Can I be an instantaneous stage and yet persist through time?

Summary, in English

An alternative to the standard endurance/perdurance accounts of persistence has recently been developed: the stage theory (Sider, T. Four-Dimensionalism: an Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Hawley, K. How Things Persist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). According to this theory, a persisting object is identical with an instantaneous stage (temporal part). On the basis of Leibniz’s Law, I argue that stage theorists either have to deny the alleged identity (i.e., give up their central thesis) or hold that stages are both instantaneous and continuants. I subsequently show that, although stage theory is flexible enough to accommodate the latter claim, the cost for accommodating it is an excessive proliferation of persistence concepts.

• Author: Tobias Hansson Wahlberg
• Department/s: Theoretical Philosophy
• Publishing year: 2008
• Language: English
• Pages: 235-239
• Publication/Series: Metaphysica
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Full text: - 106 kB; Download statistics
• Links: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12133-008-0036-9; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0036-9
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Philosophy
• Keywords: Persistence - Stage theory - Temporal counterparts - Predication - Leibniz’s Law
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1437-2053