Abstract
From time to time, the idea that enduring things can change has been challenged. The latest challenge has come in the form of what David Lewis has called a “decisive objection”, which claims to deduce a contradiction from the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, when that idea is combined with eternalism. It is my aim in this paper to explain why I think that no argument has yet appeared that deduces a contradiction from a combination of eternalism and the idea that enduring things change with respect to their temporary intrinsics, except ones that do so by committing scope fallacies.
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Notes
I would have like to have followed Lewis, and others, in calling what he describes as a “decisive objection against endurance” as an account of the persistence of objects through change “the problem of temporary intrinsics.” But some have insisted that my criticism of this objection is not in fact an argument against the existence of the problem of temporary intrinsics. They insist that the problem of temporary intrinsics is not the problem that I believe that Lewis and others have said it is; this despite the fact that it seems that the phrase ‘the problem of temporary intrinsics’ was, I believe, first used by Lewis in the sense in which I had intended to use it – as a term for a problem that the claim that enduring things can change with respect to their temporary intrinsics runs into. They insist, rather, that the problem of temporary intrinsics is the problem of what the metaphysics and semantics is of statements of the form ‘x is F at t.’
Now that problem is a good one deserving of a solution. However, I think that it is not the problem that Lewis is referring to in the quotation below. How could the issue of what the semantics and metaphysics of statements of the form ‘x is F at t’ is be the “principal and decisive objection against endurance as an account of the persistence of ordinary things,” as Lewis has said the problem of temporary intrinsics is? Perhaps the issue of the semantics and metaphysics of statements of the form ‘x is F at t’ would be raised if there were a decisive objection to endurance as an account of the persistence through change of intrinsic properties; but it is clearly not identical with that problem.
In addition, the problem of saying what it means to say of an object that it has a property at a time is a problem that arises even in cases where an object does not change. So long as an object has any property at any time, whether that property is intrinsic or not, and whether it ever loses that property or not, there is an occasion for asking what the possession of a property at a time involves, both semantically and metaphysically. Thus, that problem has nothing specifically to do with temporary properties, and so has nothing specifically to do with change, whereas the passage that I will cite clearly suggests that it is the phenomenon of change that is the cause for the difficulty for the idea that things that persist through change with respect to their intrinsic properties endure.
Nevertheless, in order to forestall misunderstanding, I shall avoid using the phrase ‘the problem of temporary intrinsics.’ David Lewis has said that there is a decisive objection against the idea that enduring objects persist through change of intrinsics properties, and I shall call that objection “the Decisive Objection.”
Lewis, D. (1986) On the plurality of worlds. (pp 203–204). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Earlier in the section, “Against Overlap,” from which this passage was taken, Lewis discusses the (alleged) problem of accidental intrinsics and encourages the adoption of a “counterpart” view of how it is possible for a thing to have different intrinsic properties in different possible worlds. That there is a problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different intrinsic properties at different times, Lewis insists, is analogous to the problem of accidental intrinsics (“Endurance through time is analogous to the alleged trans-world identity of common parts of overlapping worlds” (p. 204)). I do not wish to get involved here in a discussion of whether there really is a problem of accidental intrinsics, except to point out the following. It is not as if Lewis (or anyone else that I know of) gives an argument for the claim that if there is a problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different properties in different possible worlds, then there is a problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different properties at different times. Rather, he merely claims that the problems are analogous. Thus, if the problems really are analogous, as Lewis insists, then one could take the present paper's argument against the claim that there is a problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different intrinsic properties at different times to have a corollary – that there is, likewise, no problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different properties in different possible worlds. Alternatively, if one is convinced that there really is a problem of accidental intrinsics, one could then take my argument against the claim that there is a problem of how it is possible for a thing to have different properties at different times to be a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that the two problems are analogous.
