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Perdurance
Edited by Paul Richard Daniels (Monash University)
About this topic
| Summary | According to the perdurantist, persisting objects are “space-time worms.” That is, persisting objects are spread out in time in much the same way as how they are spread out in space—just has I have spatial parts (e.g. hand parts and a head part) which occupy spatial subregions of the greater spatial region I now occupy, I have temporal parts (e.g. me when I was an infant, me now) which occupy temporal subregions of the greater temporal region I occupy. Properly understood, the perdurantist maintains, I am a four-dimensional fusion of all these spatio-temporal parts. Perdurantists face a variety of challenges. It’s not very intuitive, some say, and this is reason to reject the view. Others argue that there are strong disanalogies between time and space which undermine the parallels between spatial parts and temporal parts that perdurantism relies upon. Then there are those who find the notion temporal parts simply unintelligible. In addition to trying to address these and other issues, perdurantists argue that their theory of persistence has a variety of virtues—including, for instance, a natural compatibility with relativistic physics. |
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Related
Siblings
- Endurance (139)
- Occasional Identity (7)
- Relative Identity (103)
- Stage Theory (67)
- Three- and Four-Dimensionalism (424)
- Temporary Intrinsics (41)
- Persistence, Misc (97)
Contents
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- (2 other versions)Is Endurantism the Folk Friendly View of Persistence?Sam Baron, Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller & Jordan Oh - manuscriptMany 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 (...)
- Mereological Atomism's Quantum Problems.Ryan Miller - manuscriptThe popular metaphysical view that concrete objects are grounded in their ultimate parts is often motivated by appeals to realist interpretations of contemporary physics. This paper argues that an examination of mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics undercuts such atomist claims. First, mereological atomism is only plausible in conjunction with Bohmian mechanics. Second, on either an endurantist or perdurantist theory of time, atomism exacerbates Bohmianism’s existing tensions with serious Lorentz invariance in a way that undermines the realist appeal of both views. (...)
- Time and Modality.Samuele Iaquinto - forthcoming - In Nina Emery (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge.Time and modality show remarkable similarities. Each of the most discussed theories in philosophy of time finds an analogous counterpart in modal metaphysics, suggesting that the parallel between the two notions is metaphysically deep. This chapter offers a brief overview of their analogies. Section 1 addresses the analogy between presentism and actualism. Section 2 explores the analogy between non-presentist theories and possibilism. Section 3 discusses the analogy between temporal and modal persistence.
- (1 other version)Temporal Dynamism and the Persisting Stable Self.Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller & Shira Yechimovitz - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...)
- (2 other versions)Is endurantism the folk friendly view of persistence?Sam Baron, Andrew J. Latham, Jordan Veng Oh & Kristie Miller - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (10).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 (...)
- The problem of too many mental tokens resonsidered.David Mark Kovacs - 2024 - Synthese 204 (169):1-21.The Problem of Too Many Thinkers is the result, implied by several “permissive” ontologies, that we spatiotemporally overlap with a number of intrinsically person-like entities. The problem, as usually formulated, leaves open a much-neglected question: do we literally share our mental lives, i.e. each of our mental states, with these person-like entities, or do we instead enjoy mental lives that are qualitatively indistinguishable but numerically distinct from theirs? The latter option raises the worry that there is an additional Problem of (...)
- Heraclitean Flux Metaphysics.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2023 - Metaphysica: International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics 24 (2):299-322.This essay offers an original interpretation and defense of the doctrine of flux, as it is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. The methodology of the paper’s analysis is in the style of rational reconstruction, and it is highly analytic in scope, in the sense that I will focus on the text itself, and only on certain parts of it too, while ignoring the rest of Plato’s extensive corpus, and without worrying about whether, how, and to what extent the interpretation of the (...)
- A Humean Non-Humeanism.David Builes - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (3):1031-1048.How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is (...)
- Self-Making and Subpeople.David Mark Kovacs - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (9):461-488.On many currently popular ontologies of material objects, we share our place with numerous shorter-lived things that came into existence after we did or will go out of existence before we will. Subpeople are intrinsically indistinguishable from possible people, and as several authors pointed out, this raises grave ethical concerns: it threatens to make any sacrifice for long-term goals impermissible, as well as to undermine our standard practices of punishment, reward, grief, and utility calculation. The aim in this paper is (...)
