Perdurantism

The key to the puzzle lies in distinguishing the tolerance, equivalence and identity relations. The first two relations are mathematical relations, and it is up to you how to interpret them. The identity relation is a logical constant of classical logic, and it is forbidden to interpret a logical constant. On the other hand, the decay of an ordinary object is a cumulative process. There must therefore be a limit in the decay process, and when this limit is crossed, the famous ship ceases to exist.

Suppose that you are faced with the following choice: You will receive a very large sum of money if you were to go into a teleporter.  The teleporter consists of rooms 1 and 2.  When you enter room 1 all of the information about your body gets copied.  Your body is then destroyed.  At the exact time of your body being destroyed, a new body is assembled (by 3D printing) in room 2--exactly like the one destroyed, complete with your mental traits.  Would you do it?

David Lewis famously introduces the debate over persistence as follows: Let us say that something persists iff, somehow or other, it exists at various times; this is the neutral word. Something perdures iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is wholly present at more than one time; whereas it endures iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time. (1986: 202) This passage suggests that there are two different theories about how objects persist through time—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 these mistakes, and thus clarify the debate over persistence.

Standard lore has it that a proper name, or a definite description on its de re reading, is a temporally rigid designator. It picks out the same entity at every time at which it picks out an entity at all. If the entity in question is an enduring continuant (a 3D object that persists through time by being fully present at different times) then we know what this means, though we are also stuck with a host of metaphysical puzzles concerning endurance itself. If the entity in question is a perdurant (a 4D worm that persists through time by having different parts at different times) then the rigidity claim is trivial, though one is left wondering how it is that different speakers ever manage to pick out one and the same entity when a host of suitable, overlapping candidates are available. But what if the entity in question is neither a continuant nor a perdurant? What if the things we talk about in ordinary language are time-bound entities that cannot truly be said to persist through time, or stage sequences whose unity resides exclusively in our minds-like the "wave" at the stadium or the characters of a cartoon? In such cases the rigidity claim can't be right and a counterpart-theoretic semantics seems required. Is that bad? I say it isn't. And it had better not be, if that turns out to be the best metaphysical option we have.

Stephen Mumford has argued that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists because perdurantism, by breaking down persisting objects in sequences of static discrete existents, is at odds with a powers metaphysics. This has been contested by Neil Williams who offers his own version of 'powerful' perdurance where powers function as links between the temporal parts of persisting objects. Weighing up the arguments given by both sides, I show that the profile of 'powerful' persistence crucially depends on how one conceptualises the processes involved in the manifestation of powers. As this turns out not to be determined per se by subscribing to some view labelled 'powers view', further discussion is needed as to what processes are and to what kind of process theory a powers metaphysics should commit itself in order to be convincing. I defend the claim that dispositionalism is best combined with a version of process ontology that is indeed incompatible with a perdurantist analysis of persistence. However, I argue that this does not imply that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists.

Although Aristotle does not explicitly address persistence, his account of persisting may be derived from a careful consideration of his account of change. On my interpretation, he supposes that motions are mereological unities of their potential temporal parts-I dub such mereological unities 'lasting'. Aristotle's persisting things, too, are lasting, I argue. Lasting things are unlike enduring things in that they have temporal parts; and unlike perduring things in that their temporal parts are not actual, but rather are potential. Lasting, that is Aristotle's persisting, is thus a distinctive alternative to enduring and perduring. I assess this alternative showing it to be attractive.

What are persons and how do they exist? The predominant answer to this question in Western metaphysics is that persons, human and others, are, and exist as, substances, i.e., ontologically independent, well-demarcated things defined by an immutable (usually mental) essence. Change, on this view, is not essential for a person's identity; it is in fact more likely to be detrimental to it. In this chapter I want to suggest an alternative view of human persons which is motivated by an appreciation of their biological nature. Organisms, human and non-human, are dynamical systems that for their existence and persistence depend on an ongoing interaction with the environment in which they are embedded. Taking seriously this most fundamental human condition leads to recognising human persons as processes, i.e., as entities for the identity of which change is essential. It also implies a holistic view of the human mind.

