# The Ockhamization of the Event Sources of Sounds(CasatiDiBonaDokic)-Copy of([email protected]) **Abstract:** There is one character too many in the triad sound, event source, thing source. As there are neither phenomenological nor metaphysical grounds for distinguishing sounds and sound sources, we propose to identify them. What is the relationship between sounds and their sources? First of all, in ordinary parlance two types of source are distinguished: thing sources (such as bells) and event sources (such as collisions or vibratory events at the object), events being here construed as spatiotemporally located individuals. In what follows we will mainly consider event sources. Second, sounds can be construed in at least three ways: as proximal, as medial or as distal items (Casati and Dokic 2005). Medial and proximal theories naturally consider sounds as caused by their sources. If sounds are considered as sound waves propagating in the environment from an object, or if they are sensations or proximal stimuli, they are naturally distinct from the event source, possibly caused by it.1 The distal view (Casati and Dokic 1994; O’Callaghan 2007 for a variant), according to which sounds are events located at the object that produce them, is more controversial regarding the possible relation between sounds and their sources. If both the sound and the sound source are distal, don’t they compete for location, both metaphysically and in perception? Metaphysical choices impinge on philosophy of perception. In particular, if we claim that we hear the event source and we hear the sound, we may