Casual Endurantism : a New Account of Identity Through Time
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CAUSAL ENDURANTISM A NEW ACCOUNT OF IDENTITY THROUGH TIME by A. Rosier, B.A (Hons.) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania September 2001 Copyright 2001 by Angela Rosier All rights reserved Ii DECLARATION I certify that this thesis does not incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university; and that to the best of my knowledge and belief it does not contain any material previously published or written by another person where due reference is not made in the text. This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. ABS I RACT This thesis proposes a new account of identity through time. The position, I will call 'causal endurantism', successfully overcomes some well-known objections to two established accounts of persistence. As is well known endurantism faces the problem of temporary intrinsics and the problem of changes in parts, and one form of perdurantism, based on spatiotemporal/qualitative continuity, cannot survive immaculate replacements and rotating disc arguments. Contrary to popular opinion, causal perdurantism also cannot avoid rotating disc arguments because it cannot fix states of motion for homogeneous objects without invoking facts of identity, and thereby becoming circular. The new account proposed in this thesis overcomes all of these problems and shows us that a hybrid account of identity is tenable. As a mixed account causal endurantism is, in some respects, like both endurantism and perdurantism, in that although the distinct successive stages of an object are connected by patterns of causal relations, these stages are not directly causally related but are joint effects of a common cause. That cause is that which endures — a dispositional property, or internal tendency towards continual change. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Where does one begin? With the supervisor of course! Huge thanks are due to Phil Dowe who, unlike the author, can always tell where the garden path ends. Thanks Phil for your extended patience and for remaining excited throughout all of my floundering. Thanks are also due to Mark Colyvan for excellent associate supervision, well given advice at a crucial stage, and help with untangling some logical debacles. Also, thanks go to the staff of the School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania, with particular nods to Emeritus Professor Frank White, Professor Jay Garfield and Voj slay Bosikovic, This thesis has also benefited from extended discussions with Damien Cox and Stephen Barker theses are really written in corridors. No one can complete without the support of family and friends, and I am no exception. "Thank God that's over" I hear you all say. Final thanks to Ryan Boyes — trusted confidante and intrepid taxi-driver. To Gwen, my nan V Table of Contents DECLARATION III ABSTRACT IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: TWO OBJECTIONS TO ENDURANTISM: CHANGES IN PROPERTIES AND CHANGES IN PARTS 5 CHAPTER 2: AN OBJECTION TO PERDURANTISM: THE INADEQUACY OF CONTINUITY 43 CHAPTER 3: A SECOND OBJECTION TO PERDURANTISM: ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 79 CHAPTER 4: THEORIES OF CAUSATION AND CAUSAL PERDURANTISM 124 CHAPTER 5: CAUSATION AS TROPE ENDURANCE 180 CHAPTER 6: CAUSAL ENDURANTISM: A NEW ACCOUNT 216 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 262 vi Analytic Table of Contents DECLARATION III ABSTRACT IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: TWO OBJECTIONS TO ENDURANTISM: CHANGES IN PROPERTIES AND CHANGES IN PARTS 5 1.1 INTRODUCING ENDURANTISM 5 Being 'wholly present' 7 Denying temporal parts 8 Numerical identity through time 9 Three dimensionalism 10 Reasons to be cheerful 12 Intuitive appeal 12 Moral responsibility 13 Ontological priority 14 Temporal neutrality 16 1.2 OBJECTION (1) THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORARY INTRINSICS 19 The indiscernibility of identicals 22 Intrinsicness' defined 24 Some endurantist solutions 28 A temporal-theoretic (presentist) solution 28 Indexical solutions 31 1.3 OBJECTION (2) THE RUSSELL-MINUS OBJECTION 39 1.4 SUMMARY 42 vii CHAPTER 2: AN OBJECTION TO PERDURANTISM: THE INADEQUACY OF CONTINUITY 43 - 2.1 INTRODUCING PERDURANTISM 44 Loose and popular identity 44 Temporal parts 44 Four dimensionalism 49 Reasons to be cheerful 53 The argument from analogy revisited 53 A modal argument 54 Contemporary physics 56 Contemporary logic 57 Referential (in)detenninacy 58 Part-hood and circularity 62 2.2 A PERDURANTIST SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORARY INTRINSICS 63 2.3 A PERDURANTIST SOLUTION TO THE RUSSELL-MINUS OBJECTION 64 2.4 OBJECTION (1) THE INADEQUACY OF SPATIOTEMPORAL AND QUALITATIVE CONTINUITY 66 Cashing out continuity 66 Continuity as a sufficient condition 70 Can sortals preserve sufficiency? 