How is it possible that we stay the same over time even though we continuously change? Looking at the analytic debate on personal identity, we will find, very generally, three types of answers: 1) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we are not properly the same then, only more or less. Identity becomes replaced with similarity. 2) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we do not properly change after all; deep down we are unchanging. 3) Staying the same while changing is not possible. Personal identity – identity of a person through time – is an illusion. In my paper, I shall show that all three of these answers are not convincing and have to be rejected. I shall defend the thesis that the difficulties analytic metaphysics has with making sense of personal identity ultimately stem from the idea that a person is some kind of thing, or a conglomerate of things, and that we can leave these difficulties behind if we think of a person as a process instead.
The idea that persons are processes is not new; it has been suggested some time ago, in particular by philosophers who nowadays have become regarded as ‘continental’. However, the idea has not yet sufficiently been linked to the more recent ‘analytic’ debate on personal identity, not least because of the difference of schools. Against this background, the paper can be seen as an attempt to merge the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ debate on personal identity by using process ontology as a unifying key. More ambitiously, given that the benefit to be gained from process ontology is as little restricted to the problem of personal identity as is the tendency in analytic metaphysics towards what I call ‘thing ontology’, the discussion presented is an exercise in reconciling ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy as such, with personal identity serving as a test case.

What is the relationship between a clay statue and the lump of clay from which it is formed? We might say that the lump constitutes the statue, but what is this relation of material constitution? Some insist that constitution is identity, on the grounds that distinct material objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Others argue that constitution is not identity, since the statue and the lump differ in important respects. Still others take cases like this to motivate revision-ary views about the nature of persistence, parthood, modality, identity, or existence. This article presents some of the most important puzzles of material constitution and evaluates some of the most popular responses.

Human persons exist longer than a single moment in time; they persist through time. However, so far it has not been possible to make this natural and widespread assumption metaphysically comprehensible. The philosophical debate on personal identity is rather stuck in a dilemma: reductionist theories explain personal identity away, while non-reductionist theories fail to give any informative account at all. This chapter argues that this dilemma emerges from an underlying commitment, shared by both sides of in the debate, to an ontology which that gives the priority to static unchanging things. The claim defended here is that the dilemma of personal identity can be overcome if we acknowledge the biological nature of human persons and switch to a process-ontological framework that takes process and change to be ontologically primary. Human persons are biological higher-order processes, rather than things, and their identity conditions can be scientifically investigated.

I argue that the conjunction of perdurantism (the view that objects are temporally extended) and universalism (the thesis that any old class of things has a mereological fusion) gives rise to undesired complications when combined with certain plausible assumptions concerning the semantics of tensed statements.

Four dimensionalism is the philosophical theory that every object that exists has a temporal part at each moment it exists. Temporal parts are analogous to spatial parts: just as my hand is a (spatial) part of my body, the first year of my life is a temporal part of my whole life. Among the philosophers who endorse four dimensionalism, there is disagreement over how objects persist, or survive over a period of time. Some philosophers think that objects persist by having temporal parts at each moment they exist. The object is properly considered to be the sum of all those temporal parts. This is the view of perdurantism, which I defend in this paper. Some other philosophers believe that objects simply are the temporal parts themselves, rather than sums, or fusions of temporal parts. They persist by being related to other temporal parts in specific ways. This is the view known as the stage theory.
My goal is to show that the stage theory requires us to accept too many philosophically problematic claims. Most of the discussion in this paper deals with the "puzzles of coincidence." Coincidence is said to occur when two distinct objects seem to be located in precisely the same place. There are actually two problems presented by these puzzles: (1) that ordinary physical objects seem to be prohibited by the laws of nature from being co-located, and (2) that the seemingly distinct co-located objects are composed of all the same physical parts. Both perdurantism and the stage theory offer solutions to these puzzles. I argue that perdurantism offers the better solution. Later in the paper, I offer other reasons not to accept the stage theory.

