Thisness and Events

Diekemper, Joseph

doi:10.5840/jphil200910656

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Recently, there's been renewed interest in an ontology of thisness (cf. Diekemper 2009Diekemper , 2014Diekemper , 2015. But no one has yet acknowledged the considerable work that such an ontology can do in defence of presentism.…”

Section: Preliminariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Virtues of Thisness Presentism

Ingram

2016

Philos Stud

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Presentists believe that only present things exist. But opponents insist this view has unacceptable implications: if only present things exist, we can't express singular propositions about the past, since the obvious propositional constituents don't exist, nor can we account for temporal passage, or the openness of the future. According to such opponents, and in spite of the apparent 'common sense' status of the view, presentism should be rejected on the basis of these unacceptable implications. In this paper, I present and defend a version of presentism ('Thisness Presentism') that avoids the unacceptable implications. The basic strategy I employ is familiar-I postulate presently existing entities to serve as surrogates (or 'proxies') for non-present entities-but some of the details of my proposal are more novel, and their application to these problems is certainly novel. One overarching thesis of this paper is that Thisness Presentism is preferable to other versions of presentism since it solves important problems facing standard iterations of the view. And I assume that this is a good positive reason in favour of the underlying thisness ontology.

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Section: Preliminariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Virtues of Thisness Presentism

Ingram

2016

Philos Stud

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“…As a matter of fact, I think that matter probably can play this role. I argue in Diekemper () that the Max Black style, spatial dispersion arguments which are commonly used to argue against the thesis that matter and spatial position can individuate across possible worlds are not successful in that endeavour. However, I also argue that the analogous temporal dispersion arguments, which are meant to show that temporal position cannot individuate, are successful.…”

Section: A Hybrid Aristotelian Ontologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thisnesses—as I will be conceiving of them—are also primitive and purely non‐qualitative properties; in other words, they are not instantiated by individuals derivatively or in virtue of standing in relations to other individuals, nor are they merely conjunctions of qualitative properties (see Adams ). In an earlier paper, I defended the existence of such properties—at least for a limited class of individuals (see Diekemper ); but here I am interested in investigating what it is for an individual x to instantiate or exemplify its thisness. Although there has been a great deal of discussion in the literature both as to whether such properties exist, as well as to the use to which they can be put assuming that they do exist, there has been very little, if any, discussion about the ontological relationship between a thisness and the individual that instantiates it…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ontology of Thisness

Diekemper

2013

Philos Phenomenol Research

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This paper seeks to give an account of what it is for an individual to instantiate thisness (i.e. primitive individual essence). Thisnesses are peculiar entities, and even those who endorse their existence and instantiation by objects/entities, have said very little about how an individual and its thisness are related. My approach will be to seek out a model for the instantiation of thisness by canvassing broadly Aristotelian accounts of the substance/attribute relation, and then by making appropriate modifications to the most likely candidates in order to accommodate an individual's instantiation of thisness. What will emerge is that the model with the most utility makes thisness redundant in the case of material substances. Nonetheless, I will suggest that a version of the model can be appropriately applied in the case of other individuals which might instantiate thisness: for example, events (where these are conceived as a fundamental category of ontology distinct from material substances).

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“…), ii) that there are, however, no thisnesses of non-actual individuals (Adams 1981), also iii) that there are no thisnesses of individuals that will exist, but that do not exist yet, and finally iv) that there are thisnesses of individuals that have existed but no longer exist (Adams 1986 I think it is important at this point to deal with some initial concerns regarding the basic picture, and this is what I will do for the remainder of this section, primarily by focusing on Adams' TTT. This process will lead to the amendment of TTT, and in Section 2 I will return to the Incoherence objection and state how the amended picture can answer the 6 I am, however, largely sympathetic with the arguments against material objects having thisness (see Diekemper (2009) objection. The answer will, in turn, lead to some surprising results, and these will require further defense before concluding the paper.…”

Section: The Makings Of a Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

The existence of the past

Diekemper

2013

Synthese

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My goal in this paper is to address what I call the 'Incoherence' objection to the growing universe theory of time. At the root of the objection is the thought that one cannot wed objective temporal becoming with the existence of a tenseless past-which is apparently what the growing universe theorist tries to do. To do so, however, is to attribute both dynamic and static aspects to time, and, given the mutual exclusivity of these two aspects-so the thought goes-incoherence results. My solution to the problem is to offer an alternative account of past existence that is compatible with a dynamic conception of time. I take as my starting point Adams' suggestion that the past exists in virtue of the existence of thisnesses of past individuals. I first seek to defend this suggestion, before amending it in order to provide a satisfactory response to the Incoherence objection. The result is a new growing universe theory which avoids the Incoherence objection but which has some surprising features of its own. Chief among these is the rejection of present events. I argue, however, that such a rejection is a necessary consequence of endorsing the growing universe theory, and that it is not as counter-intuitive as it initially sounds.

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Thisness and Events

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

The Virtues of Thisness Presentism

The Virtues of Thisness Presentism

The Ontology of Thisness

The existence of the past

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