72 Continuity as a necessary condition 75 The force of immaculate replacement examples 76 2.5 SUMMARY 77 CHAPTER 3: A SECOND OBJECTION TO PERDURANTISM: ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 79 3.1 ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 80 3.2 DEFENDING PERDURANTISM AGAINST ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS (BADLY) 88 Is homogeneous motion genuine? 89 The `no difference' defence 91 Supplementing continuity (velocities, forces, relativistic effects and vectors) 94 Defence from instantaneous velocities 94 Defence from centripetal forces 96 Defence from relativistic effects 97 Defence from vector-like qualities 101 3.3 DEFENCE FROM CAUSAL PERDURANTISM 107 3.4 APPROPRIATENESS, IMMANENCE & CIRCULARITY 116 States of motion and circularity — reprise 116 'Appropriate' causal connections? 117 Immanence and circularity 119 3.5 SUMMARY 122 CHAPTER 4: THEORIES OF CAUSATION AND CAUSAL PERDURANTISM 124 4.1 LAWS OF NATURE AND ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 125 Humean regularities 125 Probabilistic laws of nature 137 Propensities and single case objective chance 141 Neo-Humean causation 148 4.2 COUNTERFACTUALS AND ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 155 4.3 PHYSICAL PROCESSES ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 162 Transference theory 163 Transference and immanent causation 164 The identity conditions of physical quantities 168 Transference and circularity 170 Invariant quantity theory 173 Conserved quantity theory 175 4.4 SUMMARY 178 CHAPTER 5: CAUSATION AS TROPE ENDURANCE 180 5.1 EHRING'S PERSISTENCE THEORY OF CAUSATION 180 The mechanist thesis 181 5.2 TROPES AS CAUSAL RELATA 187 The cement of the universe 188 The alphabet of causation 191 ix Enduring tropes of perduring objects? 196 5.3 PERSISTENCE THEORY EXAMINED 197 Tropes versus exemplifications of universals 197 The argument from non-salient qualitative change 202 5.4 PERSISTENCE THEORY AND ROTATING DISC ARGUMENTS 205 Perduring tropes and RDA 206 Enduring tropes and RDA 208 5.5 PERSISTENCE THEORY AND THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORARY INTRINSICS 209 5.6 PERSISTENCE THEORY AND THE RUSSELL-MINUS OBJECTION 211 5.7 SUMMARY 214 CHAPTER 6: CAUSAL ENDURANTISM: A NEW ACCOUNT 216 6.1 AN INTERPRETATIVE INTERLUDE 217 The role of the complete concept 217 Objection: miraculous action 219 A perdurantist interpretation 221 Objection: miraculous action 225 Objection: a causal dilemma 227 6.2 LEIBNIZIAN ENDURANTISM 231 Miraculous action affirmed 237 The causal dilemma avoided 240 World apart and pre-established harmony explained 242 6.3 CAUSAL ENDURANTISM: A NEW ACCOUNT 246 Causal endurantism and the problem of temporary intrinsics 247 Causal endurantism and the Russell-minus objection 252 Causal endurantism and rotating disc arguments 257 6.4 CONCLUSIONS 259 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 262 Ilfaut (d'abord) durer (One must, above all, endure) Hemingway xi Introduction The debate about the identity through time of objects continues to perplex many and satisfy few. Some have the strong intuition that there just is no problem, whilst others felt it to be one of the most pressing problems in contemporary metaphysics. Much of that debate is about onus passing and intuition pumping. It has become a prizefight, with endurantism in the red corner and perdurantism in the blue. One task of this thesis is to clarify exactly what the main tenets of each view are — it turns out that this is the only way to keep an accurate score. The second task is to point out that although causal relations have been touted by the perdurantist as a ready fix for certain problems, such as determining states of motion for homogeneous objects, this is not the case. Causation is tio help to the perdurantist, and only leads to circularity. The third task is to introduce a new contender. I take the rival accounts in a conventional sense. Neither of these positions aims to provide an analysis of what it is for an object to exist at a time. Rather they attempt to characterise what it is for an object to exist at different times. Endurantism and perdurantism reflect deeply divergent ontological commitments that turn out to be in the most part, incompatible. In introducing these accounts I will use 'persistence', in the neutral sense as merely meaning that something exists at each of two times. In characterising the way in which objects might persist, I will use the terms introduced by Johnston and developed by Lewis, as follows, :.. 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 a time. Perdurance corresponds to the way a road persists through space; part of it is here and part of it is there, and no part of it is wholly present at two different places. Endurance corresponds to the way a universal, if there are such things, would be wholly present wherever and whenever it is instantiated. 1 Endurance involves overlap: the content of two different times has the enduring thing as a common part. Perdurance does not. In the red corner, ... endurance loses two points. One for falling prey to the problem of changes in temporary intrinsic properties and another for failing to account for changes in parts.