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Persistence, parts, and presentism

Noûs 33 (3):421-438 (1999)

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  1. (2 other versions)Is endurantism the folk friendly view of persistence?Sam Baron, Andrew J. Latham, Jordan Veng Oh & Kristie Miller - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.
    Many philosophers have thought that our folk, or pre-reflective, view of persistence is one on which objects endure. This assumption not only plays a role in disputes about the nature of persistence itself, but is also put to use in several other areas of metaphysics, including debates about the nature of change and temporal passage. In this paper, we empirically test three broad claims. First, that most people (i.e. most non-philosophers) believe that, and it seems to them as though, objects (...)
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  • Experience, time, objects, and processes.Jack Shardlow - 2024 - Noûs 58 (3):696-716.
    We regularly talk of the experience of time passing. Some theorists have taken the supposed phenomenology of time passing to provide support for metaphysical accounts of the nature of time; opposing theorists typically granted that there is a phenomenology of time passing while seeking to dispute that any metaphysical conclusions about time can be drawn from this. In recent debates theorists have also begun to dispute that there is a phenomenology of time passing – plausibly, if there is not, then (...)
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  • Presentism, Actualism, and Fatalism.Bradley Rettler - 2023 - Metaphysics 6 (1):13-23.
    In recent papers, Philip Swenson (2016) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and divine foreknowledge, and Michael Rea (2006) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and bivalence. In this paper, I respond to Swenson’s and Rea’s arguments. In each case, I develop a parody argument that seeks to show that actualism -- the view that everything is actual -- is inconsistent with the conjunction of (in the case of Rea) libertarianism (...)
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  • A Defence of the B-Theory of Time with Respect to the Problem of Change.James Vlachoulis - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Adelaide
    I attend to the debate between the A-theory of time and the B- theory of time by evaluating how each theory accounts for the possibility of change. I conclude in favour of the B-theory of time as an account of change. I begin by considering McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time. I connect McTaggart’s argument, and the attendant A-theory versus B-theory debate, to an argument against the possibility of change. This argument, the problem of change, can be refuted by (...)
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  • Fine’s Monster Objection Defanged.Damiano Costa, Alessandro Cecconi & Claudio Calosi - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):435-451.
    The Monster Objection has often been considered one of the main reasons to explore non-standard mereological views, such as hylomorphism. Still, it has been rarely discussed and then only in a cursory fashion. This paper fills this gap by offering the first thorough assessment of the objection. It argues that different metaphysical stances, such as presentism and three- and four-dimensionalism, provide different ways of undermining the objection.
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  • (1 other version)Duration Enough for Presentism.Robert E. Pezet - 2020 - Axiomathes 30 (4):391-421.
    This paper considers a problem for dynamic presentism that has received little attention: its apparent inability to accommodate the duration of events. After outlining the problem, I defend presentism from it. This defence proceeds in two stages. First, I argue the objection rests on a faulty assumption: that duration is temporal extension. The paper challenges that assumption on several different ways of conceiving of temporal extension. This is the negative case and forms the bulk of the paper. Second, after diagnosing (...)
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  • Contingencies within Spacetime.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Rennes 1
    I begin by giving reasons to accept the block-universe view, the strongly supported by physics view that we live in a four-dimensional world. According to it, the past and the future are as real as the present. As a result, it seems that the future is determined in the sense that what will be the case will necessarily be the case. In the dissertation, I examine whether we have to accept this consequence. I show that we do not have to (...)
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  • Visual Endurance and Auditory Perdurance.Błażej Skrzypulec - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (2):467-488.
    Philosophers often state that the persistence of objects in vision is experienced differently than the persistence of sounds in audition. This difference is expressed by using metaphors from the metaphysical endurantism/perdurantism debate. For instance, it is claimed that only sounds are perceived as “temporally extended”. The paper investigates whether it is justified to characterize visually experienced objects and auditorily experienced sounds as different types of entities: endurants and perdurants respectively. This issue is analyzed from the perspective of major specifications of (...)
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  • Philosophy of time: A slightly opinionated introduction.Florian Fischer - 2016 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 30 (2):3-28.
    There are several intertwined debates in the area of contemporary philos- ophy of time. One field of inquiry is the nature of time itself. Presentists think that only the present moment exists whereas eternalists believe that all of (space-)time exists on a par. The second main field of inquiry is the question of how objects persist through time. The endurantist claims that objects are three-dimensional wholes, which persist by being wholly1 present, whereas the perdurantist thinks that objects are four- dimensional (...)
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  • Contre les défenses du présentisme par le sens commun.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2018 - Igitur 9 (1):1-24.
    According to presentism, only the present exists. The view is in a bad dialectical situation since it has to face several objections based on physics and a priori arguments. The view remains nonetheless popular because it is, allegedly, more intuitive than alternative views, namely eternalism (past, present and future entities exist) and no-futurism (only past and present entities exist). In the essay, I shall not discuss whether intuitivity is an accurate criterion for ontological enquiry. I will rather argue that any (...)
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  • (1 other version)Ought a Four-Dimensionalist To Believe in Temporal Parts?Kristie Miller - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (4):619-646.
    This paper presents the strongest version of a non-perdurantist four-dimensionalism: a theory according to which persisting objects are four-dimensionally extended in space-time, but not in virtue of having maximal temporal parts. The aims of considering such a view are twofold. First, to evaluate whether such an account could provide a plausible middle ground between the two main competitor accounts of persistence: three-dimensionalism and perdurantist four-dimensionalism. Second, to see what light such a theory sheds on the debate between these two competitor (...)
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  • Two Fundamentally Different Perspectives on Time.Jesse M. Mulder - 2017 - Axiomathes 27 (3):295-320.
    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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  • There is No Simpliciter Simpliciter.Kristie Miller & David Braddon-Mitchell - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 136 (2):249-278.
    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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  • Defining ‚exdurance’.Yuri Balashov - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 133 (1):143-149.
    On stage theory, ordinary continuants are instantaneous stages which persist by exduring—by bearing temporal counterpart relations to other such stages. Exduring objects lack temporal extension and there is a sense in which they are wholly present at multiple instants. How then is exdurance different from endurance? I offer a definition of 'exdurance' that clearly sets it apart from other modes of persistence.
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  • Endurance, Dualism, Temporal Passage, and Intuitions.Jiri Benovsky - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (4):851-862.
    Endurantism, as opposed to perdurantism, is supposed to be the intuitive view. But the ‘endurantist intuition’ – roughly, that objects persist through time by being numerically identical and wholly located at all times at which they exist – is behind more than just endurantism. Indeed, it plays an important role in the motivation of some theories about the passage of time, and some theories about the nature of the subject. As we shall see, the endurantist intuition is often taken in (...)
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  • Temporal Parts.Katherine Hawley - 2004/2010 - Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
    Material objects extend through space by having different spatial parts in different places. But how do they persist through time? According to some philosophers, things have temporal parts as well as spatial parts: accepting this is supposed to help us solve a whole bunch of metaphysical problems, and keep our philosophy in line with modern physics. Other philosophers disagree, arguing that neither metaphysics nor physics give us good reason to believe in temporal parts.
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  • Presentism meets black holes.Gustavo E. Romero & Daniela Pérez - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4 (3):293-308.
    Presentism is, roughly, the metaphysical doctrine that maintains that whatever exists, exists in the present. The compatibility of presentism with the theories of special and general relativity was much debated in recent years. It has been argued that at least some versions of presentism are consistent with time-orientable models of general relativity. In this paper we confront the thesis of presentism with relativistic physics, in the strong gravitational limit where black holes are formed. We conclude that the presentist position is (...)
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  • No-futurism and Metaphysical Contingentism.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2014 - Axiomathes 24 (4):483-497.
