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Single Idea 5626

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

Full Idea

The principle of persistence is one that anticipates experience just as much as that of causality.

Gist of Idea

An a priori principle of persistence anticipates all experience

Source

Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B795/A767)

Book Ref

Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.657


A Reaction

This is the notion that identity is an indefinable basic of our understanding. He is objecting to Hume, who, of course, thought persistance was just an experience. Personally I persistance to be a posteriori, but how else could things exist?


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

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