‘WHEN DID THE KILLING OCCUR?: DONALD DAVIDSON ON ACTION INDIVIDUATION

Abstract

According to Donald Davidson’s method of action individuation, killings occur before the death of the victim. In this paper I shall argue against this counter intuitive view but also against its most popular rival, the view that killings do not occur until the time of the victim’s death (by which point the killer may be doing something else, or even be deceased), as well as Ruth Weintrub’s recent suggestion that killings cannot be located temporally at all. Instead, I shall claim that while we can locate killings spatiotemporally, we cannot do so with the same degree of precision that we can locate other events (e.g. shootings). In so doing, I shall also be arguing (contra Weintrub) that the causing of an event may itself be conceived of as an event.