Abstract

According to the traditional way of understanding debates in the metaphysics of persistence, perdurantists hold that persisting material objects have temporal proper parts while endurantists hold that they do not. Several theorists recently have suggested in opposition to this traditional picture that endurantism be understood as the thesis that the identity of a persisting object x is intrinsic to each of the times at which x is present. It is argued here that unless this non-traditional version of endurantism entails a certain haecceitist element, it is subject to counterexample from the metaphysical possibility that two qualitatively identical material objects "pass through" one another during some portion of their respective careers. It is argued further that the suggested version of endurantism does not mix well with haecceitism and that consequently it is best resisted.