display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 16025 | If things change they become different - but then no one thing undergoes the change! [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: If things really change, there can't literally be one thing before and after the change. However, if there isn't one thing before and after the change, then no thing has really undergone any change. | |
| From: André Gallois (Identity over Time [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Copi for this way of expressing the problem of identity through change] There is an obvious simple ambiguity about 'change' in ordinary English. A change of property isn't a change of object. Painting a red ball blue isn't swapping it. |
| 16026 | 4D: time is space-like; a thing is its history; past and future are real; or things extend in time [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: We have four versions of Four-Dimensionalism: the relativistic view that time is space-like; a persisting thing is identical with its history (so objects are events); past and future are equally real; or (Lewis) things extend in time, with temporal parts. | |
| From: André Gallois (Identity over Time [2011], §2.5) | |
| A reaction: Broad proposed the second one. I prefer 3-D: at any given time a thing is wholly present. At another time it is wholly present despite having changed. It is ridiculous to think that small changes destroy identity. We acquire identity by dying?? |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting. |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us. |