What are persons and how do they exist? The predominant answer to this question given by Western metaphysics is that persons, human and others, are and exist as substances, i.e., as some sort of discrete particular whose identity is determined by a certain set of intrinsic essential characteristics.
In my talk I want to suggest an alternative view which is motivated by metaphysical considerations about persistence as well as by recent insights from systems biology and the theory of cognition derived from it (‘enactivism’). If we take seriously that at least human persons are living dynamical systems, embedded in a natural environment and for their existence at a time as well as through time dependent on an interaction with that environment, we are led to recognise them as organised and stabilised higher-order processes rather than as substances in the traditional sense.

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.

This paper develops a endurantist theory of persistence. The theory is built around one basic tenet, which concerns existence at a time – the relation between an object and the times at which that object is present. According to this tenet, which I call transcendentism, for an object to exist at a time is for it to participate in events that are located at that time. I argue that transcendentism is a semantically grounded and metaphysically fruitful. It is semantically grounded, insofar as a semantic analysis of our temporal talk favors it over rivals. It is metaphysically fruitful, insofar as the theory of persistence that can be built around it – the transcendentist theory of persistence, to give it a name – requires neither temporal parts nor the problematic commitments to which all extant forms of endurantism are committed, such as the possibility of extended simples or multilocation.

The paper investigates the link between the theory of modal occurrents (where individuals are allowed to stretch across possible worlds) and Lewis’s counterpart theory (where all individuals are world-bound but have counterparts in other worlds). First I show how to interpret modal talk extensionally within the theory of modal occurrents. Then I show that the assumption that worlds be pairwise discrete is all that is needed to reconstruct the bulk of counterpart theory (i.e., to define the concept of a counterpart and to derive the standard postulates governing that concept) in terms of the theory of modal occurrents. Finally, I argue that this reconstruction allows us to view the indeterminacy of our modal intuitions as being part and parcel with the indeterminacy of our criteria for individuating modal occurrents, and that this indeterminacy is naturally explained in terms of linguistic (as opposed to ontic) vagueness.

Go on a journey through spacetime via the medium of comics! Discover your place in the universe in this crossover metanarrative marrying block universe theory and comics theory. Learn how to consider your own life - and art! - as a 4-dimensional hyper-object and transcend your own conceptions of our universe.

Priority pluralism, perdurantism, and that gunky time is at least metaphysically possible, are three fairly commonly held views in metaphysics. However, in this paper, I argue that the three are jointly incompatible, and thus at least one of them must false. Resultantly, I argue one of the following must be true: priority monism or metaphysical infinitism; endurantism; or that time is necessarily atomistic.

Hay dos respuestas filosóficas al problema de la persistencia: las que afirman que un objeto físico sólo se extiende en el espacio (subsistencialismo o tridimensionalismo) y las que agregan que, además, se extienden en el tiempo (tetradimensionalismo). Recientemente se ha argumentado que la relatividad especial implica claramente este segundo tipo de respuesta: los fenómenos que descansan en la relatividad de la simultaneidad mostrarían la tetradimensionalidad de los objetos físicos. En esta charla sugeriré que: 1) la relatividad no es compatible con ninguna de estas ontologías; y 2) la disputa tridimensionalismo/tetradimensionalismo sólo tiene sentido bajo una interpretación convencionalista de la simultaneidad.

The theory according to which most ordinary objects are mere “entia successiva”—sequences of distinct mereological aggregates, whose unity resides exclusively in our minds—is a variant of the standard, three-dimensional conception of objects. For the aggregates are, at bottom, endurants, i.e., entities that persist through time by being fully present at any time at which they exist. In this paper I compare this theory with the so-called “stage view”, according to which ordinary objects—indeed, all objects—are sequences of momentary entities that cannot truly be said to persist through time. Both theories face a number of intuitive difficulties but the stage view, I argue, has a lot more to offer in return.

