Particulars, Actuality, and Identity over Time, vol 4
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the (obvious) semantics for modal and temporal adverbs requires relativization neither of the object in the state-type nor of the property. A state-type such as that of a being bent, which might be written , is in a clear sense ‘complete’ by itself; a temporal adverb expresses a temporal mode of obtaining for it, while a modal adverb expresses a way of obtaining for its tokens (in the absence of tense, the modal adverbs can be taken to express ways of obtaining for the types and there is still no problem of accidental intrinsics).4 Ill If the foregoing criticism of Lewis’s argument is correct, then we still lack a reason to require that resolutions of difficulties about identity through time employ the less problematic ontology of thing-stages. So what else might be offered? Lewis’s argument was an attempt to provide new grounds for the ontology of thing-stages. The more traditional grounds have simply been that satisfactory resolution of certain puzzles demands such an ontology. Johnston discusses two of a sort familiar from the literature on identity through time, the Dion/Theon case and the case of the pot, the plasticine and the bust. But in my view, these are not cases to which the advocate of thing-stages should appeal, since they provide little support for his or her way of looking at things. Dion is an as yet unmutilated man and Theon is the parcel of matter consisting of the matter of Dion less the matter of his left foot. Initially, then, Dion/Theon. Next, Dion loses his left foot. So now we have a dilemma. If it is still true that Dion # Theon, distinct things are occupying the same region of space (a ‘worrying co-occupancy’). Alternatively, if Dion = Theon after the mutilation, then distinct things have become identical, which, according to Johnston, is an impossibility. But against the background of an ontology of thing-stages, the difficulty vanishes: there are distinct sums of stages (‘maximal R-inter-related aggregates of stages’, in the terminology of [Lewis 1983, p. 62]), and what happens after the mutilation is that these sums have their constituents in common. Johnston objects to this

2013 ◽  
pp. 226-227
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Property A ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
State Type ◽  
Temporal Mode ◽  
Temporal Adverbs ◽  
Modal Adverbs

none both, while a defender of endurance will say that the plasticine first constitutes a pot, then a bust. Since constitution is not identity, we may therefore say that the plasticine, pot and bust are pairwise non-identical.5 We cannot argue that since pot and bust have exactly the same parts, they must be the same thing by the mereological principle that if the parts of x are the same as the parts of y, then x = y. First, if the plasticine constitutes the pot, any part of the pot will be constitutedby some part of the plasticine, but will not be identical to that part. Later, the plasticine part in question will constitute a part of the bust. Since constitution is not identity, we may therefore say that no part of the pot is identical to any part of the plasticine, so we cannot identify a part of the pot with a part of the bust via identity with a part of the plasticine. Still, this leaves it open that a pot-part is ‘straight-ofF identical to the bust-part made of the same plasticine, and hence by mereology, that pot and bust are identical. But Wiggins-style strategies again apply. Objects are not mere things, they are things of specific sorts; we can think of the unsubscripted identity symbol in ‘x = y’ as being introduced by existential quantification: ‘x = y’ means that for some sort F, x is the same F as y [Wiggins 1980, pp. 15, 38]. So pot and bust are the same what? If we say they are the same sum of parts, we relativize identity, since they are evidently not the same artifact. What we must do is distinguish sums of parts and artifacts. In the example, there are two sums of parts x and y (the pot parts and the bust parts) and if x and y have the same parts, as was left open by the previous paragraph, x and y are the same sum of parts. But we can deny that x is a pot and y is a bust. In other words, the proper conclusion to draw is that no pot is the same thing as any mereological sum of pot-parts and no bust the same thing as any sum of bust-parts. Some other relation, such as constitution, holds between ordinary things and the mereological sums of their parts. Hence we again avoid the conclusion that the pot and the bust are the same thing. If this discussion is right, the two examples are ineffective as

2013 ◽  
pp. 228-231
Keyword(s):  
Mereological Sum ◽  
Existential Quantification ◽  
Previous Paragraph ◽  
Identity Symbol

fixed the reference of our term ‘persistence5 not by means of a substantive account of the nature of persistence but by saying that persistence just is that actual process which is such that for any sort F, Fs exhibit the process just when they are not confronted with substantial changes in F-important respects.18 Since ‘persistence5 so introduced names a highly determinable process and there is some leeway both in the exact determination of sorts and in what the substantial and important sortal relative changes are, it is very hard to describe how the actual world could misleadingly fail to exhibit persistence. Notice that this reply to scepticism about judgements of persistence does not make nonsense of the sceptical worry. (Contrast the view that persistence is to be analyzed in terms of sortal-relative distributions of properties over space-time.) The present view allows us to make sense of much that the sceptic urges. Suppose that persistence is actually some process p. Then there could be a process q distinct from p but not distinguishable from p by beings like us. And there is a possible world which contains only the process q and q-variants of us who make judgements of persistence or more exactly judgements with the same conceptual role as our judgements of persistence. Taking those judgements to have the same content as our judgements, those judgements would be false through and through. However, two caveats make this supposition far from worrying. First, so long as the inhabitants of the y-world take the elementary precaution of introducing their term ‘persistence5 in a way precisely analogous to the reference-fixing method described above, the contents of those of their judgements which are naturally expressed by them in talk involving the term ‘persistence5 will not be the same as the contents of our judgements of persistence. Since ‘actual5 in their mouth picks

2013 ◽  
pp. 218-219
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
Exact Determination ◽  
Present View

of supposing that there are intrinsic qualitative features of mental representations—I doubt that this is a mistake—but the mistake of supposing that these intrinsic qualitative features represent the world by mirroring or picturing it so that representation goes first and foremost by way of intrinsic similarity. What could be intrinsically similar to an array of sense qualities across a sense field? Answer: an array of qualities across space and time. If this is what is primarily represented by a perceptual representation then the problem is how it is we arrive at representational contents to the effect that there are persisting objects. The natural answer is that we derive such contents; it is as if we infer them demonstratively or non-demonstratively from what is primarily represented. So persisting objects are either constructions out of distributions of qualities or the inferred causes of such distributions. It is this whole empiricist problematic which must be rejected. Representation is our characteristic activity. What justifies a particular kind of representation or judgement made immediately as a result of perceptual experience is not that it mirrors or pictures or is intrinsically similar to an independently characterizable reality but that it is the representation or judgement which we would standardly and non-collusively make under just those conditions of perceptual experience. So it is with perceptual judgements of persistence. We spontaneously and non-collusively make them on the basis of perceptual experience. Although particular judgements of persistence may be overturned by the discovery of the sort of trickery mentioned above, the overturning takes place by means of accounting for the illusory appearance of persistence as due to the causal powers of a more inclusive framework of persisting objects. The global commitment to the effect that the world is made up of persisting objects is not a reasoned consequence of some prior commitment to the effect that the world contains at least distributions of qualities over space­ time. It is something we spontaneously and dogmatically employ as a fundamental theme in our everyday representation of the way the world is. How do we earn the right to this dogmatism? How do we earn the right to spontaneously go in for representations as of persisting objects? (By what right do we so synthesize the

2013 ◽  
pp. 216-217
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way
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