Mauro Dorato (2015), Topoi 34(2), 369–378 (2015) — ARXIV-1503.01140
Key takeaways
- Events are the metaphysical category best suited to quantum mechanics: they fit the flash and matter-density GRW theories, Bohmian mechanics and even wave-function antirealisms, and so bridge the manifest and scientific images. Insofar as some realism about the wave function is needed, it should be read as referring to dispositions (powers) of events.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-105. What follows is what the work says about itself.
Dorato argues that an ontology of events is precise, flexible and general enough to serve all three main primitive-ontology formulations of quantum mechanics, and also antirealist views of the wave function. Because these formulations put their basic entities in four-dimensional spacetime, events can connect the quantum picture with the manifest image. If some realism about the wave function is also needed, it must be realism about some kind of power. The second part raises difficulties for the proposal (Esfeld et al.) that in Bohmian mechanics this power is held holistically by all the particles in the universe.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 40 seconds of active reading over 2 sessions. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-105 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as a short, clear statement of event-primitivism for primitive-ontology theories, and of intrinsic (not holistic) dispositions against Esfeld et al. It is programmatic. By Dorato’s own account (p. 15) the relation between events and powers is left for future work, and without that the event reading does little work beyond relabelling.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-105, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: medium — a short paper (t=40s, 2 sessions) whose argument the skim largely captures. It is relevant mainly as a node in the wave-function cluster.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-105 is that reading):
- A primitive-ontology position that sits between Chen’s taxonomy (LIT-204) and Allori’s functionalism (LIT-200). Its dispositional reading of ψ links it to Vetter (LIT-109).
- Check whether “events” does real work or relabels matter points plus powers. Dorato himself concedes the difference from Esfeld could be “purely verbal” without (iii).
- The antirealist section (Rovelli, Bohr) is thin and may need the fuller literature.
Access when seeded: The Springer page was blocked by a bot challenge. Crossref gives online 2015-03-08 and the October 2015 issue. I read the author’s accepted version (“Forthcoming in TOPOI”, 19 PDF pp.) from arXiv:1503.01140 (v1 submitted 3 Mar 2015, found via Unpaywall), and used that earlier date as first appearance. Volume, issue and pages are from Crossref.