starts walking to the shops at t and stops
walking to the shops at tn, it is not necessarily the case that there is a
complete walk to the shops that S has walked such that t1 and tn are
the temporal boundaries of an event that is a walk to the shops. What
may have been completed is only an event that is part of a walk to the
shops; an event that is constituted by a process or an accomplishment
that is a subprocess or subaccomplishment of a walk to the shops.
Accomplishments, then, are the temporal analogues of sortally
governed spatial particulars, like gold medals or gold statues of Venus
pulling on a slipper. What is distinctive about accomplishments, in
contrast to events, is that the temporal stuff that constitutes the
putative accomplishment has to take a particular, restricted, temporal
form. If we understand the nature of the spatial form that spaceoccupying spatial particulars need to take as determined by the nature
of the sortal principle for things of that kind, correspondingly, we can
understand the nature of the temporal form that accomplishments
need to possess as determined by a temporal sortal principle for things
of that kind. The temporal sortals for accomplishments are principles
of explanation for complete events of a certain kind that contain, at
least, information about what the beginnings and ends of a particular
event must be like to be an event of that kind, and which incorporate
restrictions on what kinds of events of starting and stopping can
constitute the points of completion of events of this kind.
Suppose we take it that what makes a kind artifactual is that
particulars of that kind have to be made from an activity deriving from,
or explained in terms of, the intentions or aims of rational agents.
Then, it is plausible to think that in the temporal case, as in the spatial
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
25
case, there is a distinction between artifactual and natural kinds.
There are some accomplishments, like the fall of some particular
cherry stone to the ground at some date and time, the temporal form of
which is determined by temporal sortals which are nonartifactual or
natural; the completion conditions for such occurrences are
determined by what occurrences are necessary for the satisfaction of
the reproductive functions of the type of organism from which the
stone falls, reproductive functions which are constitutive of a cherry
tree being the type of thing it is. There are other accomplishments,
say, the convoluted flight of a heat-seeking missile that eventually
achieves its proper destructive end, that are a kind of accomplishment
the principle of identity of which is artifactual; involving essential
reference to the intentions or aims of the designers of the missile and
its software. It is facts about the programmers of the software that
controls the flight of such missiles that determines how the flight of
such missiles ought to begin, and how it ought to terminate. On this
view, given the simple criterion offered for something’s being an
artifactual particular, the intentional or agential bodily actions of
rational agents would also appear to count as artifactual particulars.
Bodily actions necessarily involve movements of the agent’s body, but
they are movements explicable in terms of the intentions or aims of
the rational agent. Assessing and developing this idea would take me
well beyond the scope of this paper. I note only that there need not be
much that is controversial about such a suggestion, at least, given that
I here understand “explicable in terms of the intentions or aims of a
38
rational agent” in a relatively unrestricted way.
At the core of this approach is the fact that lumps of stuff,
whether spatial or temporal, are particulars, and so that the category
extends further than those particulars which possess boundary
39
conditions restricted by the nature of things of that kind.
The
38
Of course, any satisfying development of this suggestion would
distinguish between the way that the intentional bodily actions of human
beings are explained by their intentions or aims and the completely different
way that the intentions of programmers explain the movements of heatseeking missiles.
39
A failure to acknowledge this, I maintain, is a difficulty in the account
offered in Mourelatos, “Events, Processes and States.” Though Mourelatos
does say that “all and only event predications are equivalent to count-
26
THOMAS CROWTHER
proposals need refining and developing, and not all of that can be
undertaken here. But in advance of such refinement, it is helpful to
clarify some distinct notions of a lump (or a chunk, or a piece)
relevant to this analogy between spatial and temporal notions. One
might distinguish between the notions of a lump and a mere lump.
Something is a lump of F (or a quantity of F) in the liberal sense if and
only if it is a complete, spatially bounded particular made of F.
Particulars which have restrictive boundary conditions imposed by
their natures qualify as lumps in this liberal sense. But contrasting
with this is the notion of a mere lump, or a lump in the formal sense.
Something is a mere lump of F if and only if it is a complete, spatially
bounded particular made of F, and it does not possess restrictive
boundary conditions for the occupancy of space or time in virtue of its
nature. Mere lumps of F are disorganized or nonorganized quantities
of F just in the sense that they do not fall under sortal predicates that
determine restrictive boundary conditions for them. That a particular,
a, is a mere lump of F is consistent with it possessing parts that do fall
under sortal predicates that determine restrictive boundary conditions,
as some mere lumps of space-occupying stuff may be
nonhomogeneous, and have such particulars as parts.
quantified existential constructions” (Ibid. 429), he also implies that as they
are relevant to events, these count-quantified constructions are of a particular
type, one that rules out individuation through “extrinsic containers.” This is
what Mourelatos is most naturally read as saying, when he writes: “[E]vents
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 and qualities” (Ibid., 430). On the most natural reading
of this, “substances” is to be read as “Aristotelian primary substances”
(horses, dogs, trees) rather than as, say, “lumps of clay,” or “lumps of bronze
and silver.” Given this view, then, an event for Mourelatos is to be understood
as a “completed accomplishment.” If that is right, then the temporal ontology
that he presents is incomplete. The intuition that drives Mourelatos’s
discussion is that there is a distinction between mass and particular in the
case of spatial notions, and that this is applicable to the temporal case. But
now it appears that there is no room for the thought that bounded stretches
and phases of process, like a walk around that went on for a few minutes, are
complete temporal particulars too. A walk around, or a stretch of walking
around is not stuff, but a bounded quantity of it.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
27
Sortal concepts for space-occupying particulars determine what is
proper or correct for those particulars; it is essential to conceiving of a
particular as being made of space-occupying stuff that has the form
determined by some particular sortal concept that there is then a
condition of correctness determined by that sortal in terms of which
the relevant particular is susceptible of evaluation. A particular that is
only a half of a bronze statue of Venus pulling on a slipper is
incomplete, and, in the relevant sense, defective. That particular is not
how a complete statue of that kind ought to be. There is a constitutive
connection between being evaluable in the light of the principle and
there being something made of the relevant organized stuff at that
place. In the case of space-occupying spatial particulars, what it is for
there to be some space-occupying stuff organized according to the
sortal principle for a particular kind of thing, F, at a point in space, is
just for there to be, at that point, something that can be evaluated in
terms of the correctness condition for a complete F. If the correctness
condition is met, there is a complete F at that point in space. If the
correctness condition is not met, there is an incomplete F at that point
in space. What it is for there to be stuff organized according to the
sortal principle for Fs, and so assessable for completeness or
incompleteness in the light of that principle, is potentially a highly
variable and context-relative matter. As we have seen, some of these
sortal principles may be artifactual, though some are no doubt natural.
Similarly, sortal concepts for temporal particulars determine what is
correct for those particulars. A stretch of walking to the shops which
is only a walk to the front door is incomplete, and so improper or
defective. It is not how a complete walk to the shops should be. As in
the case of spatial particulars, there is a constitutive connection
between being assessable as either complete or incomplete in the light
of a particular sortal condition for Fs, and there being, at the relevant
point in time, a quantity of time-occupying stuff arranged in an F-like
way.
In the light of this discussion of completion and correctness as it
applies to accomplishments and Aristotelian primary substances, it
might appear strained to describe lumps as having liberal completion
conditions, or to describe them as possessing boundary conditions, or
completion conditions which are unrestricted. If the function of a
boundary condition or a completion condition is just to determine
28
THOMAS CROWTHER
what counts as correct, then it may seem problematic that there is no
such thing as an incorrect boundary for a mere lump, or no such thing
as an incomplete lump. But isn’t it the case that there is correctness,
or a correctness condition, only where there is the possibility of
incorrectness? This need not be a worry. In the case of mere lumps or
pieces or blobs of F, the applicability of the notion of correctness or
propriety in the case of boundaries derives from the notion of what is
permitted, by the nature of what kind of particular is in question, with
respect to these boundaries. That a boundary for a spatial particular
which is a mere lump of F completes a mere lump of F (and so is
correct for a lump) does not entail that there must be something it is
for it to be an incomplete lump, for that this boundary completes the F
is that it is a boundary which is permitted for lumps. And that there is
a boundary which is permitted does not entail that some boundaries
are not permitted. (By contrast, we could think of the completion
conditions for accomplishments and Aristotelian primary substances
as determining correctness conditions that take something like the
form of obligations).
At the outset, in discussion of one proposed way of thinking of the
idea of an accomplishment, I discussed the possibility that the de facto
starting and stopping points of a stretch of process might
automatically count as terminal points or telic points, in a sense that
would make such a stretch of process (and thereby any stretch of
process) an accomplishment. Call “walking from A to B” in this sense,
a resultant accomplishment. Resultant accomplishments do not count
as genuine accomplishments because it is not possible to conceive of
them as stretches of process organized around a principle that
determines conditions of correctness in the way it does for genuine
accomplishments. Suppose S merely walked from t1 to t2, but that S
walked from A to B during that time. Then it is true that what S was
doing during that time was, in the relevant resultant accomplishment
sense, walking from A to B. But that he was walking from A to B at
some time between t1 and t2 is not for there to be temporal stuff at
that time organized around the telic goal completed in walks from A to
B. For walking from A to B in this sense is not governed by a
correctness condition that allows for evaluations of what transpires in
terms of a success or failure to meet the conditions required for
complete events of the kind: a walk from A to B. There are no
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
29
incomplete walks from A to B where walking from A to B is a resultant
accomplishment, and where “incomplete” indicates “not as required by
the nature of the event-type to which it belongs.” What could such an
incomplete event be? Just the traversing of only half the distance to
B? But that cannot be correct. This would leave it obscure why such a
walk is an incomplete walk to B rather than to other points
intermediate between the point of termination of the walk and B, or to
C or to D or to E, and so forth.
V
In the first section of the paper, I argued that some familiar
criteria suggested as ways of distinguishing between process and
accomplishment face difficulties. But these suggested criteria appear
to latch onto recognizable features of process and accomplishment to
some degree. It is significant that it is possible to articulate what is
correct about these different suggestions about the distinction
between process and accomplishments in light of the idea that there is
a distinction between the completion conditions of processes and
accomplishments.
Homogeneity.
In introducing the idea of a distinction in
completion conditions, I have already suggested that this thought
captures something of the intuition behind the idea of the homogeneity
of process in comparison with accomplishment. If ing is a process,
then whenever ing starts and stops, those starts and stops are the
boundaries of a complete . In the case of process, had t1 and t10
been points at which ing started and then stopped, there would be a
complete temporal particular which is a stretch of ing. There is a
different way to illuminate this idea, in terms of notions drawn from
related features of the category of mass. Though time-occupying and
space-occupying stuff cannot be count quantified, it can be mass
quantified. Though there cannot be two stuff(s) or more than one
stuff(s)—at least where “stuff” refers to stuff itself rather than to types
of stuff—there can be some stuff, more stuff, and enough stuff. In the
light of this idea, what appears to underpin the homogeneity of
process is that, in the case of a process, if there is some ing from t1t10, then necessarily there is enough ing from t1-t10 for a complete
(even if, because the ing may not yet have stopped, there is not a
30
THOMAS CROWTHER
complete ). That is true even for processes like walking and waltzing
that are nonhomogeneous according to (H) above. If there is some
walking from t1-t10, there must be enough walking from t1-t10 for
there to be a complete walk from t1-t10 (even if there is not a complete
walk because the walking has not yet terminated). Accomplishments
are nonhomogeneous in this sense, in that the positioning of the
boundaries of the relevant time-occupying stuff, as well as its mode of
organization, must meet certain conditions for there to be enough ing
for a complete event of that kind to occur; for there to be some ing is
not for there to be enough ing for a . Whether there is enough of
the relevant stuff is dependent on whether the requirements for
boundaries determined by the sortal principle are met.
Cumulativity and quantization. There were difficulties in
thinking that complete stretches of processes are cumulative or
upwardly homogeneous in the sense that they could simply be added
together to produce stretches of processes of the same kind. I have
already explained the difficulties with the notion of cumulativity when
explained in this way. I also noted that the view that the unfolding of a
process consists of phases of that process that can each have the same
character of the unfolding whole will not be sufficient to distinguish
process from accomplishment. But there is something correct about
the idea that processes are cumulative in a way that accomplishments
are not, that can again be illuminated by the analogy with notions of
mass and a compositional ontology.
An idea implicit in the discussion of homogeneity immediately
above was that, if there is enough walking from t1-t10 for a complete
event of walking (a complete walk), it does not follow that there is a
complete walk from t1-t10. The walking that went on from t1-t10 may
be a nondetached temporal part of a walk that went on from t1-t20.
But in the case of accomplishments, if there is enough walking to the
shops from t1-t10 for a complete walk to the shops, there must be a
complete walk to shops that took place from t1-t10. If there is enough
walking to the shops from t1-t10 for a walk to the shops, then this
walking cannot be a nondetached temporal part of a complete walk to
the shops that extends beyond those intervals. These facts about what
is entailed by having enough process or accomplishment for a
complete particular of the relevant kind are reflected in the fact that, if
there is enough walking from t1-t10 for a complete walk, it does not
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
31
follow that S stopped walking at t (it does not follow that t1 or t10 are
the temporal boundaries of a complete stretch of walking), whereas if
there was enough walking to the shops from t1-t10 for a complete walk
to the shops, t10 is of necessity a point at which there was the
termination of (the later temporal boundary of) the walk to the shops.
So process, by contrast with accomplishment, can accumulate in the
sense that, if there is enough walking for a complete walk from t1-t10,
then further phases of this walk can accumulate from t10 onwards.
A related way to express the idea that process is cumulative, by
contrast with accomplishment, concerns differences in the way that
processes and accomplishments relate to another mass quantifier as a
consequence of the facts just noted. Given the fact that, if there is
enough walking from t1-t10 for a complete event of walking, then that
does not entail that there is a complete walk from t1-t10, it follows
that, if there is more walking after t10, it is not necessarily the case
that there is another walk that occurs after t10. It could just be the
continuation of the same walk. On the other hand, if there is enough
walking to the shops from t1-t10 for a complete event of walking to the
shops, then any more walking to the shops after t10 would have to
constitute a different, another, walk to the shops.
Progress and the imperfective paradox. In exploring suggestions
about how to distinguish between process and accomplishment, it was
suggested that in the case of accomplishments, from the fact that O is
ing at t, it follows that O has not yet ed at t, but that in the case of
processes, if O is ing at t, O has ed at t. This is the phenomenon
that has come to be known as the imperfective paradox. Different
features of this data might be picked out as an imperfective paradox
that is in need of explanation. The first is the apparent contrast
between the entailment and failure of entailment in the process and
accomplishment cases. A second feature in need of explanation is
how it can be that, in the case of accomplishments, something can be
ing at t, and not only has not ed by t, but will not at all. What is
particularly in need of explanation is the fact that the introduction of
the idea of a process of ing appears to involve the idea of a particular
event unfolding, a , and yet the occurrence of ing is consistent with
the nonexistence of the  that is unfolding. Yet, how then are we to
make sense of the notion of the unfolding of a which may never
32
THOMAS CROWTHER
exist? How, indeed, are we to make sense of the notion of progress or
unfolding at all?
In connection with the first of these features, it has already been
noted that the pattern of entailment is not indicative. There are
nonhomogeneous processes. So something can be ing even though it
has not yet ed (walking, chuckling, and so forth). But there are
features of processes and accomplishments that emerge from the
temporal ontology sketched out here that the pattern of entailment
reflects. Given an agent who is walking to the shops at t, then were
that agent to have stopped walking to the shops at t, there would not
have been a complete walk to the shops at t. But given an agent
walking at t, were that agent to have stopped walking at t, then
necessarily there would be a walk that was completed (a complete
stretch of walking).
Again, the existence of nonhomogeneous
processes does not have an impact on this difference between the
respective modes of time-occupation.
Suppose we then focus on the second feature of the data. If the
question is how it can be that it may be that an accomplishment is
going on at a time though it will not be complete, the suggestion
pursued here is that this is to be understood in terms of the idea that
there is a requirement on the unfolding of such an accomplishment,
determined by the nature of the particular event that is unfolding, such
that the unfolding that occurs is subject to that requirement for its
completion condition, even though it will fail to meet that requirement
for completion. Suppose that the question is how this can be
explained, given that, in the case of accomplishments, a  appears to
be in progress, though there isn’t and won’t be a . Here, I can offer
only some brief suggestions about how the ontology sketched here
allows us to make some distinctive suggestions about this complex
issue, and repeat that a study of the relations between these ideas
about temporal ontology and the claims advanced within formal
semantics of the progressive and perfective aspect will be undertaken
in further work.
The analogy with spatial notions is instructive again here. Spaceoccupying stuffs necessarily occupy regions of space. If there is
bronze at p, then there is bronze throughout a region of space within
which p is contained. But if there is a region of space throughout
which there is bronze, within which p is contained, then there is a
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
33
space-occupying particular at p which is made of bronze. Spaceoccupying stuff, then, is what bounded space-occupying particulars
are made of. But the space-occupying particular that is made of
bronze, which is present at p, may vary depending on whether the
bronze that is present is organized in any way or not. It may be that p
falls within a region of space throughout which there is bronze, given
that it falls within a region of space occupied by a mere lump of
bronze, that is, a quantity of bronze not organized any way at all. Yet it
may be that there is bronze at p, and a region throughout which there
is bronze which contains p, in virtue of the fact that there is a
particular present at p which is made of bronze organized according to
the sortal statue of Venus balancing on one foot pulling on her
slipper. If there is a particular present at p which is made of bronze
organized according to that sortal, then there is either, at that location,
a complete statue of Venus pulling on her slipper. or a particular which
is a part of such a statue, a bronze upper torso bent over in
concentration, say. If there is bronze at p, then what spatial particular
is present at p is determined by what is present in a region of space
that surrounds p, and how that bronze is organized throughout that
region. For any set of regions of space around p, that region will not
determine what it is that is present and made of bronze at p, unless
that region is the set of points in space that marks the boundary of the
space occupied by a spatial particular made of bronze (a set of points
at which there is a change from there being something at that point
made of bronze to there not being anything at that point which is made
of bronze). The set of points in space that marks the boundary of the
space occupied by a spatial particular made of bronze is not
necessarily a set of points beyond which there is no more bronze.
Something may be made of bronze even if bronze is only one of the
space-occupying stuffs of which it is made. So there is something
made of bronze present at p if there is a statue of Venus at p which is
made of a bronze torso, but which has wooden limbs and a wooden
head.
In a structurally identical way, if there is ing at t, then there is a
period of time within which t falls throughout which there is ing. In
the same way that there cannot be bronze merely at a location p, if
there is something processively unfolding at t, then there must be a
period of time over which that thing is unfolding. But where there is
34
THOMAS CROWTHER
ing over a period of time that contains t, then there is some temporal
particular which is made of ing—that is, an event which is made of
ing—which occurs at t, and which has temporal boundaries that
occupy a region of time within which t is contained. If there is ing at
t, then there may be a temporal particular made of ing that occurs at
t in virtue of the fact that ing is an unorganized process, and that
there is a temporal particular the boundaries of which contain t, that
is, a mere stretch (a temporal lump) of ing. But in the case of
accomplishments, the event made of ing which occurs at t, the
temporal boundaries of which contain t, may be either a complete ,
or a which is a temporal particular which is part of a . For
example, if there is walking to the shops at t, then at t there is walking
organized according to the end of getting to the shops. If there is
walking organized according to the end of getting to the shops at t,
then there must be a region of time occupied by walking organized in
that way. And if there is a duration occupied by walking organized
with the end of getting to the shops, then there must be a bounded
temporal particular made of walking organized according to that end
that occurs at t. But this event may be a completed walk to the shops,
or it may be an event which is merely a walk halfway to the shops; a
walk which is only a part of a walk to the shops. So for there to be
something progressively unfolding at a time requires the occurrence of
an event at that time. There cannot be time-occupying stuff at a time
without a time-occupying particular occurring at that time. But the
nature of the event, the occurrence of which is required for there to be
the progressive unfolding of something, is determined through the
notion of composition by time-occupying stuff; it is a temporal
particular made of such progressively unfolding material. Incomplete
accomplishments, as well as complete accomplishments, are made of
progressively unfolding material; organized processes, or processes
that possess a temporal form provided by a temporal sortal or
temporal principle of individuation for complete events of that kind.
If the core of the imperfective paradox is that something can be
progressively unfolding, without its being the case that there will be a
complete event of the relevant kind, even though there must be some
completed events introduced by the idea that ing is going on then it
is these facts that explain it. It is true that, for something to be going
on—whether process or accomplishment—there must exist temporal
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
35
particulars, which are, necessarily, bounded and complete temporal
items. But if ing is going on, then the temporal particular that is
required to exist simply by the nature of the unfolding of ing is a
temporal particular that is made of, or composed of, ing, not a
temporal particular which is a . In the case in which the completion
conditions for events of the type are not met, these particulars are
temporal particulars which are temporal parts of events of the relevant
40
kind.
In light of these ideas, we can then suggest the following
modest account of progress: that for ing to be in progress or to be
unfolding at t—whether it is process or accomplishment—is for there
to be a temporal particular made of ing such that t falls within its
temporal boundaries, or, equivalently, for it to be the case that S
started ing at some time prior to t, and S has not yet stopped ing
at t.
The idea of a compositional temporal ontology modelled on
spatial notions, then, not only allows us to understand the distinction
between process and accomplishment, but offers up attractive
suggestions about other puzzling features of temporal notions.
40
In advance of further discussion specifically focused on the
relationship between these metaphysical claims and a formal semantics of the
progressive—which is to be undertaken elsewhere—one ought to be very
cautious about taking these metaphysical claims to immediately generate
consequences for any semantic theory of the progressive. However, were the
contours of the account here mirrored in a formal semantic treatment, they
might seem to suggest an account according to which the truth of any
sentence in the progressive at a time does entail the truth of a sentence that
reports that there is a complete event that occurs at that time. That would
appear to mark such a position out as an event theory of the progressive.
(See Landman, “The Progressive”; Terence Parsons, Events in the Semantics
of English, amongst others.) By contrast with more familiar event theories
though, the account that might seem to suggest itself couldn’t be construed as
an attempt to explain the truth conditions of the progressive in terms of the
perfective without progressive remainder. The idea of something unfolding in
a certain way (so, of the truth of a sentence with progressive aspect) figures
essentially in determining what complete event it is the existence of which is
entailed by the progressive. Any such semantics would also be distinctive in
according a central place to temporal mass predications in determining the
relations between the progressive and perfective.
36
THOMAS CROWTHER
VI
I want to draw the paper to a conclusion through raising a worry
about the existence of an analogy between spatial and temporal
notions. It might be said that, in the case of space-occupying, spatiallybounded particulars, there is a clear rationale for supposing that there
are space-occupying stuffs from which those particulars are made. A
space-occupying spatial particular can be composed of different
matter at different times at which it exists. So, a statue may be
composed of marble at t, and after renovation, at t + n, it is composed
of imitation marble. Space-occupying particulars can be subject to
distinctive kinds of changes, or, they can persist through certain kinds
of change, and distinguishing between a particular and what it is made
41
of is what enables this to be explained. The notion of composition
has application to spatial particulars in virtue of there being modal
facts about spatial particulars that need to be explained: that there are
kinds of changes in properties that they are capable of undergoing
while remaining the same. But there are no modal facts of this kind
about particular events, because events cannot change their
42
properties; they possess all of their properties necessarily. What it
would be for the Battle of Waterloo to have turned out differently, for
example, would be for there to have occurred a numerically different
battle from that which did occur, that shared many of its properties,
but diverged in some. But in the absence of the possibility of change,
those modal facts that motivate a compositional ontology in the case
of space-occupying spatial particulars are absent from the temporal
case. That leaves it simply mysterious what the motivation is for
drawing on the notion of constitution in connection with notions of
time-occupation.
41
A further thought might be that we can distinguish between a spaceoccupying spatial particular and the stuff of which it is made because the stuff
of which something is made can outlast the spatial particular that it
composes, or constitutes. The statue cannot be identical with the piece of
clay, because the statue may go out of existence while the piece of clay
persists.
42
For this view see, for example, Donald Davidson, “Thinking Causes,” in
Mental Causation, ed. John Heil and Alfred R. Mele (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 3–17; and Michael R. Ayers, Locke, 2 vols. (London:
Routledge, 1991), 104–5.