- Persistence.Kristie Miller - 2022 - Cambridge University Press.Persistence realism is the view that ordinary sentences that we think and utter about persisting objects are often true. Persistence realism involves both a semantic claim, about what it would take for those sentences to be true, and an ontological claim about the way things are. According to persistence realism, given what it would take for persistence sentences to be true, and given the ontology of our world, often such sentences are true. According to persistence error-theory, they are not. This (...)
- Kripke-Armstrongov argument protiv temporalnih delova.Nikola S. Stamenkovic - 2022 - Theoria: Beograd 65 (1):87-101.Kripke-Armstrongovim argumentom tvrdi se da branilac postojanja temporalnih delova materijalnih objekata ne može da utvrdi da li usamljeni homogeni disk sačinjen od kontinuirane materije rotira oko svoje ose ili miruje. Perdurantista ne može da razlikuje dve mogućnosti pozivajući se na različite trenutne brzine trenutnih temporalnih delova diska, zbog toga što bi time prekršio tezu hjumovske supervenijencije. U ovom radu ću, sledeći Džeremija Baterfilda, pokazati kako se na KripkeArmstrongov izazov može odgovoriti zadržavajući hjumovsku supervenijenciju: pozivanjem na različite trenutne brzine netrenutnih temporalnih (...)
- Persistence as a Four-Dimensionalist: Perdurantism vs. Exdurantism.Richard Callais - 2021 - Dialogue 64 (1):24-29.The debate over persistence currently involves three competing theories—one three-dimensionalist theory called “endurantism” and two four-dimensionalist theories called “perdurantism” and “exdurantism.” This inner debate between the latter two persistence theories is what I aim to clarify, and ultimately, I argue that perdurantism is superior to exdurantism because exdurantism is too extravagant in counting ordinary objects in the world. Extravagant for the reason that objects in their entirety are bound to their momentary stages, and there is practically an interminable number of (...)
- Opening a Can of Spacetime Worms: The Metaphysics of Persistence.Danny George Wardle - 2021 - Dissertation, University of AdelaideThis thesis is composed of three essays on the perdurantist approach to persistence and identity over time. In Chapter 1, I discuss how the following papers are to be understood as parts of a unified perdurantist account of persistence over time. This chapter also outlines some of my philosophical assumptions and provides some background information about the metaphysics of persistence. In Chapter 2, I respond to the objection that the worm theory is unable to account for our intuitions about ordinary (...)
- (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 →.
- Was Bonaventure a Four-dimensionalist?Damiano Costa - 2020 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2):393-404.Bonaventure is sometimes taken to be an ante litteram champion of the four-dimensional theory of persistence. I argue that this interpretation is incorrect: Bonaventure was no four-dimensionalist.
- To Be is to Persist.Dustin Gray - 2020 - Philosophy Now 141 (141):8-11.What does it mean for an object to persist through time? Consider the statement, ‘My car is filthy, I need to wash it.’ Consider the response, ‘How did it get that way?’ The answer is that dirt, dust and other particles have collected on the car’s surface thus making it filthy. Its properties have changed. At one point in the car’s career, none of that dirt and grime existed on its surface and the car was said to be clean. The (...)
- Diachronic Self-Making.David Mark Kovacs - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (2):349-362.This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in one’s de (...)
- Perdurantism, fecklessness and the veil of ignorance.Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2565-2576.There has been a growing charge that perdurantism—with its bloated ontology of very person-like objects that coincide persons—implies the repugnant conclusion that we are morally obliged to be feckless. I argue that this charge critically overlooks the epistemic situation—what I call the ‘veil of ignorance’—that perdurantists find themselves in. Though the veil of ignorance still requires an alteration of our commonsense understanding of the demands on action, I argue for two conclusions. The first is that the alteration that is required (...)
- Da li je Sajder još uvek perdurantista?Nikola S. Stamenković - 2020 - Theoria: Beograd 63 (4):111-125.U knjizi Pisanje knjige sveta (2011) Teodor Sajder tvrdi da na fundamentalnom nivou stvarnosti ne postoje objekti sastavljeni od delova, što njegovo gledište čini verzijom mereološkog nihilizma. Međutim, u prethodnoj knjizi pod naslovom Četvorodimenzionalizam (2001) Sajder zastupa mereološki univerzalizam, tezu da svaka klasa objekata ima mereološku fuziju, odnosno da postoji dodatni objekat koji sadrži date objekta kao svoje delove, koji igra suštinsku ulogu u njegovoj argumentu na osnovu nejasnosti u prilog perdurantizma, odnosno postojanja temporalnih delova materijalnih objekata. U ovom radu (...)
