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Single Idea 1350

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 1. Objects over Time ]

Full Idea

Identity supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence….Otherwise we must suppose a being to exist after it has ceased to exist, and to have existed before it was produced, which are manifest contradictions.

Gist of Idea

Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist

Source

Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)

Book Ref

'Personal Identity', ed/tr. Perry,John [University of California 1975], p.108

A Reaction

I take the point to be that if something is supposed to survive a gap in its existence, that must imply that it somehow exists during the gap. If a light flashes on and off, is it really a new entity each time?

The 16 ideas with the same theme [general ideas about sameness of objects over time]:

1504 Something must be unchanging to make recognition and knowledge possible [Aristotle on Parmenides]
12503 Identity means that the idea of a thing remains the same over time [Locke]
13182 Changeable accidents are modifications of unchanging essences [Leibniz]
21300 A change more obviously destroys an identity if it is quick and observed [Hume]
21299 Changing a part can change the whole, not absolutely, but by its proportion of the whole [Hume]
1350 Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist [Reid]
5626 An a priori principle of persistence anticipates all experience [Kant]
16991 No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke]
16503 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins]
9663 A thing 'perdures' if it has separate temporal parts, and 'endures' if it is wholly present at different times [Lewis]
16025 If things change they become different - but then no one thing undergoes the change! [Gallois]
16233 Gallois hoped to clarify identity through time, but seems to make talk of it impossible [Hawley on Gallois]
14958 A continuous object might be a type, with instances at each time [Ladyman/Ross]
15396 Most criteria for identity over time seem to leave two later objects identical to the earlier one [Cameron]
22612 Endurance and perdurance just show the consequences of A or B series time [Ingthorsson]
22625 Science suggests causal aspects of the constitution and persistance of objects [Ingthorsson]