Eli Hirsch argues that certain ontological disputes involve a conflict between "equivalent" languages, and that the principle of charity compels each disputant to interpret the other as speaking truly in their own language. For Hirsch, a language's semantics maps sentences (in context) onto sets of possible worlds but assigns no role to reference. I argue that this method leads to an overly uncharitable portrayal of the disputes at issue-whereby ontologists who speak "equivalent" languages can only argue about syntax. Lack of charity stems from the fact that this portrayal likely fails to uphold the self-conception of the disputants-and particularly what I will call "the weak self-conception". As a result, Hirsch's deflationism falls victim of the same principle of charity that informs it.

I will discuss three arguments in favor of perdurantism, the thesis that objects persist by having temporal parts located at different times. Firstly, I will introduce the rival accounts of persistence of perdurantism and endurantism. Then I will discuss three arguments for perdurantism: the problem of temporary intrinsics, the argument from vagueness and the argument from Special Relativity. I will conclude that none of them represents a knock-down argument for perdurantism. However, endurantism faces important difficulties in offering its solutions to the issues at stake, and the solutions proposed are often at odds with commonsense. Therefore, if one of the main problem for perdurantism is its being at odds with commonsense, endurantism is in no better position with respect to this issue.

I argue that four-dimensionalism is inconsistent with phenomenal experience as we know it to be. There currently exist good arguments to show why perdurantism must be false on phenomenological grounds. Such arguments are often used to motivate stage theory. I defend these arguments but argue against the motivation for stage theory. Phenomenology is incompatible with instantaneous person-stages and non- instantaneous person-stages are implausible. Given that the views discussed exhaust four-dimensionalist treatments of persons, the framework must be false.

The aim of this paper is to explore the view that some ontological disputes are " metalinguistic negotiations " (to employ a recent term coined by David Plunkett and Timothy Sundell), and to make sense of the significance of these controversies in a way that is still compatible with a broadly deflationist approach. I start by considering the view advocated by Eli Hirsch to the effect that some ontological disputes are verbal. I take the Endurantism-Perdurantusm dispute as a case-study and argue that, while it can be conceded that the dispute is verbal at the object-level, this does not rule out the possibility of a non-verbal disagreement at the metalinguistic level. I then explore the metalinguistic dispute hypothesis by seeing how it can be defended from a first objection playing on the idea of inter-translatability, as well as a second objection raising the question of equal theoretical virtues.

Jiri Benovsky's book continues the recent methodological trend in analytic metaphysics. This area of research is typically labelled 'meta-metaphysics' or 'metaontology'. i But as is typical of much of the work in this area, Benovsky's book as well discusses a number of first order issues in metaphysics, such as bundle theory, endurantism and perdurantism, and presentism and eternalism. Accordingly, the book ought to be of interest also to those who work in these areas of metaphysics. The book is short but dense. Previous familiarity with the relevant metaphysical theories is certainly required if one wishes to fully appreciate the book; there is no needless repetition or lengthy introductions. I would consider this to be a virtue, although it does entail that reading the book requires some concentration. The book consists of two parts. The first part concerns theory equivalence in metaphysics, with three primary case studies, and concludes with an analysis of the role of primitives in metaphysical theories. The second part considers different strategies for theory choice in metaphysics. One chapter is devoted to criticizing the usefulness of various theoretical virtues that metaphysicians often refer to, using trope theory, universalism, and nominalism as examples. Another chapter concerns intuitions and is largely based on Benovsky's recent paper 'From Experience to Metaphysics: On Experience-based Intuitions and their Role in Metaphysics' (2015). The final chapter puts forward Benovsky's central claim, namely, that aesthetic properties (which he takes to be grounded in non-aesthetic properties) are central for theory choice in metaphysics. Some other chapters also reuse Benovsky's earlier published material.

Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach.

Kripke-Armstrong argument aims to establish that the defender of existence of material objects’ temporal parts cannot determine whether a lonely homogeneous disc made of continuous matter is rotating around its axis or not. The perdurantist cannot distinguish between these two possibilities by appealing to different instantaneous velocities of instantaneous temporal parts of the disc, since by doing so he would violate the Humean supervenience thesis. In this paper I will show, following Jeremy Butterfield, how Kripke-Armstrong challenge can be answered while retaining Humean supervenience: by appealing to different instantaneous velocities of non-instantaneous temporal parts of the Kripke-Armstrong lonely disc.