- 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.
- Plurdurance.Daniel Giberman - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.Like most theories in first order metaphysics, theories of persistence generally aim at metaphysically necessary truth. Consequently, those that accept proper temporal parts of material entities are maximally competitive only when they accord with the full range of metaphysically possible temporal mereological structures. Consider, for example, a structure in which every element is a proper temporal part of some others. The present essay argues that temporal junk plausibly is possible and that perdurantism, the thesis that material entities persist by having (...)
- Non-branching personal persistence.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (9):2307-2329.Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.
- Fragmentalist Presentist Perdurantism.Samuele Iaquinto - 2019 - Philosophia 47:693-703.Perdurantists think of continuants as mereological sums of stages from different times. This view of persistence would force us to drop the idea that there is genuine change in the world. By exploiting a presentist metaphysics, Brogaard proposed a theory, called presentist four-dimensionalism, that aims to reconcile perdurantism with the idea that things undergo real change. However, her proposal commits us to reject the idea that stages must exist in their entirety. Giving up the tenet that all the stages are (...)
- Self-Colocation: A Colocation Puzzle for Endurantists.Justin Mooney - 2019 - Synthese (6):5297-5309.The recent literature on the nature of persistence features a handful of imaginative cases in which an object seems to colocate with itself. So far, discussion of these cases has focused primarily on how they defy the standard endurantist approaches to the problem of temporary intrinsics. But in this article, I set that issue aside and argue that cases of apparent self-colocation also pose another problem for the endurantist. While the perdurantist seems to have a fairly straightforward account of self-colocation, (...)
- Notes sur la perdurance en architecture.Adelfo Scaranello - 2019 - Philosophique 22.Le musée des Beaux-arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon (MBAB) restructuré est une stratification d’architectures de différentes époques. L’enveloppe initiale de l’architecte Pierre Marnotte datant du XIXème siècle abritait à l’origine une halle à grains. Ce bâtiment fût transformé progressivement en musée. En 1967, l’architecte Louis Miquel construit dans la cour de cet édifice une extension afin de recevoir une énième donation d’œuvres qui caractérisent les collections de cette institution. No...
- Bundle Theory and the Identity of Indiscernibles.Philip Swenson & Bradley Rettler - 2019 - Res Philosophica 96 (4):495-508.A and B continue their conversation concerning the Identity of Indiscernibles. Both are aware of recent critiques of the principle that haven’t received replies; B summarizes those critiques, and A offers the replies that are due. B then raises a new worry.
- A reason for the non-specialist to care about the metaphysics of properties and persistence.Daniel Giberman - 2018 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (2):162-177.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 (...)
- Processi, non cose. Per una filosofia delle tensegrità.Giacomo Pezzano - 2018 - Scienza E Filosofia 19:101-123.Processes, not Things. Towards a Philosophy of Tensegrity This contribution aims to offer a first answer to the question: how can we make conceivable the meaning and the consequences of “tensegrity”? In order to do this, I highlight some philosophically relevant elements of the concept of tensegrity (§ 1); then, I put together the perspective of a Philosophy of Tensegrity with the one of the Process Philosophy, and I claim that tensegrity can help in rethinking some fundamental philosophical topics or (...)
- Persons, Stages, and Tensed Belief.Nicholas Rimell - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (3):577-593.Perdurantists hold that we persons—just like other ordinary objects—persist by perduring, by having temporal parts, or stages, located over time. Perdurantists also standardly endorse the B-theory of time. And, in light of this endorsement, they typically characterize our tensed beliefs as self-ascriptions of properties, made not by us but by our stages. For instance, for me to believe that Angela Merkel is currently the chancellor of Germany is for my now-located stage to self-ascribe the property of being simultaneous with Merkel’s (...)
- The Limit Decision Problem and Four-Dimensionalism.Costa Damiano - 2017 - Vivarium 55 (1-3):199-216.I argue that medieval solutions to the limit decision problem imply four-dimensionalism, i.e. the view according to which substances that persist through time are extended through time as well as through space, and have different temporal parts at different times.
- Homunculi Are People Too! Lewis's Definition of Personhood Debugged.Cody Gilmore - 2017 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (1):54-60.David Lewis defends the following "non-circular definition of personhood": "something is a continuant person if and only if it is a maximal R-interrelated aggregate of person-stages. That is: if and only if it is an aggregate of person-stages, each of which is R-related to all the rest (and to itself), and it is a proper part of no other such aggregate." I give a counterexample, involving a person who is a part of another, much larger person, with a separate mental (...)
- Instantaneous Temporal Parts and Time Travel.Seahwa Kim & Takeshi Sakon - 2017 - Korean Journal of Logic 20 (1).The standard definition of an instantaneous temporal part cannot properly deal with cases involving time travel. This paper provides a new definition of an instantaneous temporal part by appealing to David Lewis's distinction between external time and personal time. The new definition avoids the problems because it does not allow more than one instantaneous temporal part of an object at each moment of its personal time. We argue that this new definition, combined with our new perdurantist semantic thesis, deals with (...)
- Parfitians as Exdurantists.Fabio Patrone - 2017 - Axiomathes (6):1-9.Derek Parfit’s thesis that identity doesn’t matter in survival has been extensively discussed except for its metaphysical robustness. How can we justify the abandonment of identity in the way Parfit suggests? My argument is the following. Those who want to endorse the thesis that identity doesn’t matter (and, therefore, abandon identity across time) should adopt exdurantism, i.e. a metaphysics according to which the world is composed by temporal parts each existing at a time and according to which there is nothing (...)
- Mctaggart’s Paradox.Rögnvaldur D. Ingthorsson - 2016 - New York: Routledge.McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time, first published in 1908, set the agenda for 20th-century philosophy of time. Yet there is very little agreement on what it actually says—nobody agrees with the conclusion, but still everybody finds something important in it. This book presents the first critical overview of the last century of debate on what is popularly called "McTaggart’s Paradox". Scholars have long assumed that McTaggart’s argument stands alone and does not rely on any contentious ontological principles. The (...)
- Persisting Particulars and their Properties.Kristie Miller - 2016 - In Francesco Federico Calemi (ed.), Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 139-160.My present inclination is to say that both identity and relational analyses are intelligible hypotheses. I reject the identity analysis, looking rather to relations between different phases to secure the unity of a particular over time. But I do not think that the identity view can be rejected as illogical. If it is to be rejected, then I think it must be rejected for Occamist reasons. The different phases exist, and so do their relations. These phases so related, it seems, (...)
- 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 (...)
- Multilocation, Fusions, and Confusions.Claudio Calosi & Damiano Costa - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (1):25-33.The paper provides a new and detailed critique of Barker and Dowe’s argument against multi-location. This critique is not only novel but also less committal than previous ones in the literature in that it does not require hefty metaphysical assumptions. The paper also provides an analysis of some metaphysical relations between mereological and locational principles.
- New Arguments for 'Intelligent Design'? Review Article on William A. Dembski, Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. [REVIEW]Philippe Gagnon - 2015 - ESSSAT News and Reviews 25 (1):17-24.Critical notice assessing the use of information theory in the attempt to build a design inference, and to re-establish some aspects of the program of natural theology, as carried out in this third major monograph devoted to the subject of intelligent design theory by mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski, after The Design Inference (1998) and No Free Lunch (2002).
- David Lewis on Persistence.Katherine Hawley - 2015 - In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A companion to David Lewis. Chichester, West Sussex ;: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 237–249.This chapter explores the connections between David Lewis's perdurance theory and his Humean supervenience, arguing that his influential argument about temporary intrinsics is best seen in this light. It presents domestic dispute within the anti‐endurantist camp and analyzes the following questions: why does Lewis identify ordinary objects with world‐bound parts of transworld objects, but not with time‐bound parts of transtemporal objects? Given that Lewis is a counterpart theorist about modality, why isn't he a stage theorist about persistence? Humean supervenience in (...)(collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark 5 citations - (1 other version)Plain Paritculars.Ernâni Magalhães - 2015 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 92 (1):87-108.Are concrete objects in some sense made up of the properties they exemplify? A distinguished tradition holds they are. I begin by defending the distinction: there is a real and not just semantic distinction between asserting and denying that concrete objects have their properties as parts. I then argue in favor of the view that concrete objects are not made up of their parts. First, this view has less ontological baggage than its opponent. Next, the supposed advantages of the alternative (...)
