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Single Idea 14758

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts ]

Full Idea

How can an instantaneous stage believe anything? Beliefs take time.

Gist of Idea

How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time?

Source

Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.8)

Book Ref

Sider,Theodore: 'Four Dimensionalism' [OUP 2003], p.197

A Reaction

Sider's four-dimensionalist answer is that the belief is embodied in the earlier counterparts, making belief a 'highly relational property'. I am not impressed by this answer to the very nice problem which he has raised. It's a problem for 3D, too.

The 21 ideas with the same theme [things have parts in time, as they do in space]:

13267 Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki]
16209 How can point-duration slices of people have beliefs or desires? [Thomson]
17521 You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers]
17514 Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers]
16023 Stage theorists accept four-dimensionalism, but call each stage a whole object [Noonan]
12297 Three-dimensionalist can accept temporal parts, as things enduring only for an instant [Fine,K]
17279 Even a three-dimensionalist might identify temporal parts, in their thinking [Fine,K]
14730 Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider]
14731 Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider]
14758 How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider]
14762 Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider]
16203 Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley]
16204 Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley]
16205 The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley]
16206 Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley]
16212 An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley]
16213 Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley]
13927 We must explain change amongst 'momentary entities', or else the world is inexplicable [Haslanger]
13928 If the things which exist prior to now are totally distinct, they need not have existed [Haslanger]
14410 You believe you existed last year, but your segment doesn't, so they have different beliefs [Merricks]
14561 Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum]