Cambridge Non-Events

Paul Helm argues in a 1975 articles that “merely Cambridge events” are not actually events. He is picking up on Peter Geach’s claim that only intrinsic changes, and not relational changes, are real changes. More specifically, he is responding to Jaegwon Kim’s argument that Cambridge events (Xanthippe becoming a widow – a “Cambridge” event because it changes her relation to Socrates but doesn’t change her intrinsically) are non-casually dependent on other events (Xanthippe’s widowhood is non-causally dependent on the death of Socrates.

Helm states his conclusion at the outset:

“‘Cambridge’ events are not events, and a fortiori cannot stand in a relation of dependence to other events, whether of causal or non-causal dependence.”

His reasoning is first that “whatever events are, they happen to real individuals, and not to possible but unactual individuals. They are part of the life-history of individuals.” Yet, “Cambridge events” can happen to non-existent beings: “I can, by begetting a child, make my long-dead father into a grandfather. My father no longer exists, but certain relational propositions become true of him that were not true of him previously. But these cannot properly be described as events. Events happen to things, but they cannot happen to non-existent things. If a merely ‘Cambridge’ event can happen to a non-existent thing a merely ‘Cambridge’ event cannot be an event.” Events happen to things, and Cambridge events can happen to nothings; therefore they are not events.

He also argues that Xanthippe’s widowhood is the logical consequence of the event of Socrates’ death, not a separate event caused by the event of Socrates’ death: “It is because one description ‘the death of Socrates’ describes an action or event, and the other ‘the widowing of Xanthippe’ describes the logical consequence of the action or event, given a certain relation between Socrates and Xanthippe. A widow (or widower) is something someone can become only by some- thing really happening to someone else. The logical consequence of the event of Socrates’ dying is not another event.”

This is a counter-intuitive conclusion, though. Ask Xanthippe, What was the most significant event in your life during the year 399 BC? and I suspect she would say, “I became a widow.” And Helm’s argument depends on a strangely reductive notion of “thing,” a notion that excludes relational properties as definitive of a thing in any sense. Events happens to things – but a “wife” apparently is not a thing. “Wife” is a relation, and so no events happen to wives, but only to the women who happen to be wives. But if events can’t happen to wives, they can’t happen to a lot of things. Is the fall of Rome an event? It doesn’t seem so, on Helm’s view, because Rome is not a thing. The event is the Goths marching down streets, setting fire to buildings, raping and pillaging and destroying. But the fall of Rome is not an event.

Weberman more sensibly argues “Cambridge changes” are not bogus but real in relation to “emergent properties” and “emergent entities.” He defines these as “entities or properties that are physically embodied but because of their complexity or novelty not reducible or fully explainable by their physical properties. Emergent properties include social properties (such as having monetary value, being an uncle or a U. S. citizen), historical properties (such as being the beginning of a new epoch or the beginning of a new species), and aesthetic properties (such as manifesting originality). Emergent entities include social objects and phenomena (such as money and prime ministers), historical objects and events (such as wars and revolutions) and aesthetic objects (such as artworks).”

Weberman doesn’t think that every relational change is real: “An emergent entity undergoes a genuine relational change when that relational change involves change in relational properties that bear o the way the entity is identified and individuated.” Thus, Xanthippe becoming a widow is a real relational change, and a real event.