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Persistence and Properties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

SYDNEY SHOEMAKER
SYDNEY SHOEMAKER*
Affiliation:
CORNELL UNIVERSITY [email protected]
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Abstract:

If for every portion of space-time there is an object composed of its contents, four-dimensionalism will be true of these objects. But ordinary objects—trees, stones, persons, etc.—are not among these objects (although the series of events that make up their careers will be). The properties of ordinary objects, including sortal properties, are temporally local and have causal profiles that incorporate transtemporal persistence conditions of the things that have them, and this supports a rejection of four-dimensionalism in favor of three-dimensionalism as an account of the nature of these ordinary objects. Also rejected is the stage theory that takes ordinary objects to be momentary stages (whose transtemporal sameness is not identity), and the argument (of Katherine Hawley) that holds that stage theory is supported by the fact that there can be cases in which it is indeterminate whether the same thing exists at different times.

Keywords

metaphysicsontologyD-fusionenduranceperdurancepersistence condition
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 433 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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References

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