The Transcendentist Theory of Persistence
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Experience and the Passage of Time∗
Experience and the Passage of Time∗ Bradford Skow 1 Introduction Some philosophers believe that the passage of time is a real phenomenon. And some of them find a reason to believe this when they attend to features of their conscious experience. In fact this “argument from experience” is supposed to be one of the main arguments for passage. What exactly does this argument look like? Is it any good? There are in fact many different arguments from experience. I am not sure I understand them all. In this paper I want to talk about the three most interesting arguments that I do understand.1 I am going to argue that all three of them fail. ∗Published in Philosophical Perspectives 25: Metaphysics (2011), pp.359-387. 1I will not say anything about A. N. Prior’s “Thank Goodness That’s Over” argument (Prior 1959) because it is not an argument from experience (even though it is often said to be). Here is Prior’s argument: I can be glad that my ordeal is over without being glad that my ordeal is earlier than this thought or that my ordeal is earlier than 12 noon. But the latter two propositions are the propositions that some opponents of passage (the ones Prior knew) identified with the proposition that my ordeal is over. Prior concluded that the object of my propositional attitude is a proposition that only proponents of passage believe in. Phenomenal experience does not play an important role in this argument. True, there is some distinctive phenomenal “feel” that (sometimes? usually? always?) occurs when I am glad about something. -
Parts of Persons Identity and Persistence in a Perdurantist World
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO Doctoral School in Philosophy and Human Sciences (XXXI Cycle) Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” Parts of Persons Identity and persistence in a perdurantist world Ph.D. Candidate Valerio BUONOMO Tutors Prof. Giuliano TORRENGO Prof. Paolo VALORE Coordinator of the Doctoral School Prof. Marcello D’AGOSTINO Academic year 2017-2018 1 Content CONTENT ........................................................................................................................... 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... 4 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1. PERSONAL IDENTITY AND PERSISTENCE...................................................................... 8 1.1. The persistence of persons and the criteria of identity over time .................................. 8 1.2. The accounts of personal persistence: a standard classification ................................... 14 1.2.1. Mentalist accounts of personal persistence ............................................................................ 15 1.2.2. Somatic accounts of personal persistence .............................................................................. 15 1.2.3. Anti-criterialist accounts of personal persistence ................................................................... 16 1.3. The metaphysics of persistence: the mereological account ......................................... -
Duration, Temporality and Self
Duration, Temporality and Self: Prospects for the Future of Bergsonism by Elena Fell A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire 2007 2 Student Declaration Concurrent registration for two or more academic awards I declare that white registered as a candidate for the research degree, I have not been a registered candidate or enrolled student for another award of the University or other academic or professional institution. Material submitted for another award I declare that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award and is solely my own work Signature of Candidate Type of Award Doctor of Philosophy Department Centre for Professional Ethics Abstract In philosophy time is one of the most difficult subjects because, notoriously, it eludes rationalization. However, Bergson succeeds in presenting time effectively as reality that exists in its own right. Time in Bergson is almost accessible, almost palpable in a discourse which overcomes certain difficulties of language and traditional thought. Bergson equates time with duration, a genuine temporal succession of phenomena defined by their position in that succession, and asserts that time is a quality belonging to the nature of all things rather than a relation between supposedly static elements. But Rergson's theory of duration is not organised, nor is it complete - fragments of it are embedded in discussions of various aspects of psychology, evolution, matter, and movement. My first task is therefore to extract the theory of duration from Bergson's major texts in Chapters 2-4. -
The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel: the Possibility of Time Travel
University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well Honors Capstone Projects Student Scholarship 2017 The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel: The Possibility of Time Travel Ramitha Rupasinghe University of Minnesota, Morris, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/honors Part of the Philosophy Commons, and the Physics Commons Recommended Citation Rupasinghe, Ramitha, "The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel: The Possibility of Time Travel" (2017). Honors Capstone Projects. 1. https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/honors/1 This Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel: The possibility of time travel Ramitha Rupasinghe IS 4994H - Honors Capstone Project Defense Panel – Pieranna Garavaso, Michael Korth, James Togeas University of Minnesota, Morris Spring 2017 1. Introduction Time is mysterious. Philosophers and scientists have pondered the question of what time might be for centuries and yet till this day, we don’t know what it is. Everyone talks about time, in fact, it’s the most common noun per the Oxford Dictionary. It’s in everything from history to music to culture. Despite time’s mysterious nature there are a lot of things that we can discuss in a logical manner. Time travel on the other hand is even more mysterious. -
Bergsoniana, 1
Bergsoniana 1 | 2021 Reassessing Bergson Bergsonian Answers to Contemporary Persistence Questions Florian Fischer Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/448 DOI: 10.4000/bergsoniana.448 ISSN: 2800-874X Publisher Société des amis de Bergson Electronic reference Florian Fischer, “Bergsonian Answers to Contemporary Persistence Questions”, Bergsoniana [Online], 1 | 2021, Online since 01 July 2021, connection on 14 September 2021. URL: http:// journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/448 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/bergsoniana.448 Les contenus de la revue sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. BERGSONIAN ANSWERS TO CONTEMPORARY PERSISTENCE QUESTIONS Florian FISCHER Introduction Time is one of the central topics of contemporary analytic philosophy, and Henri Bergson is one of the most important philosophers of time, but still Bergson plays virtually no role in the contemporary analytic debate about time. In contrast to his poor reception,1 Henri Bergson has a lot to offer analytic philosophy, as I will argue. More precisely, I will illustrate what the debates about persistence and ontology of time might gain from incorporating Bergsonian ideas. To do so, I will first investigate persistence, i.e., existence through time. The focal point of the contemporary analytic debate is how to conceptualise change without letting the involved incompatibilities lead to a logical contradiction. This can be called a horizontal way of posing the question, namely, how to reconcile two incompatible properties had by one entity at two points in time. Bergson famously asserted that objects are ontologically secondary, mind- dependent abstractions from an underlying dynamic reality. -
Four-Dimensionalism, Eternalism, and Deprivationist Accounts of the Evil of Death
Synthese https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03393-0 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Four-dimensionalism, eternalism, and deprivationist accounts of the evil of death Andrew Brenner1 Received: 22 June 2021 / Accepted: 28 August 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 Abstract Four-dimensionalists think that we persist over time by having different temporal parts at each of the times at which we exist. Eternalists think that all times are equally real. Deprivationists think that death is an evil for the one who dies because it deprives them of something. I argue that four-dimensionalist eternalism, conjoined with a standard deprivationist account of the evil of death, has surprising implications for what we should think about the evil of death. In particular, given these assumptions, we will lack any grounds for thinking that death is an evil for some individuals for whom we would antecedently expect it to be an evil, namely those individuals who cease to exist at death. Alternatively, we will only have some grounds for thinking that death is an evil for certain individuals for whom we might antecedently be more inclined to think death is not an evil, namely those individuals who survive death, in the sense that they continue to exist after death. Keywords Death · Evil of death · Four-dimensionalism · Eternalism · Perdurantism · Stage theory 1 Introduction According to four-dimensionalism, things which persist over time do so by hav- ing temporal parts at each of the times at which they exist. Four-dimensionalism is almost always conjoined with an eternalist temporal ontology, according to which past, present, and future things are equally real. -
Travelling in Time: How to Wholly Exist in Two Places at the Same Time
Travelling in Time: How to Wholly Exist in Two Places at the Same Time 1 Introduction It is possible to wholly exist at multiple spatial locations at the same time. At least, if time travel is possible and objects endure, then such must be the case. To accommodate this possibility requires the introduction of a spatial analog of either relativising properties to times—relativising properties to spatial locations—or of relativising the manner of instantiation to times—relativising the manner of instantiation to spatial locations. It has been suggested, however, that introducing irreducibly spatially relativised or spatially adverbialised properties presents some difficulties for the endurantist. I will consider an objection according to which embracing such spatially relativised properties could lead us to reject mereology altogether in favour of a metaphysics according to which objects are wholly present at every space-time point at which they exist. I argue that although such a view is coherent, there are some good reasons to reject it. Moreover, I argue that the endurantist can introduce spatially relativised or adverbialised properties without conceding that objects lack spatial parts. Such a strategy has the additional advantage that it allows the endurantist not only to explain time travel, but also to reconcile our competing intuitions about cases of fission. The possibility of travelling back in time to a period in which one’s earlier self or one’s ancestors exist, raises a number of well-worn problems (Grey, 1999; Chambers, 1999; Horwich, 1975 and Sider, 2002). In this paper I am concerned with only one of these: how is it that an object can travel back in time to meet its earlier self, thus existing at two different spatial locations at one and the same time? Four-dimensionalists have an easy answer to this question. -
Presentism/Eternalism and Endurantism/Perdurantism: Why the Unsubstantiality of the First Debate Implies That of the Second1
1 Presentism/Eternalism and Endurantism/Perdurantism: why the 1 unsubstantiality of the first debate implies that of the second Forthcoming in Philosophia Naturalis Mauro Dorato (Ph.D) Department of Philosophy University of Rome Three [email protected] tel. +393396070133 http://host.uniroma3.it/dipartimenti/filosofia/personale/doratoweb.htm Abstract The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By “logical equivalence” I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast doubts on the fact that the debate between presentism and eternalism is about “what there is”. In this respect, I will conclude that also the debate about persistence in time has no ontological consequences, in the sense that there is no real ontological disagreement between the two allegedly opposite positions: as in the case of the presentism/eternalism debate, one can be both a perdurantist and an endurantist, depending on which linguistic framework is preferred. The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By “logical equivalence” I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast doubts on the fact that the debate between presentism and eternalism is about “what there is”. -
Unity of Mind, Temporal Awareness, and Personal Identity
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE THE LEGACY OF HUMEANISM: UNITY OF MIND, TEMPORAL AWARENESS, AND PERSONAL IDENTITY DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy by Daniel R. Siakel Dissertation Committee: Professor David Woodruff Smith, Chair Professor Sven Bernecker Associate Professor Marcello Oreste Fiocco Associate Professor Clinton Tolley 2016 © 2016 Daniel R. Siakel DEDICATION To My mother, Anna My father, Jim Life’s original, enduring constellation. And My “doctor father,” David Who sees. “We think that we can prove ourselves to ourselves. The truth is that we cannot say that we are one entity, one existence. Our individuality is really a heap or pile of experiences. We are made out of experiences of achievement, disappointment, hope, fear, and millions and billions and trillions of other things. All these little fragments put together are what we call our self and our life. Our pride of self-existence or sense of being is by no means one entity. It is a heap, a pile of stuff. It has some similarities to a pile of garbage.” “It’s not that everything is one. Everything is zero.” Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche “Galaxies of Stars, Grains of Sand” “Rhinoceros and Parrot” ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v CURRICULUM VITAE vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION xii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: Hume’s Appendix Problem and Associative Connections in the Treatise and Enquiry §1. General Introduction to Hume’s Science of Human Nature 6 §2. Introducing Hume’s Appendix Problem 8 §3. Contextualizing Hume’s Appendix Problem 15 §4. -
Taking Tense Seriously’ Dean W
W. Zimmerman dialectica Vol. 59, N° 4 (2005), pp. 401–457 The A-Theory of Time, The B-Theory of Time, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’ Dean W. Zimmerman† ABSTRACT The paper has two parts: First, I describe a relatively popular thesis in the philosophy of propositional attitudes, worthy of the name ‘taking tense seriously’; and I distinguish it from a family of views in the metaphysics of time, namely, the A-theories (or what are sometimes called ‘tensed theories of time’). Once the distinction is in focus, a skeptical worry arises. Some A- theorists maintain that the difference between past, present, and future, is to be drawn in terms of what exists: growing-block theorists eschew ontological commitment to future entities; pre- sentists, to future and past entities. Others think of themselves as A-theorists but exclude no past or future things from their ontology. The metaphysical skeptic suspects that their attempt to articulate an ‘eternalist’ version of the A-theory collapses into merely ‘taking tense seriously’ – a thesis that does not imply the A-theory. The second half of the paper is the search for a stable eternalist A-theory. It includes discussion of temporary intrinsics, temporal parts, and truth. 1. Introduction Sadly, the great metaphysician J. McT. E. McTaggart is now remembered mainly for what must be his worst argument: the infamous argument for ‘the unreality of time’. But even this ‘philosophical “howler” ’ (as C. D. Broad rightly called it1) includes enough insightful analysis to have made it a natural starting point for most subsequent work on the metaphysics of time. -
Endurantism Vs. Perdurantism
International Journal of Database Management Systems ( IJDMS ) Vol.4, No.3, June 2012 CONCEPTUAL MODELLING AND THE QUALITY OF ONTOLOGIES : ENDURANTISM VS. PERDURANTISM Mutaz M. Al-Debei 1, Mohammad Mourhaf Al Asswad 2, Sergio de Cesar 3 and Mark Lycett 4 1Department of Management Information Systems, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan [email protected] 2Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University – West London, London, UK {mohammad.alasswad,Sergio.deCesare,mark.lycett}@brunel.ac.uk ABSTRACT Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach. -
Endurantism Or Perdurantism?
The embodied self: Endurantism or perdurantism? Saskia Heijnen Contents Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2 1. Endurantism versus perdurantism in metaphysics .............................................................. 5 1.1 Particulars ......................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Persisting particulars ......................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Temporal parts: a closer look ......................................................................................... 10 1.4 Wholly present: a closer look ......................................................................................... 14 1.5 Perdurantism and endurantism in action ........................................................................ 17 1.5.1 Fusion ....................................................................................................................... 17 1.5.2 Fission ...................................................................................................................... 19 2. Endurantism versus