Aspects and the Alteration of Temporal Simples

Abstract

According to David Lewis, alteration is "qualitative difference between temporal parts of something." It follows that moments, since they are simple and lack temporal parts, cannot alter from future to present to past. Here then is another way to put McTaggart's paradox about change in tense. I will appeal to my theory of Aspects to rebut the thought behind this rendition of McTaggart. On my theory, it is possible that qualitatively differing things be numerically identical. I call these differing, numerically identical things "aspects." I will argue that alteration can be a qualitative difference between temporal aspects of something that lacks temporal parts. So a moment can alter in tense. By rejecting Lewis's assumption my theory can solve this version of McTaggart's paradox.

The logical problem of the incarnation: a new solution

“…At the ontological level, according to Baxter (2018a, 914), aspects are difficult to distinguish from other entities 7 . However, we can begin to acquire an understanding of their nature by describing their functional role and the relationship to the individuals that bear them.…”

“…Lastly, aspects are not mental abstractions. That is, even though a complete individual's aspects are abstract entities (through them failing to exhaust the content or plime (entity) that they are aspects of), which can be considered by means of abstraction – where one abstracts a way that an individual is – it is important to note, as Baxter (2016, 104) writes, that the difference between a complete individual and their aspects is ‘a less-than-numerical distinction but more than a mere distinction of reason’ 10 . Baxter terms this distinction an aspectival distinction , which results in the aspects of an individual only ever being two (or more) in a ‘loose’ sense when they are counted based on qualitative distinction.…”

“…However, in a ‘strict’ sense, when the aspects are counted on the basis of a numerical distinction, they are only ever one. Thus, aspects, as Baxter notes, provide a ‘complexity to the simple, i.e., a qualitative complexity to the quantitatively simple’ (Baxter (2016), 178).…”

“…So, for example, ‘David insofar as he is a philosopher’ refers to one, numerically identical aspect of David and ‘David insofar as he is a father’ refers to another, numerically identical aspect of him. Aspects can thus differ in their qualities without the resultant differences indicating numerically distinct individuals (Baxter (2016), 175). More fully, we can apply some aspect terms to our self-differing example, where one aspect term of David would be: David y [ y is a father], which is a name for ‘David insofar as he is a father’.…”

The aloneness argument: an aspectival response

“…Donald L.M. Baxter (1999Baxter ( , 2016Baxter ( , 2018aBaxter ( , 2018b introduced the concept of an 'aspect' into the contemporary metaphysical literature in order to provide a coherent conceptual foundation for the notion of qualitative self-differing (hereafter, self-differing). Self-differing is the qualitative differing of some entity in one way (or respect) from itself in another (Baxter, 1999).…”