Event (philosophy)

In philosophy, events are particulars in time or instantiations of properties in objects. On some views, only changes involving the acquisition or loss of a property can constitute events, like the lawn's becoming dry. According to others, there are also events that involve nothing but the retaining of a property, e.g. the lawn's staying wet. Events are usually defined as particulars that, unlike universals, cannot be instantiated repeatedly.. Processes are often understood as complex events constituted by sequences of events. But even simple events can be conceived as complex entities involving an object, a time and the property exemplified by the object at this time. Some traditional metaphysical approaches tended to emphasize static being over dynamic events. This tendency has been opposed by so-called process philosophy or process ontology, which ascribes ontological primacy to events and processes.