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Single Idea 16197

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism ]

Full Idea

A question for perdurance theory is whether it can account for the special concern we feel for our own future selves.

Gist of Idea

How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves?

Source

Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8)

Book Ref

Hawley,Katherine: 'How Things Persist' [OUP 2004], p.35


A Reaction

That is one of those questions that begins to look very mysterious whatever your theory. I favour endurantism, but me next year looks a very remote person for me to be concerned about, in comparison with the people around me now.


The 24 ideas with the same theme [objects extend in both space and time]:

Surely the past phases of a thing are not parts of the thing? [Broad]
A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad]
If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad]
Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine]
If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden]
It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses [Wiggins]
I could have died at five, but the summation of my adult stages could not [Noonan]
4-D says things are stretched in space and in time, and not entire at a time or at a location [Fine,K]
You can ask when the wedding was, but not (usually) when the bride was [Fine,K, by Simons]
4D: time is space-like; a thing is its history; past and future are real; or things extend in time [Gallois]
How can you identify temporal parts of tomatoes without referring to tomatoes? [Lowe]
Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider]
4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider]
4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider]
Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [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]
Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley]
If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley]
Four dimensional-objects are stranger than most people think [Simons]
Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time [Crisp,TM]
Four-dimensionalists say instantaneous objects are more fundamental than long-lived ones [Hawthorne]
Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism [Williams,NE]
If causation involves production, that needs persisting objects [Ingthorsson]