scholarly journals Foundations for Ontology of Persistence: Beyond Talk of Temporal Parts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumiaki Toyoshima
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Ontological Modeling ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

Persistence is about how things behave across time. It is generally discussed in terms of endurantism (three-dimensionalism) and perdurantism (four-dimensionalism). Despite the relevance of persistence to ontological modeling, however, there is no clear consensus over how to characterize precisely those two theories of persistence. This paper takes the initial steps towards a foundation for ontology of persistence. In particular, I examine by employing recent findings from philosophy of persistence how some major upper ontologies conceptualize endurantism and perdurantism. My resulting modest suggestion is that formal-ontological discussion on persistence should be updated by expanding its perspective beyond the topic of whether objects have proper temporal parts or not.

The creation–conservation dilemma and presentist four-dimensionalism

2002 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM F. VALLICELLA
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Theism ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

On traditional theism, God is not only a creator but also a conserver. The doctrine of conservation, however, appears to face a dilemma. Either conservation is continuous re-creation with consequences inimical to diachronic identity, or conservation is an operation upon a pre-existent entity, which, because it is pre-existent, is in no clear need of conservation. This article first makes a case for the dilemma, and then proposes a way between its horns. Safe passage is possible if we adopt presentist four-dimensionalism, i.e. the conjunction of presentism, according to which temporally present items alone exist, and four-dimensionalism, the doctrine that individuals are not continuants but wholes of temporal parts.

scholarly journals Is Sider still a perdurantist?

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Nikola Stamenkovic
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Mereological Nihilism ◽  
The World ◽  
Mereological Fusion ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Theodore Sider ◽  
Four Dimensionalism ◽  
Additional Object

In Writing the Book of the World (2011) Theodore Sider claims that on the fundamental level of reality there are no objects composed of parts, which makes his view a version of mereological nihilism. However, in his previous book entitled Four-Dimensionalism (2001), Sider endorses mereological universalism, the thesis that every class of objects has a mereological fusion, i.e. that there exists an additional object containing those objects as parts, which plays a crucial role in his argument from vagueness in favour of perdurantism, that is the thesis of the existence of temporal parts of material objects. In this paper I will investigate whether Sider can still be a perdurantist in spite of his latest commitment to mereological nihilism.

No Hope in the Dark: Problems for four-dimensionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Jonathan J Loose
Keyword(s):  
Christian Belief ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Central Question ◽  
General Weakness ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Future Self ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

Whether or not it is coherent to place hope in a future life beyond the grave has become a central question in the larger debate about whether a materialist view of human persons can accommodate Christian belief.  Hud Hudson defends a four-dimensional account of resurrection in order to avoid persistent difficulties experienced by three-dimensionalist animalism.  I present two difficulties unique to Hudson’s view.  The first problem of counterpart hope is a manifestation of a general weakness of four-dimensional views to accommodate adequately prudential concern about one’s future self.  More significantly, the second problem of quasi hope demonstrates that even if a temporal parts view can accommodate the possibility of future resurrection it necessarily leaves human beings in the dark about their individual futures and thus incapable of hope.  I conclude that whatever its merits in demonstrating the possibility of resurrection, four-dimensionalist materialism cannot accommodate veridical Christian hope.

scholarly journals The Limit Decision Problem and Four-Dimensionalism

Vivarium ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Damiano Costa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Problem ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

The author argues 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.

Persistence

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Balashov
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Dimensional Object ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

Regardless of whether the future or past are real, there is also the question of what objects are. What is it for an object to persist in time? At one time, one is short and at another time tall. Is something a four-dimensional object with different temporal parts? Or is there a wholly present three-dimensional entity that changes properties? This chapter gives a survey of this problem, updating three positions on it to the relativistic context, and providing the reader with a solid base from which to evaluate the positions. It notes that people recognize the problem of persistence as being primarily about parthood and location, and also sketches views known as three-dimensionalism (3Dism) or endurantism, and four-dimensionalism (4Dism) or perdurantism.

scholarly journals Ought a Four-Dimensionalist To Believe in Temporal Parts?

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristie Miller
Keyword(s):  
Space Time ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

I borrow the title of this paper, slightly amended, from Parsons’ recent ‘Must a Four-Dimensionalist Believe in Temporal Parts?’ Four-dimensionalism, as I use the term, is the view that persisting objects have four dimensions: they are four-dimensional ‘worms’ in space-time. This view is contrasted with three-dimensionalism, the view that persisting objects have three-dimensions and are wholly present at each moment at which they exist. The most common version of four-dimensionalism is perdurantism, according to which these four-dimensional objects are segmented into temporal parts — shorter lived objects that compose the four-dimensional whole in just the same way that the segments of real earth worms compose the whole worm.

On Stages, Worms, and Relativity

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 223-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Balashov
Keyword(s):  
Special Relativity ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Stage Theory ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Four Dimensionalism

AbstractFour–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 space–time 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 that considerations of special relativity favor the worm theory over the stage theory.

Processes

Philosophy ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 72 (279) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowland Stout
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Conception ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Physical Objects

A natural picture to have of events and processes is of entities which extend through time and which have temporal parts, just as physical objects extend through space and have spatial parts. While accepting this picture of events, in this paper I want to present an alternative conception of processes as entities which, like physical objects, do not extend in time and do not have temporal parts, but rather persist in time. Processes and events belong to metaphysically distinct categories. Moreover the category of events is not the more basic of the two.

Noonan on temporal parts

Analysis ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-216
Author(s):  
G. Spinks
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Parts

Predicates, parts, and impermanence: a contemporary version of some central Buddhist tenets

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-488
Author(s):  
MATTHEW McKEEVER
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Logical Constant ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Spatially Extended ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
Spatial Locations

AbstractIn this article, I argue that recent work in analytic philosophy on the semantics of names and the metaphysics of persistence supports two theses in Buddhist philosophy, namely the impermanence of objects and a corollary about how referential language works. According to this latter package of views, the various parts of what we call one object (say, King Milinda) possess no unity in and of themselves. Unity comes rather from language, in that we have terms (say, ‘King Milinda’) which stand for all the parts taken together. Objects are mind- (or rather language-)generated fictions. I think this package can be cashed out in terms of two central contemporary views. The first is that there are temporal parts: just as an object is spatially extended by having spatial parts at different spatial locations, so it is temporally extended by having temporal parts at different temporal locations. The second is that names are predicates: rather than standing for any one thing, a name stands for a range of things. The natural language term ‘Milinda’ is not akin to a logical constant, but akin to a predicate.Putting this together, I'll argue that names are predicates with temporal parts in their extension, which parts have no unity apart from falling under the same predicate. ‘Milinda’ is a predicate which has in its extension all Milinda's parts. The result is an interesting and original synthesis of plausible positions in semantics and metaphysics, which makes good sense of a central Buddhist doctrine.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document