- Endurantism vs. Perdurantism?: A Debate Reconsidered.Ofra Magidor - 2015 - Noûs 50 (3):509-532.One of the central debates in contemporary metaphysics has been the debate between endurantism and perdurantism about persistence. In this paper I argue that much of this debate has been misconstrued: most of the arguments in the debate crucially rely on theses which are strictly orthogonal to the endurantism/perdurantism debate. To show this, I note that the arguments in the endurantism/perdurantism debate typically take the following form: one presents a challenge that endurantists allegedly have some trouble addressing, and to which (...)
- Why neither diachronic universalism nor the Argument from Vagueness establishes perdurantism.Ofra Magidor - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (1):113-126.One of the most influential arguments in favour of perdurantism is the Argument from Vagueness. The argument proceeds in three stages: The first aims to establish atemporal universalism. The second presents a parallel argument in favour of universalism in the context of temporalized parthood. The third argues that diachronic universalism entails perdurantism. I offer a novel objection to the argument. I show that on the correct way of formulating diachronic universalism the principle does not entail perdurantism. On the other hand, (...)
- I—What is a Continuant?Helen Steward - 2015 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1):109-123.In this paper, I explore the question what a continuant is, in the context of a very interesting suggestion recently made by Rowland Stout, as part of his attempt to develop a coherent ontology of processes. Stout claims that a continuant is best thought of as something that primarily has its properties at times, rather than atemporally—and that on this construal, processes should count as continuants. While accepting that Stout is onto something here, I reject his suggestion that we should (...)
- Restricted Diachronic Composition and Special Relativity.Stephan Torre - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):235-255.When do objects at different times compose a further object? This is the question of diachronic composition. The universalist answers, ‘under any conditions whatsoever’. Others argue for restrictions on diachronic composition: composition occurs only when certain conditions are met. Recently, some philosophers have argued that restrictions on diachronic compositions are motivated by our best physical theories. In Persistence and Spacetime and elsewhere, Yuri Balashov argues that diachronic compositions are restricted in terms of causal connections between object stages. In a recent (...)
- Mereological Sums and Singular Terms.Kathrin Koslicki - 2014 - In Shieva Kleinschmidt (ed.), Mereology and Location. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 209-235.The relative merits of standard mereology have received quite a bit of attention in recent years from metaphysicians concerned with the part/whole properties of material objects. A question that has not been pursued to the same degree, however, is what sort of semantic repercussions a commitment to mereological sums in the standard sense might have in particular on the predicted behavior of singular terms and our practices of using such terms to refer to objects. The apparent mismatch between our actual (...)
- The Endurance/Perdurance Controversy is No Storm in a Teacup.Tobias Hansson Wahlberg - 2014 - Axiomathes 24 (4):463-482.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.
- New Reasons to Motivate Trope Theory: Endurantism and Perdurantism.Jiri Benovsky - 2013 - Acta Analytica 28 (2):223-227.In this paper, I argue that (non-presentist) endurantism is incompatible with the view that properties are universals. I do so by putting forward a very simple objection that forces the endurantist to embrace tropes, rather than universals. I do not claim that this is bad news for the endurantist—trope theory seems to me by all means more appealing than universals—rather, I would like to see this result as a further motivation to embrace tropes. I then also put forward a (more (...)
- An Introduction to Ontology.Nikk Effingham - 2013 - Cambridge: Polity.In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today. He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with (...)
- From times to worlds and back again: a transcendentist theory of persistence.Alessandro Giordani & Damiano Costa - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):210-220.Until recently, an almost perfect parallelism seemed to hold between theories of identity through time and across possible worlds,as every account in the temporal case(endurantism,perdurantism, exdurantism) was mirrored by a twin account in the modal case (trans-world identity, identity-via-parts, identity-via-counterparts). Nevertheless, in the recent literature, this parallelism has been broken because of the implementation in the debate of the relation of location. In particular, endurantism has been subject to a more in-depth analysis, and different versions of it, corresponding to different (...)
- Counting Stages.Emanuel Viebahn - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (2):311-324.This paper defends stage theory against the argument from diachronic counting. It argues that stage theorists can appeal to quantifier domain restriction in order to accommodate intuitions about diachronic counting sentences. Two approaches involving domain restriction are discussed. According to the first, domains of counting are usually restricted to stages at the time of utterance. This approach explains intuitions in many cases, but is theoretically costly and delivers wrong counts if diachronic counting is combined with fission or fusion. On the (...)
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