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Single Idea 15271

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

Full Idea

If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place.

Gist of Idea

If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another

Source

Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)

Book Ref

Harré,R/Madden,E.H.: 'Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity' [Blackwell 1975], p.110

A Reaction

The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose.

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

14963 Surely the past phases of a thing are not parts of the thing? [Broad]
14759 A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad]
11842 If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad]
9019 Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine]
15271 If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden]
11876 It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses [Wiggins]
16024 I could have died at five, but the summation of my adult stages could not [Noonan]
12296 4-D says things are stretched in space and in time, and not entire at a time or at a location [Fine,K]
18882 You can ask when the wedding was, but not (usually) when the bride was [Fine,K, by Simons]
16026 4D: time is space-like; a thing is its history; past and future are real; or things extend in time [Gallois]
8272 How can you identify temporal parts of tomatoes without referring to tomatoes? [Lowe]
14726 Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider]
14728 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider]
14729 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider]
16191 Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley]
16197 How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley]
16199 If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley]
16201 Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley]
16240 If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley]
12837 Four dimensional-objects are stranger than most people think [Simons]
14021 Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time [Crisp,TM]
14591 Four-dimensionalists say instantaneous objects are more fundamental than long-lived ones [Hawthorne]
23788 Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism [Williams,NE]
22620 If causation involves production, that needs persisting objects [Ingthorsson]