more on this theme     |     more from this text


Single Idea 16193

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change ]

Full Idea

Another strategy for the problem of change says that instantiation - the having of properties - is time-indexed, or relative to times, although properties themselves are not. This 'adverbialism' says that object has-at-t some property.

Gist of Idea

'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property

Source

Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.5)

Book Ref

Hawley,Katherine: 'How Things Persist' [OUP 2004], p.21


A Reaction

[She cites Johnson, Lowe and Haslanger for this] Promising. The question is whether the time index is attached to the object, to the property, or to the instantiation. The middle one is wrong. There aren't two properties - green-at-t1 and green-at-t2.


The 39 ideas from Katherine Hawley

Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley]
Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley]
'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley]
Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley]
Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley]
How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley]
If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley]
Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley]
Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley]
The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley]
Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley]
Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley]
The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley]
Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley]
Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley]
Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley]
A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley]
An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley]
Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley]
Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley]
Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley]
On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley]
Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley]
Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley]
Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley]
Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley]
Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley]
Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley]
If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley]
Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley]
Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley]
The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley]
Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley]
An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley]
If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley]
The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley]
If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley]
To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley]
Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley]