Event ontology

Event ontology is the metaphysical position that events — discrete, bounded occurrences — are more fundamental than substances, objects, or continuous processes. Unlike process ontology, which treats reality as continuous flux, event ontology holds that the basic constituents of reality are individual happenings: a collision, a decision, a flash of light, a birth. The position is associated with philosophers such as Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim, who argued that events are the relata of causation and the subjects of scientific laws.

Event ontology shares with process ontology the rejection of substance as fundamental, but it disagrees about what replaces substance. Where the process ontologist sees a river, the event ontologist sees a series of splashes. The debate between them turns on the nature of time: is time continuous (favoring process) or composed of discrete moments (favoring events)? This question has direct implications for how we understand quantum mechanics, where the measurement problem can be read as a conflict between continuous wave evolution and discrete measurement outcomes.