    According to no-futurism, past and present entities are real, but future ones are not. This view faces a skeptical challenge (Bourne 2002, 2006, Braddon-Mitchell, 2004): if no-futurism is true, how do you know you are present? I shall propose a new skeptical argument based on the physical possibility of Gödelian worlds (1949). This argument shows that a no-futurist has to endorse a metaphysical contingentist reading of no-futurism, the view that no-futurism is contingently true. But then, the no-futurist has to face (...)
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  • Endurantism and Perdurantism.Nikk Effingham - 2012 - In Robert Barnard & Neil Manson (eds.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics. Continuum Publishing. pp. 170.
    An introduction to the theories of endurantism and perdurantism, and persistence more broadly.
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  • (1 other version)Travelling in Time: How to Wholly Exist in Two Places at the Same Time.Kristie Miller - 2006 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (3):309-334.
    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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  • Explicating Eternalism A Study in Metaontology.Thorben Petersen - 2012 - Philosophia Naturalis 49 (1):137-161.
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  • Chisholm's Phenomenal Argument Revisited: A Dilemma for Perdurantism.Donald Smith - 2010 - American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1):31.
    According to perdurantism, objects persist by being spread out over time, just as composite three-dimensional objects are spread out over space. Just as a composite three-dimensional object is spread out over space by having spatial parts, objects persist, according to perdurantism, by having temporal parts. Perdurantism can be stated more precisely by saying what exactly a temporal part is. In the sequel, Theodore Sider's definition of "instantaneous temporal part" shall be assumed: x is an instantaneous temporal part of y at (...)
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  • (1 other version)From Experience to Metaphysics: On Experience‐based Intuitions and their Role in Metaphysics.Jiri Benovsky - 2015 - Noûs 49 (3):684-697.
    Metaphysical theories are often counter-intuitive. But they also often are strongly supported and motivated by intuitions. One way or another, the link between intuitions and metaphysics is a strong and important one, and there is hardly any metaphysical discussion where intuitions do not play a crucial role. In this article, I will be interested in a particular kind of such intuitions, namely those that come, at least partly, from experience. There seems to be a route from experience to metaphysics, and (...)
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  • The Present vs. the Specious Present.Jiri Benovsky - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (2):193-203.
    This article is concerned with the alleged incompatibility between presentism and specious present theories of temporal experience. According to presentism, the present time is instantaneous (or, near-instantaneous), while according to specious present theories, the specious present is temporally extended—therefore, it seems that there is no room in reality for the whole of a specious present, if presentism is true. It seems then that one of the two claims—presentism or the specious present theory—has to go. I shall argue that this kind (...)
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  • Presentism/Eternalism and Endurantism/Perdurantism: why the Unsubstantiality of the first debate implies that of the second.Mauro Dorato - 2012 - Philosophia Naturalis 49 (1):25-41.
    The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By “logical equivalence” I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast (...)
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  • Presentism, persistence and composition.Ernâni Magalhães - 2011 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (4):509-523.
    Pace Benovsky's ‘Presentism and Persistence,’ presentism is compatible with perdurantism, tropes and bundle-of-universals theories of persisting objects. I demonstrate how the resemblance, causation and precedence relations that tie stages together can be accommodated within an ersatzer presentist framework. The presentist account of these relations is then used to delineate a presentist-friendly account of the inter-temporal composition required for making worms out of stages. The defense of presentist trope theory shows how properties with indexes other than t may be said to (...)
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  • On Presentism, Endurance, and Change.H. Scott Hestvold & William R. Carter - 2002 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (4):491 - 510.
    There has been much recent debate about Presentism among those who believe the doctrine to be nontrivial and true, those who believe it to be nontrivial and false, and those who believe it to be trivial — either trivially true or trivially false. Formulating Presentism precisely is problematic, which accounts for some of the controversy.
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  • Enduring Special Relativity.Kristie Miller - 2004 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 42 (3):349-370.
    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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  • A New Definition of Endurance.Kristie Miller - 2005 - Theoria 71 (4):309-332.
