Endurantism Endures: Rejoinder to Barker and Dowe

Abstract

In Barker and Dowe (2005), Stephen Barker and Phil Dowe present a range of arguments which they take to demonstrate the paradoxical nature of endurantism. I claim that the endurantist has convincing replies to each argument. Eric is a (short-lived) cat. He persists for 100n, for some small temporal unit n, and thus, assuming Endurantism, is multi-located throughout a 4-D spacetime region R of 100n temporal size. Consider the 100 temporal slices r1, r2, ... , r100 of the region R, where each r has temporal length n. At each region r, there is an object, a cat: Eric at r. We refer collectively to these objects as the Ericrs. Take the fusion, or mereological sum, of the Ericrs and call this fusion F(Ericr). Our first paradox of multilocation (version 2) goes as follows: