| Sažetak: | <p>Recent debates about mind and action have witnessed a growing interest in the ontology of the progressive aspect. This thesis puts this issue in a broader philosophical context by relating it to a series of inter-related questions concerning the ontology and semantics of events, the debate between three-dimensionalism and four-dimensionalism, the metaphysics of tense, and the nature of action and memory. This discussion develops an account of the progressive aspect as expressing an internal perspective on events and illustrates how this account can be integrated into a cohesive understanding of temporal perspectives, temporal particulars and reality.</p>
<p>Chapter 1 examines recent debates on the ontology of the progressive aspect, and argues that the progressive aspect can be coherently understood as expressing an internal perspective on events, provided that we follow Davidson in taking events as primitive temporal particulars. Chapter 2 critically assesses Davidson’s own arguments for his ontology of events. Chapter 3 recharacterizes the debate between three-dimensionalism and four-dimensionalism, and elucidates how three-dimensionalism can provide an alternative ground for Davidsonian event ontology. Chapter 4 focuses on the question of the reality of tense and demonstrates that tense realism cannot accommodate retentional memory. Chapter 5 draws on considerations about retentional memory to refute a tense-realist objection against my event-based account of the progressive aspect. Collectively, these chapters offer a unified view of how temporal perspectives (tense, aspect), temporal particulars (events) and temporal reality interrelate.</p>
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