    In this paper I present a new definition of endurance. I argue that the three-dimensionalist ought to adopt a different understanding from the four-dimensionalist, of what it is to have a part simpliciter. With this new understanding it becomes possible to define endurance in a manner that both preserves the central endurantist intuitions, whilst avoiding commitment to any controversial metaphysical theses. Furthermore, since this endurantist definition is a mereological one, there is an elegant symmetry between the definitions of endurance and (...)
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  • Critical Notice of Theodore Sider, Four Dimensionalism.Matthew Davidson - 2004 - Philosophical Books 45 (1):17-33.
    This is a critical notice of Theodore Sider's book, _Four-Dimensionalism_.
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  • Endurantist and perdurantist accounts of persistence.Maureen Donnelly - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (1):27 - 51.
    In this paper, I focus on three issues intertwined in current debates between endurantists and perdurantists—(i) the dimension of persisting objects, (ii) whether persisting objects have timeless, or only time-relative, parts, and (iii) whether persisting objects have proper temporal parts. I argue that one standard endurantist position on the first issue is compatible with standard perdurantist positions on parthood and temporal parts. I further argue that different accounts of persistence depend on the claims about objects' dimensions and not on the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Ought a four-dimensionalist to believe in temporal parts?Kristie Miller - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (4):pp. 619-646.
    This paper presents the strongest version of a non-perdurantist four-dimensionalism: a theory according to which persisting objects are four-dimensionally extended in space-time, but not in virtue of having maximal temporal parts. The aims of considering such a view are twofold. First, to evaluate whether such an account could provide a plausible middle ground between the two main competitor accounts of persistence: three-dimensionalism and perdurantist four-dimensionalism. Second, to see what light such a theory sheds on the debate between these two competitor (...)
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  • Time, context, and cross-temporal claims.Giuliano Torrengo - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (2):281-296.
    I present a new problem for the tense realist concerning the evaluation of cross-temporal claims, such as ‘John is now taller than Michael was in 1984’. Time can play two different roles in the evaluation of an utterance of a sentence: either as an element that completes the content expressed by the utterance (the completion role), or as part of the circumstances against which the content is evaluated (the evaluation role). It is this latter role that time plays in the (...)
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  • Temporal Parts and Time Travel.Nikk Effingham - 2011 - Erkenntnis 74 (2):225-240.
    This paper argues that, in light of certain scenarios involving time travel, Sider’s definition of ‘instantaneous temporal part’ cannot be accepted in conjunction with a semantic thesis that perdurantists often assume. I examine a rejoinder from Sider, as well as Thomson’s alternative definition of ‘instantaneous temporal part’, and show how neither helps. Given this, we should give up on the perdurantist semantic thesis. I end by recommending that, once we no longer accept such semantics, we should accept a new set (...)
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  • ‘Wholly Present’ Defined.Thomas M. Crisp & Donald P. Smith - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2):318–344.
    Three-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalist would be (...)
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  • The endurance/perdurance distinction.Neil McKinnon - 2002 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (3):288 – 306.
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  • Defining ‚exdurance'.Yuri Balashov - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 133 (1):143 - 149.
    On stage theory, ordinary continuants are instantaneous stages which persist by exduring—by bearing temporal counterpart relations to other such stages. Exduring objects lack temporal extension and there is a sense in which they are wholly present at multiple instants. How then is exdurance different from endurance? I offer a definition of ‚exdurance’ that clearly sets it apart from other modes of persistence.
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  • (2 other versions)How to live forever without saving your soul: Physicalism and immortality.Trenton Merricks - 2001 - In Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, body, and survival: essays on the metaphysics of human persons. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 183-201.
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  • On Stages, Worms, and Relativity.Yuri Balashov - 2002 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50:223-.
    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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  • (1 other version)Persistence in Time.Damiano Costa - 2020 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Persistence in Time No person ever steps into the same river twice—or so goes the Heraclitean maxim. Obscure as it is, the maxim is often taken to express two ideas. The first is that everything always changes, and nothing remains perfectly similar to how it was just one instant before. The second is that nothing … Continue reading Persistence in Time →.
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  • Mereological Endurantism Defined.Damiano Costa - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (10):2063-2073.
    I develop a definition of mereological endurantism which overcomes objections that have been proposed in the literature and thereby avoids the charge of obscurity put forward by Sider against the view.
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  • How to endure presentism.Sam Baron - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6):659-673.
    ABSTRACTPresentism and endurantism are natural bedfellows: arguments have been mounted from endurantism to presentism and vice versa. I generalise an argument against the compatibility between presentism and endurantism offered recently by Tallant. I then show how to reformulate endurantism so that it is compatible with presentism. I demonstrate that this reformulated version of endurantism can do the same work with respect to the problem of temporary intrinsics as can standard definitions.
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  • Composition and Identities.Manuel Lechthaler - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Otago
    Composition as Identity is the view that an object is identical to its parts taken collectively. I elaborate and defend a theory based on this idea: composition is a kind of identity. Since this claim is best presented within a plural logic, I develop a formal system of plural logic. The principles of this system differ from the standard views on plural logic because one of my central claims is that identity is a relation which comes in a variety of (...)
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  • The A-Theory of Time, The B-Theory of Time, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’.Dean W. Zimmerman - 2005 - Dialectica 59 (4):401-457.
    The paper has two parts: First, I describe a relatively popular thesis in the philosophy of propositional attitudes, worthy of the name ‘taking tense seriously’; and I distinguish it from a family of views in the metaphysics of time, namely, the A-theories (or what are sometimes called ‘tensed theories of time’). Once the distinction is in focus, a skeptical worry arises. Some A-theorists maintain that the difference between past, present, and future, is to be drawn in terms of what exists: (...)
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  • Refining Four-Dimensionalism.Shieva Kleinschmidt - 2017 - Synthese 194 (11):4623-4640.
    Current formulations of Four-Dimensionalism may be objected to on grounds that they are too inflexible: the formulations do not seem to allow for enough variety in the views they are paired with. For instance, Kit Fine has noted that formulations of Four-Dimensionalism in terms of instantaneous parts may be too demanding for Four-Dimensionalists who believe nothing is instantaneous. And Trenton Merricks has argued that one can think something persists four-dimensionionally without taking it to have proper temporal parts, and claims that (...)
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  • The Metaphysical Equivalence Of Three And Four Dimensionalism.Kristie Miller - 2005 - Erkenntnis 62 (1):91-117.
    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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  • Theories of persistence.Ryan Wasserman - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):243-250.
    The debate over persistence is often cast as a disagreement between two rival theories—the perdurantist theory that objects persist through time by having different temporal parts at different times, and the endurantist theory that objects persist through time by being wholly present at different times. This way of framing the debate over persistence involves both an important insight and an important error. Unfortunately, the error is often embraced and the insight is often ignored. This paper aims to correct both of (...)
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  • On Continuity and Endurance.Claudio Mazzola - 2015 - Acta Analytica 30 (2):133-147.
    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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  • Passage, Persistence and Precision.Neil McKinnon - 2002 - Dissertation, Monash University
    Time passes, and the inexorability of its passing has deep emotional significance. One of the main themes of this thesis involves an investigation into the metaphysical nature of the passage of time. What sort of metaphysical account of passage should be given? And do our emotional responses to temporal passage have metaphysical implications? The other main theme of the thesis is the issue of the metaphysics of persistence. When a thing is present at more than one time, what is the (...)
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  • Endurance and Discernibility.Robert Francescotti - 2008 - Metaphysica 9 (2):193-204.
    How can an object remain the same, numerically identical, while undergoing change? This is a worry for endurantists, who hold that for any stages, x and y, of a persisting object, x is numerically identical with y. Endurantists might try to avoid the problem of change by insisting that all properties are temporally anchored. It is argued here that while this strategy helps in many cases, it does not help in all. A type of case is presented in which a (...)
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