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Single Idea 16503

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

Full Idea

The question 'what is it?' refers to the persistence and lifespan of an entity, and so manifests the identity over time of an entity and its persistence, between persistence and existence, and between its existence and being the kind of thing it is.

Gist of Idea

'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing

Source

David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.1)

Book Ref

Wiggins,David: 'Sameness and Substance' [Blackwell 1980], p.54

A Reaction

The idea that establishing the kind of a thing can do all this work strikes me as false. The lifespan of a 'human' can be between five minutes and a hundred years. Humans have a clear death, but thunderstorms don't.

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]