more from this thinker
|
more from this text
Single Idea 11842
[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism
]
Full Idea
We call a lightning flash or a motor accident an event, but refuse to apply this to the cliffs of Dover. ...But quantitative differences (of time) give no good grounds for calling one bit of history an event, and refusing the name to another bit.
Gist of Idea
If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs?
Source
C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], p.54), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 2.3 n13
Book Ref
Wiggins,David: 'Sameness and Substance Renewed' [CUP 2001], p.31
A Reaction
Wiggins calls this proposal a 'terrible absurdity', but it seems to me to demand attention. There is a case to be made for a 'process' to be the fundamental category of our ontology, with stable physical objects seen in that light.
The
24 ideas
with the same theme
[objects extend in both space and time]:
14963
|
Surely the past phases of a thing are not parts of the thing?
[Broad]
|
14759
|
A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity
[Broad]
|
11842
|
If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs?
[Broad]
|
9019
|
Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times
[Quine]
|
15271
|
If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another
[Harré/Madden]
|
11876
|
It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses
[Wiggins]
|
16024
|
I could have died at five, but the summation of my adult stages could not
[Noonan]
|
12296
|
4-D says things are stretched in space and in time, and not entire at a time or at a location
[Fine,K]
|
18882
|
You can ask when the wedding was, but not (usually) when the bride was
[Fine,K, by Simons]
|
16026
|
4D: time is space-like; a thing is its history; past and future are real; or things extend in time
[Gallois]
|
8272
|
How can you identify temporal parts of tomatoes without referring to tomatoes?
[Lowe]
|
14726
|
Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time
[Sider]
|
14728
|
4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts
[Sider]
|
14729
|
4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists
[Sider]
|
16191
|
Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts
[Hawley]
|
16197
|
How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves?
[Hawley]
|
16199
|
If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large!
[Hawley]
|
16201
|
Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing
[Hawley]
|
16240
|
If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was?
[Hawley]
|
12837
|
Four dimensional-objects are stranger than most people think
[Simons]
|
14021
|
Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time
[Crisp,TM]
|
14591
|
Four-dimensionalists say instantaneous objects are more fundamental than long-lived ones
[Hawthorne]
|
23788
|
Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism
[Williams,NE]
|
22620
|
If causation involves production, that needs persisting objects
[Ingthorsson]
|