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
37
But it cannot be that the very rationale for the applicability of the
notion of composition in the spatial case derives from the idea of
changes in what something is composed of over a period of time. The
idea of a change in composition of a spatial particular presupposes the
applicability of the notion of composition to such a particular. A more
basic rationale for the idea of the composition of a spatial particular by
space-occupying stuff is simply that for there to be some bounded
spatial particular at a place in space or throughout a region of space is
not just for there to be a set of places or positions which delimits a
region of space, which is the spatial boundary of a particular. For that
will not distinguish between there being a space-occupying spatial
particular at that place, and a hole in a space-occupying particular at
that place. For there to be a space-occupying spatial particular that
occupies that region of space is for space to be filled out in a certain
way throughout that region of space, where for space to be filled out in
a certain way is inconsistent with it being empty, that is, not filled out
at all, or filled out with something else. The idea of the composition of
particulars from stuff seems to have its ultimate grounding in these
basic metaphysical intuitions. And these basic intuitions are as much
applicable to the temporal case as they are to the spatial case. For a
temporal particular, which is the doing of something by some agent, to
exist over a bounded period of time tx-tn is not just for tx-tn to be the
temporal boundaries of a temporal particular. For a temporal
particular to exist from tx-tn is for the time from tx-tn to be filled out
in a certain way, where that excludes it not being filled out at all, that
is, for the agent of the action to have been doing nothing, and excludes
it being filled out in other ways, that is, excludes the agent’s having
been doing something else.
It is true that there are differences in the way that facts about the
notion of composition are manifest across the spatial and temporal
cases. The kind of feature of spatial particulars raised in the initial
worry is one of these. But that is because the analogy that has been
used here is a structural metaphysical analogy that holds between
things which are of importantly different metaphysical kinds. Spatial
and temporal particulars are not identical kinds of particulars. Spatial
particulars do not have a temporal mode of existence; they do not
unfold over a period of time, as temporal particulars do. So the way
that the natures of spatial and temporal particulars determine
38
THOMAS CROWTHER
boundary conditions for particulars of the relevant kinds, and the facts
about composition and boundaries that are consistent with their
having the natures that they have, will be correspondingly different,
given these basic difference in mode of time-occupation. These claims
about the differences in the mode of occupation of time by spatial and
temporal particulars, and that spatial and temporal particulars are of
distinct kinds, are, of course, controversial, and defending them would
require serious engagement with arguments in favour of a fourdimensionalist ontology. The relevant point here, however, is that at
least if one takes a naïve metaphysics of spatial and temporal
particulars seriously, according to which there is a distinction between
these kinds of particulars, then it can be no argument against the
analogy that there are differences in the way that these different
features are realized. Even granting this, it is worth noting just how
much similarity there is between the realizations of these structural
features across the cases. It is true that the nature of a temporal sortal
does not provide information about what changes a bounded temporal
particular is capable of undergoing, where these changes are changes
in the properties of an atemporal thing that persists whole over a
period of time. Nevertheless, it is true that a temporal particular can
be made of different stuff at different phases of its existence; the very
same birthday party may have been composed of the exchange of
small talk at t1-t2, and debauchery at t8-t10. Temporal particulars may
have temporal profiles across a period of time, during which there can
be changes in the way that time is occupied, where the changes
consistent with their composing the same event or not over that time
are determined by the nature of events of that kind. That is itself a
significant further analogy with the spatial case.
I have tried to argue that a temporal ontology that is based on a
more fully developed analogy between spatial and temporal notions
reveals a plausible way of understanding the distinction between
process and accomplishment. The idea that there is a metaphysical
distinction between temporal stuffs and the things they are constituted
out of, as well as the idea of a distinction between whether timeoccupying stuff is organized by a restrictive temporal sortal or not, will
both stand and fall, ultimately, on how much philosophical explanation
these ideas enable us to do. I have then tried to motivate the idea that
certain puzzling notions within temporal ontology can be better
THE MATTER OF EVENTS
39
understood in light of such an ontology. Though the discussion can
only be developed here so far, it is to be hoped that it provides a
number of pointers for the direction in which further research is to be
43
pursued.
Heythrop College, University of London
43
I am grateful to Mark Sainsbury for conversations about spaceoccupying stuffs that sparked my interest in the lines of thought pursued in
this paper. For helpful comments and discussion thanks are due to Mark Eli
Kalderon, Michael Martin, Ian Phillips, Mark Textor, Rory Madden, Matthew
Manning, David Papineau, and Rowland Stout. Particular thanks are due to
Jennifer Hornsby, Matthew Soteriou, and Guy Longworth for extensive
discussion and written comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any errors
are mine.