Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Truth and the Past', 'Commentary on Sentences' and 'The Possibility of Metaphysics'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 3. Three-Dimensionalism
An object 'endures' if it is always wholly present, and 'perdures' if different parts exist at different times [Lowe]
     Full Idea: The 'endurance' view is that an object persists by being 'wholly present' at more than one time, and the 'perdurance' view is that an object has different temporal parts which exist at different times.
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 5)
     A reaction: It is tempting to say that only a philosopher would come up with a view as bizarre as the second one. Trying to imagine God's view of time has led to a lot of confusion. Endurance seems to need substance, so bundle views of objects encourage perdurance.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism
How can you identify temporal parts of tomatoes without referring to tomatoes? [Lowe]
     Full Idea: The temporal parts approach to identity appears to be viciously circular, for how are the 'temporal parts' of tomatoes to be individuated and identified save by reference to the very tomatoes of which they are parts?
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 5.3)
     A reaction: (This attacks the 'perdurance' view - Idea 8271) Something wrong here. Isn't Lowe begging the question, by assuming that a tomato at an instant IS the tomato? To know what a tomato is, you must spend time with it.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 6. Successive Things
Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2
     A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists.