Promiscuous Endurantism and Diachronic Vagueness

American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2):181-189 (2007)
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Abstract

According to a popular line of reasoning, diachronic vagueness creates a problem for the endurantist conception of persistence. Some authors have replied that this line of reasoning is inconclusive, since the endurantist can subscribe to a principle of Diachronic Unrestricted Composition (DUC) that is perfectly parallel to the principle required by the perdurantist’s semantic account. I object that the endurantist should better avoid DUC. And I argue that even DUC, if accepted, would fail to provide the endurantist with the necessary resources for explaining diachronic vagueness in familiar semantic terms.

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Achille C. Varzi
Columbia University

Citations of this work

The Argument from Vagueness.Daniel Z. Korman - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (10):891-901.
Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude.Ross Inman - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (3):583-597.
The metaphysics of groups.Nikk Effingham - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (2):251-267.
Temporal Parts.Katherine Hawley - 2004/2010 - Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
Endurantism and Perdurantism.Nikk Effingham - 2012 - In Robert Barnard Neil Manson (ed.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics. pp. 170.

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The statue and the clay.Judith Jarvis Thomson - 1998 - Noûs 32 (2):149-173.
Sameness and Substance.David Wiggins - 1981 - Philosophical Quarterly 31 (124):260-268.

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