The first two solutions are rejected by Lewis for reasons that need not concern us here; but it should be noted that his reasons for rejecting them do not amount to showing that they are impossible. Rather, he thinks that the cost of adopting them are too high in that they amount to rejecting the idea that such properties as that of being bent are really intrinsic. Of course, Lewis favors the third solution. A fourth solution involves giving up eternalism in favor of presentism. But that is a solution that is not in play here.
This is not to say that the notion of an intrinsic property is unproblematic. See Lewis, D. (1999) Extrinsic properties. reprinted in his Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology. (pp. 111–115). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and Lewis, D. & Langton, R. Defining ‘intrinsic.’ ibid., pp. 116–132.
See, for example, Lewis, D. On the plurality of worlds. (pp. 202–205); Merricks, T. (1995) On the incompatibility of enduring and perduring entities. Mind, 104(414): 523–531, esp. pp. 526–528; and Mark Hinchliff, op. cit.
Sider, T. (2001) Four-dimensionalism. (p. 11) Oxford: Clarendon.
Merricks, op. cit., pp. 526–527.
If a thing endures through a change from being F to not being F, it does not merely come to lack F; it acquires one of F's contraries. But a thing cannot, it is said, possess contrary properties. Thus, again, it will be argued, change in enduring things is impossible.
While I have doubts about whether eternalism and presentism can be understood as substantive and rival views about time, it is not my intention to discuss that issue here. That issue is the subject of my paper, “Time for a Change: A Polemic Against the Presentism/Eternalism Debate,” Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 6: Time and Identity (MIT), (in press). And my views on the perdurance/endurance controversy are best left to another occasion.
See Merricks, p. 526, Jubien, M. (1993). Ontology, modality, and the fallacy of reference. (pp. 24–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and Lewis, D. On the plurality of worlds. pp. 202–204.
If this interpretation of (4) sounds a bit odd, perhaps it will appear less so if rendered as ‘if it is now the case that some object is F at one time, and it is now the case that it is not F at another, then it is now the case that it is both F and not F.’
One could see how an inconsistency would follow from the idea that something has and then lacks a property, in conjunction with eternalism, if eternalism expressed the idea that all times do not merely exist, but exist at the very same time. For if so, it would follow that, if at t 1 x is F at t 2, then x is F at t 1, for times that exist at the same time are the same time. Then, if x were now F at one time, and not F at another, that object would be both F and not F at the same time; and that is a contradiction. But I see no reason why eternalism should be thought to express an idea which seems absurd on its face and for which no good reason can be given. Moreover, the idea amounts, ironically, to a capitulation to and adoption of some form of presentism. If all times exist at the same time, then, since the present time clearly exists, all times would be the present time, and, thus, everything that has ever existed or will exist would exist now.
See Sider, Four-dimensionalism. op. cit.
There are periods of time, one which begins before Aristotle's death and ends after my birth, during which we both can be said to exist. But, even so, there is still no time during which Aristotle's life and mine overlap.
My thanks to Michael McKinsey and Ted Sider for reminding me of this point.
I owe this point to Michael McKinsey.
I suppose that one might claim that numbers exist “outside of time,” rather than at all times. However, numbers do have a least some properties at times; for example, the number two has the property of being my favorite number, and the number one used to number my suits until I bought another. So, I don't see any principled objection to its being true (in worlds in which there are times) that the number seven is prime now and at all times.
Scott, H. & Carter, W.R. (2002) On presentism, endurance, and change. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32, (3):491–510, esp., 599. There, they write, “X exists simpliciter, if and only if X is among the things that the universe includes...That x exists simpliciter does not alone imply that X did exist, that X presently exists, nor that x will exist.”
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Wayne State University for a 2003 Summer Research Grant that enabled me to do some of the preliminary work on this paper, and Michael McKinsey for reading and commenting on various drafts. A shorter version of this paper was read at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, California, March 2005, and I thank Dean Zimmerman for his comments on that version.
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Lombard, L.B. Scope Fallacies and the “Decisive Objection” Against Endurance. Philosophia 34, 441–452 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9046-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9046-z