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Several philosophers have maintained in recent years that the endurance/perdurance debate is merely verbal: these prima facie distinct theories of objects’ persistence are in fact metaphysically equivalent, they claim. The present paper challenges this view. Three proposed translation schemes are examined; all are shown to be faulty. In the process, constructive reasons for regarding the debate as a substantive one are provided. It is also suggested that the theories may have differing practical implications. |
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Comment une proposition qui affirme que a est fatigué le matin et n’est pas fatigué le midi peut-elle être vraie ? Bolzano soutient que toute proposition portant sur une chose contingente contient, dans la composante-sujet, la représentation d’un temps. Dans cet article, je reconstruis et évalue les arguments de Bolzano en les comparant à ceux de son adversaire principal, le tenant de la position selon laquelle toute proposition portant sur une chose contingente contient une copule renfermant la représentation du temps (...) |
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Some well-known metaphysical arguments against relativism rest on the claim that relativity somehow must be accompanied by relationality. I argue otherwise, and trace the consequences for some prominent disputes between relativists and absolutists. |
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In this paper, I show how a solution to Lewis’ problem of temporary intrinsics is also a response to McTaggart’s argument that the A-series is incoherent. There are three strategies Lewis considers for solving the problem of temporary intrinsics: perdurantism, presentism, and property-indexing. William Lane Craig (Analysis 58(2):122–127, 1998) has examined how the three strategies fare with respect to McTaggart’s argument. The only viable solution Lewis considers to the problem of temporary intrinsics that also succeeds against McTaggart, Craig claims, is (...) |
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This essay outlines an explanatory virtue of presentism: its unique ability amongst temporal metaphysics to deliver a partial explanation of the conservational character of natural laws. That explanation relies on presentism, uniquely amongst temporal metaphysics, being able to support an endurantist account of persistence. In particular, after reconsidering a former argument for endurantism entailing presentism by Merricks (Noûs 33:421-438, 1999), a new argument for this entailment, is expounded. Before delivering the explanation of the conservational character of natural laws, a brief (...) |
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Some properties and relations take time to be instantiated. They are not instantiated at a time, but through a temporal interval. Cognitive properties and relations such as understanding and thinking are like this, but also many biological, chemical, and microphysical properties and relations such as absorbing, freezing, radiating, and decaying. In this paper, I make a case for taking seriously such temporally extended properties (TEPs). I argue that they are ubiquitous and that our current theories of persistence would do well (...) |
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European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView. |
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Frege taught us how to understand one form of predication: an atemporal one. There is also a different, temporal form of predication, which I briefly introduce. Accordingly, there are two fundamentally different approaches to time: a reductive one, aiming to account for time in terms of Frege’s atemporal predication, and a non-reductive one, insisting that the temporal form of predication is sui generis, and that time is to be understood in its terms. I do not directly argue for or against (...) |
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I argue that two competing accounts of persistence, three and four dimensionalism, are in fact metaphysically equivalent. I begin by clearly defining three and four dimensionalism, and then I show that the two theories are intertranslatable and equally simple. Through consideration of a number of different cases where intuitions about persistence are contradictory, I then go on to show that both theories describe these cases in the same manner. Further consideration of some empirical issues arising from the theory of special (...) |
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It is possible to wholly exist at multiple spatial locations at the same time. At least, if time travel is possible and objects endure, then such must be the case. To accommodate this possibility requires the introduction of a spatial analog of either relativising properties to times—relativising properties to spatial locations—or of relativising the manner of instantiation to times—relativising the manner of instantiation to spatial locations. It has been suggested, however, that introducing irreducibly spatially relativised or spatially adverbialised properties presents (...) |
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It is possible to wholly exist at multiple spatial locations at the same time. At least, if time travel is possible and objects endure, then such must be the case. To accommodate this possibility requires the introduction of a spatial analog of either relativising properties to times—relativising properties to spatial locations—or of relativising the manner of instantiation to times—relativising the manner of instantiation to spatial locations. It has been suggested, however, that introducing irreducibly spatially relativised or spatially adverbialised properties presents (...) |
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This paper identifies problems with indexicalism and abverbialism about temporary intrinsic properties, and solves them by disentangling two senses in which a particular may possess a property simpliciter. The first sense is the one identified by adverbialists in which a particular possesses at all times the property as a matter of foundational metaphysical fact regardless of whether it is manifest. The second involves building on adverbialism to produce a semantics for property-manifestation according to which different members of a family of (...) |
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There is a fundamental ontological difference between two kinds of entity: things and objects. Unlike things, objects are not identical to any fusion of particulars. Unlike things, objects do not have mereological parts. While things are ontologically innocent, objects are not. Objects are meaty. I defend the distinction between things and objects, and provide an account of the nature of objects. |
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Endurantism is not inconsistent with the theory of special relativity, or so I shall argue. Endurantism is not committed to presentism, and thus not committed to a metaphysics that is at least prima facie inconsistent with special relativity. Nor is special relativity inconsistent with the idea that objects are wholly present at a time just if all of their parts co-exist at that time. For the endurantist notion of co-existence in terms of which “wholly present” is defined, is not, I (...) |
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This paper aims to motivate a new beginning in metaphysical thinking about persistence by drawing attention to the disappearance of change in current accounts of persistence. I defend the claim that the debate is stuck in a dilemma which results from neglecting the constructive role of change for persistence. Neither of the two main competing views, perdurantism and endurantism, captures the idea of persistence as an identity through time. I identify the fundamental ontological reasons for this, namely the shared commitment (...) |
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This article discusses recent work in metaphysics on temporal parts. After a short introduction introducing the notion of a temporal part, we examine several well‐known arguments for the view that ordinary material objects such as tables, trees, and persons have temporal parts: (1) positing temporal parts makes it possible to solve puzzles of coincidence (e.g., the statue/lump puzzle); (2) positing temporal parts makes it possible to solve the problem of intrinsic change over time; and (3) the existence of temporal parts (...) |
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David Lewis, following in the tradition of Broad, Quine and Goodman, says that change in an object X consists in X's being temporally extended and having qualitatively different temporal parts. Analogously, change in a spatially extended object such as a road consists in its having different spatial parts . The alternative to this view is that ordinary objects undergo temporal change in virtue of having different intrinsic non-relational properties at different times. They endure, remaining the same object throughout change, whereas (...) |
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According to three-dimensionalism, objects persist in time by being wholly present at each time they exist; on the contrary, four-dimensionalism asserts that objects persist by having different temporal parts at different times or that they are instantaneous temporal parts of four-dimensional aggregates. Le Poidevin has argued that four-dimensionalism better accommodates two common assumptions concerning persistence and continuity; namely, that time itself is continuous and that objects persist in time in a continuous way. To this purpose, he has offered two independent (...) |
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How could the self be a substance? There are various ways in which it could be, some familiar from the history of philosophy. I shall be rejecting these more familiar substantivalist approaches, but also the non-substantival theories traditionally opposed to them. I believe that the self is indeed a substance—in fact, that it is a simple or noncomposite substance—and, perhaps more remarkably still, that selves are, in a sense, self-creating substances. Of course, if one thinks of the notion of substance (...) |
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Recently, Caterina Moruzzi has appealed to Ted Sider’s case for continuant exdurantism and the availability of a “parallel move” in musical ontology to promote a specific version of musical work exdurantism. In this article, I argue that her version of musical exdurantism undermines the prospects for making the parallel move, but I go on to sketch two alternatives that do not. In Section I, I outline apparent persistence-parallels between ordinary material objects and musical works. In Section II, I sketch a (...) |
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Hugh Mellor has proposed what appears to be a new solution to the problem of intrinsic change (Mellor 1998). Assuming endurantism and a B‐theoretic, nonpresentist view of time, facts are supposed to have only enduring things and atemporal properties (or relations) as constituents, but no times. The having of properties and relations is not relativised to times. Instead, the whole of a fact is conceived of as temporally localised. It will be argued that this interesting and novel proposal does not (...) |
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Two recurrent arguments levelled against the view that enduring objects survive change are examined within the framework of the B-theory of time: the argument from Leibniz's Law and the argument from Instantiation of Incompatible Properties. Both arguments are shown to be question-begging and hence unsuccessful. |
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Three arguments for the conclusion that objects cannot endure in B-time even if they remain intrinsically unchanged are examined: Carter and Hestevolds enduring-objects-as-universals argument (American Philosophical Quarterly 31(4):269-283, 1994) and Barker and Dowe's paradox 1 and paradox 2 (Analysis 63(2):106-114, 2003, Analysis 65(1):69-74, 2005). All three are shown to fail. |
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One premise in David Lewis’s well-known argument from temporary intrinsic properties in favor of temporal parts is the intuition that material objects exemplify such properties simpliciter, that is, without qualification. The argument has spawned a large critical literature, with commentators questioning the simpliciter premise’s motivation, content, dialectical force, and status as an intuition. The present essay has two chief goals: to provide a novel framework for clarifying Lewis’s simpliciter premise and to explain how the resulting clarification upends a wide range (...) |
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We have compelling extra-philosophical reasons for caring about identity, parthood, and location. For example, we desire ceteris paribus that nothing every part of which is very near to our location be very near to the location of something dangerous, evil, or otherwise unpleasant. This essay argues that such considerations are relevant to certain first-order metaphysical debates, namely, the debates over immanent universals and tropes and endurantism and perdurantism, respectively. As a consequence, even the non-specialist has a reason to care about (...) |
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According to Minkoswki, Einstein's special theory of relativity reveals that ‘space by itself, and time by itself are doomed to fade away into mere shadows’. But perceptual experience represents objects as instantiating shapes like squareness — properties of ‘space by itself’. Thus, STR seems to threaten the veridicality of shape experience. In response to this worry, some have argued that we should analyze the contents of our spatial experiences on the model of traditional secondary qualities. On this picture—defended in recent (...) |
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This essay outlines an explanatory virtue of presentism: its unique ability amongst temporal metaphysics to deliver a partial explanation of the conservational character of natural laws. That explanation relies on presentism, uniquely amongst temporal metaphysics, being able to support an endurantist account of persistence. In particular, after reconsidering a former argument for endurantism entailing presentism by Merricks, a new argument for this entailment, is expounded. Before delivering the explanation of the conservational character of natural laws, a brief account of that (...) |
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Four-dimensionalism, or perdurantism, the view that temporally extended objects persist through time by having (spatio-)temporal parts or stages, includes two varieties, the worm theory and the stage theory. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four-dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of spacetime and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. The stage theorist, however, claims, not that perduring objects have stages, but that the fundamental entities of the perdurantist ontology are stages. I argue (...) |
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