Online research in philosophy

The terms ‘endurance’ and ‘perdurance’ are commonly thought to denote distinct ways for an object to persist, but it is surprisingly hard to say what these are. The common approach, defining them in terms of temporal parts, is mistaken, because it does not lead to two coherent philosophical alternatives: endurance so understood becomes conceptually incoherent, while perdurance becomes not just true but a conceptual truth. Instead, we propose a different way to articulate the distinction, in terms of identity rather than temporal parts: an object endures if its identity is determined at every moment at which it exists. We make precise what it means for the identity of an object to be determined at a moment. We also discuss what role the endurance/perdurance distinction, so understood, should play in the debates about time, material objects and personal identity.

Contra Swinburne I argue that God cannot exist within time. There is a sufficient condition for its being now now. Because the conception of God existing within time cannot account for this condition, it has to be rejected. Based on Priest I argue that God's creative act is this: to cause the actuality of the universe within the soul.

The terms ‘endurance’ and ‘perdurance’ are commonly thought to denote distinct ways for an object to persist, but it is surprisingly hard to say what these are. The common approach, defining them in terms of temporal parts, is mistaken, because it does not lead to two coherent philosophical alternatives: endurance so understood becomes conceptually incoherent, while perdurance becomes not just true but a conceptual truth. Instead, we propose a different way to articulate the distinction, in terms of identity rather than temporal parts: an object endures if its identity is determined at every moment at which it exists. We make precise what it means for the identity of an object to be determined at a moment. We also discuss what role the endurance/perdurance distinction, so understood, should play in the debates about time, material objects and personal identity.

Metaphysicians of space and time are fond of talking about objects being present at, wholly present at, or existing at certain times, or occupying certain regions of space, or even regions of space-time. Take, for example, this famous set of definitions due to Mark Johnston and David Lewis: Let us say that something persists, iff, somehow or other, it exists at various times; this is the neutral word. Something perdures iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is wholly present at more than one time; whereas it endures iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time. (Lewis 1986, p. 202) A great deal of debate has been conducted in this terminology: debates about whether anything does endure or perdure; about the ontology of temporal parts; about whether it makes sense to apply this kind of thinking to space, as well as to time (we can ask, for example, the analogous questions whether things are extended by being entended, or pertended); about whether it can be applied to space-time, and if so, to relativistic space-time. These debates have been fruitful, but cursed with a certain amount of imprecision. People sometimes talk past each..

Thomas Aquinas holds that the existence of God is self-evident in itself (because God’s essence is his existence) but not to us (since we do not know the divine essence). Giles of Rome agrees with the first part of Thomas’s claim, but he parts company with Aquinas by maintaining that God’s existence is self-evident to the wise. Since the wise can know that God is his existence, they cannot think of him as not existing. This paper reexamines Thomas’s teaching in the light of Giles’s criticisms. By examining closely what is involved in the claim that God’s essence is his existence, and how one’s knowledge of this claim is related to the knowledge that God exists, it argues that Thomas’s position has the resources to withstand Giles’s objections.

Anselm holds that God is simple, eternal, and immutable, and that He creates “necessarily”—He “must” create this world. Avicenna and Averroes made the same claims, and derived as entailments that God neither knows singulars nor interacts with the spatio-temporal universe. I argue that Anselm avoids these unpalatableconsequences by being the first philosopher to adopt, clearly and consciously, a four-dimensionalist understanding of time, in which all of time is genuinely present to divine eternity. This enables him to defend the divine perfections in question, and the claim that God creates “necessarily,” while still maintaining the position that God knows singulars and acts in the physical world—in one, immutable, and eternal act.

Whether or not there are non-existent objects seems to be one of the more mysterious and speculative issues in ontology.1 To affirm that there are non-existent objects is to affirm that reality consists of two kinds of things, the existing and the non-existing. The existing contains all of what is in our space-time world, plus all abstract objects, if there are any. Most people, it seems fair to say, would think that this is all there is. For them the only real question in ontology can be what kinds of existing things there are. However, followers of Meinong maintain that this isn’t all there is. There is also another kind of things, those that do not exist. And to say this, the Meinongians continue, is to accept that reality is divided into two basic kinds of things, the existing and the non-existing. Whether or not reality contains two basic categories of things, existing and non-existing, or only one, existing, is what the debate about non-existent objects is all about. And as such it seems to be the most speculative of the debates in ontology. How could we human beings possibly decide it? One might think that to find out whether or not there are abstract objects is hard to decide, since they are not in space and time, causally inaccessible, unobservable, etc.. But whatever difficulty there might be to answer the question whether or not there are abstract objects, it has to be even harder to decide whether or not there are non-existent objects. Abstract objects, if there are any, at least..

The present paper defends Augustine's claim that time is ontologically dependent on the world. My proof is accomplished by establishing two sub-proofs. First, I argue that time requires change by criticizing Shoemaker's argument for the counterclaim that time does not require change. Second, I go on to show that there is no source of change apart from the created universe. I conclude that if we grant the traditional theistic assumption that the created universe has a beginning and an end, then since time is ontologically dependent on the world, time cannot extend from the infinite past into the infinite future. And if time does not extend from the infinite past into the infinite future, then a temporal God has a beginning and endures for only a finite period of time. This implausible consequence gives us reason to believe that God is eternal.

In this paper I argue that the classic concept of eternity, as it is presented in Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas, must be understood to involve not only the claim that all temporal things are epistemically present to God, but also the claim that all temporal things areexistentially present to God insofar as they coexist timelessly in the eternal present. I further argue that the concept of eternity requires a tenseless view of time. If this is correct then the existence of an eternal God logically depends on the truth of the tenseless account of time. I conclude by suggesting that the Christian theologian ought to reject a tenseless ontology.

Many theists reject the notion that God’s eternity consists in his timelessness — i.e., in his lacking temporal extension and failing to possess properties at any times. Some of these “divine temporalists” hold that, for philosophical reasons, it is impossible to accept both the timelessness of God and the view that God knows what happens at different times and brings about events in time. 1 Many reject divine timelessness as a dubious import from Platonism with no biblical or theological warrant.2 And some question the very intelligibility of the doctrine.