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Full Idea
The principal and decisive objection to endurance, as an account of the persistence of ordinary things, is the problem of temporary intrinsics. Persisting things change their intrinsic properties, such as their shape. My own shape keeps changing.
Gist of Idea
Endurance is the wrong account, because things change intrinsic properties like shape
Source
David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2)
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [Blackwell 2001], p.203
A Reaction
Presumably if something was going to endure through time it would need a shape. If it has no particular shape, it lacks identity? Lewis discusses the problem at length. Why is a precise shape essential to anything?
| 15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
| 9664 | Endurance is the wrong account, because things change intrinsic properties like shape [Lewis] |
| 9665 | There are three responses to the problem that intrinsic shapes do not endure [Lewis] |
| 12295 | 3-D says things are stretched in space but not in time, and entire at a time but not at a location [Fine,K] |
| 12298 | Genuine motion, rather than variation of position, requires the 'entire presence' of the object [Fine,K] |
| 8271 | An object 'endures' if it is always wholly present, and 'perdures' if different parts exist at different times [Lowe] |
| 14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
| 14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
| 16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
| 16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
| 13924 | The persistence of objects seems to be needed if the past is to explain the present [Haslanger] |
| 13930 | Persistence makes change and its products intelligible [Haslanger] |