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 these stages, which is not reasonable when counting in the ordinary world.

There has been a growing worry (raised in some form or another by Dean Zimmerman, Eric Olson, A.P. Taylor, Mark Johnston and Alex Kaiserman) that perdurantism—and similarly ontologically abundant views—is morally untenable. For perdurantism posits that, coinciding with persons, are person-like objects, and giving them their moral due seems to require giving up prudentially driven self-sacrifice. One way to avoid this charge is to adopt consequentialism. But Mark Johnston has argued that the marriage of consequentialism and perdurantism is in moral trouble. For, depending on the nature of time, consequentialist perdurantists either are unable to do more than one good act or they are morally obliged to adopt a repugnant form of ageism. I argue that perdurantist consequentialism doesn't have either repugnant implication.

Marya Schechtman's 'Narrative Self-Constitution View' proposes that for some conscious entity to be a person they must have a narrative self-conception. I argue, however, that Schechtman's seemingly intuitive criteria for personhood are too narrow, given my own experiences and phenomenology as a person with an 'episodic' temporal temperament. I draw on Galen Strawson's paper 'Against Narrativity' to defend my view that there can exist persons who perceive themselves to be entirely without a cohesive narrative at all, and go on to argue that it is both unethical and unintuitive to deny these kinds of people personhood. In my positive thesis I propose that it may be possible to argue that selves must be capable of local narrativity to be considered persons, but that we should reject the requirement of global narrativity for selfhood on the basis that it is contrary to our accepted world view of who constitutes a person.

In objection to one of Yuri Balashov’s defenses of perdurantism, Matthew Davidson claims that, according to the special theory of relativity, both 3-dimensional and 4-dimensional shapes are nonintrinsic, i.e., they are relative to reference frames. I argue that 3-dimensional and 4-dimensional spatial shapes are indeed nonintrinsic, but shapes in 3-dimensional and 4-dimensional spacetime are intrinsic, according to the special theory of relativity. This follows from the special relativity theory’s claim that spacetime intervals or distances in any n-dimensional spacetime are invariant, unlike spatial distances.

Does the physical body account for what we refer to as the mind, or soul? Or does the mind exist apart from the physical body? As philosopher Blaise Pascal recognized, this is not a periphery issue for humanity: it ought to take primacy among all inquiries. I argue that there are strong arguments suggesting the immaterial mind’s existence. And one can arrive at such a conclusion from thoughtful reflection alone.

This paper defends the possibility of admitting occurrents in a presentist ontology. Two ways of doing so are proposed, the first one involves Meinongian presentism. By using the notion of non-existent object and coherently modifying some mereo-logical principle, it is argued, the presentist can allow for occurrents. The second proposal involves ex-concrete objects. Ex-concrete objects, i.e. objects that are contingently not concrete, have been used by Linsky and Zalta (Philosophical Perspectives , 8 (Logic and Language), 431-458, 1994), Williamson (2002) in the modal metaphysics debate, by Orilia (Philosophical Studies, 173 (3), 589-607, 2016) in the presentism-eternalism debate, and by Longenecker (Synthese 195 (11), 5091-5111, 2018) in the debate about material constitution. I argue that, just by admitting ex-concrete objects, it is possible to have occurrents even for the presentist. Of course, in order to do so we must modify our definitions of occurrent and continuant. Nevertheless , I argue that my theory is metaphysically sound, at least for the presentist persuaded by the intuitive claim that there are occurrents, which otherwise she must reject.

Here is an old story, both familiar and puzzling: a sculptor purchases an ordinary lump of clay-hereby named 'Lump'-and later fashions that lump of clay into the likeness of the biblical king David. A statuehereby named 'David'-is thus created. We are now faced with the following question: what is the relation between Lump and David?