Theories of persistence

Wasserman, Ryan

doi:10.1007/s11098-015-0488-z

Cited by 35 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…Lewis's characterization of perdurance is similar to Sider's, but as Wasserman () has recently reminded us, it is also importantly different. Whereas Sider's formulation is an ontological one, perdurance being characterized in terms of the existence of ITPs, Lewis's is an explanatory one, characterized in terms of persistence in virtue of having ITPs.…”

Section: Persistencementioning

confidence: 82%

“…The difference can be made clear by noting that it is consistent with Sider's definition, but not Lewis's, to “take facts about temporal parts to be grounded in facts about temporal continuants, rather than vice versa. This would be a view on which temporal wholes are more basic than temporal parts” (Wasserman, : 245 n7).…”

Section: Persistencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wasserman concludes that

Rather than trying to formulate endurantism as a theory of persistence, we can instead formulate it as a denial. In particular, we can take endurantism to be the view that objects do not persist through time by having different temporal parts at different times (Wasserman, : 248).…”

Section: Persistencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Are The Statue and The Clay Mutual Parts?

Walters

2017

Nous

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Are a material object, such as a statue, and its constituting matter, the clay, parts of one another? One wouldn't have thought so, and yet a number of philosophers have argued that they are. I review the arguments for this surprising claim showing how they all fail. I then consider two arguments against the view concluding that there are both pre-theoretical and theoretical considerations for denying that the statue and the clay are mutual parts.

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Section: Persistencementioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Persistencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Are The Statue and The Clay Mutual Parts?

Walters

2017

Nous

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“…Sider's book is also a nice compendium of arguments from the literature. Responses on behalf of the endurantist include, for example, Lowe (1988), Haslanger (1989), Wasserman (2003), and Wasserman (2016). Hawley (2015) is a very helpful overview of the field.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicates, parts, and impermanence: a contemporary version of some central Buddhist tenets

McKeever

2017

Rel. Stud.

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In this article, I argue that recent work in analytic philosophy on the semantics of names and the metaphysics of persistence supports two theses in Buddhist philosophy, namely the impermanence of objects and a corollary about how referential language works. According to this latter package of views, the various parts of what we call one object (say, King Milinda) possess no unity in and of themselves. Unity comes rather from language, in that we have terms (say, ‘King Milinda’) which stand for all the parts taken together. Objects are mind- (or rather language-)generated fictions. I think this package can be cashed out in terms of two central contemporary views. The first is that there are temporal parts: just as an object is spatially extended by having spatial parts at different spatial locations, so it is temporally extended by having temporal parts at different temporal locations. The second is that names are predicates: rather than standing for any one thing, a name stands for a range of things. The natural language term ‘Milinda’ is not akin to a logical constant, but akin to a predicate.Putting this together, I'll argue that names are predicates with temporal parts in their extension, which parts have no unity apart from falling under the same predicate. ‘Milinda’ is a predicate which has in its extension all Milinda's parts. The result is an interesting and original synthesis of plausible positions in semantics and metaphysics, which makes good sense of a central Buddhist doctrine.

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“…The second kind of theory, unlike the first, does not need to be explanatory. See Wasserman (forthcoming).…”

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confidence: 99%

Vagueness and the Laws of Metaphysics

Wasserman

2015

Philos Phenomenol Research

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This is a paper about the nature of metaphysical laws and their relation to the phenomenon of vagueness. Metaphysical laws are introduced as analogous to natural laws, and metaphysical indeterminism is modeled on causal indeterminacy. This kind of indeterminacy is then put to work in developing a novel theory of vagueness and a solution to the sorites paradox.This paper introduces a theory of vagueness according to which borderline cases are the result of indeterministic metaphysical laws. Section 1 introduces the concept of a metaphysical law, sections 2 and 3 explain what it would mean for these laws to be indeterministic, and section 4 shows how this kind of indeterminacy can help to explain the phenomenon of vagueness. Section 5 then concludes by contrasting this theory with other possible accounts. 1

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Theories of persistence

Cited by 35 publications

References 20 publications

Are The Statue and The Clay Mutual Parts?

Are The Statue and The Clay Mutual Parts?

Predicates, parts, and impermanence: a contemporary version of some central Buddhist tenets

Vagueness and the Laws of Metaphysics

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