Alethic modalities, temporal modalities, and representation JIRI BENOVSKY Abstract: In this article, I am interested in four versions of what is often referred to as "the Humphrey objection". This objection was initially raised by Kripke against Lewis's modal counterpart theory, so this is where I will start the discussion. As we will see, there is a perfectly good answer to the objection. I will then examine other places where a similar objection can be raised: it can arise in the case of temporal counterpart theory (in fact, it can arise in the case of all kinds of counterpart theories, independently on modal realism), and a very similar worry can also arise against modal realism itself or against an ersatzist theory of possible worlds itself. For similar reasons, in similar situations, a similar objection will arise. What is interesting is that it is not the case that a similar response can be given in all of these similar cases. So, in the end, we will see what dissimilarities there are and how and why they are relevant. In particular, we will see the differences there are between alethic modalities and temporal modalities. In the case of alethic modalities (metaphysical necessity and possibility), the objection can be answered by appealing to the notion of representation, while this does not work very well in the case of temporal modalities. Keywords: Counterpart theory, Humphrey objection, representation, modal realism, ersatzism 2 §1. I have a doppelganger. His name is Jerry and not only is he very much like me, but he also likes doing the same things I do. He physically resembles me a lot, he is the same size, the same build, the same strength. Like me, he likes to go running, hiking, and climbing. He is exactly as fit as me – no more, no less. He climbed the same summits I did, in the same weather conditions, at the same speed, with the same technical skill; he is exactly as good – or bad – as I am. He looks and behaves so much like me that if you'd see him running up a mountain you'd think it's me. Last week, Jerry did something I did not: he managed to climb up the Everest. That's a big performance, far above my (our) usual level, so when I learned about his achievement I was really happy for him. But, after a few seconds of thought, I also started to feel happy for me, because if he managed to do it, that means that I could do it as well, given how similar we are. Great news, I can go on the Everest, I can do it! The feeling I have – namely, the idea that something is possible for me because something is actual for somebody else – will play an important role in the discussion below. Indeed, in this article, I will be interested in four versions of what is often referred to as "the Humphrey objection". This objection was initially raised by Saul Kripke (1972, p.45) against David Lewis's (1968) counterpart theory, so this is where I will start the discussion. As we will see, there is a perfectly good – well-known – answer to the objection, along the lines of the story of Jerry and me. I will then examine other places where a similar objection can be raised: it can arise in the case of temporal counterpart theory (in fact, it can arise in the case of all kinds of counterpart theories, independently on modal realism) but a very similar worry can also arise against modal realism itself or against an ersatzist theory of possible worlds itself. For similar reasons, in similar situations, a similar objection will arise. Now, what is interesting is that it is not the case that a similar response can be given in these similar cases. So, in the end, we will see what dissimilarities there are and how and why they are relevant. In particular, we will see the differences there are between alethic modalities and temporal modalities. In the case of alethic modalities (metaphysical necessity and possibility), the objection can be answered by appealing to the notion of representation, while this does not work very well in the case of temporal modalities. §2. Let us start with David Lewis's modal counterpart theory, under his own realist framework of possible worlds (see Lewis (1968, 1986)). This version of modal counterpart theory claims that all individuals are world-bound (that is, they inhabit only one world) and provides an analysis of de re modal statements in this way: 3 (i) (X is possibly F) ↔ (X is F or at least one counterpart of X is F)1 (ii) (X is necessarily F) ↔ (X is F and all of X's counterparts are F) The picture such an analysis provides is the following (I put it here mainly because it will be useful to compare it to another picture, in §4 below). In W1 (say, the actual world), Jerry is, as we know, an alpinist and he is 185cm tall. He does not exist in any other world, but he has counterparts in other worlds. In W2, there is an individual, Jerry*, who is exactly like Jerry except that he is only 175cm tall and instead of going in the mountains he likes to do Kung-Fu. In W2, he is the most similar person to our actual Jerry. The idea behind the counterpart-theoretic analysis of modal statements is then that Jerry could have been smaller and could do Kung-Fu, because one of his counterparts (Jerry*) is such. What is a counterpart? The counterpart relation is based on similarity. In short, something is an other-worldly counterpart of Jerry if it is an individual inhabiting a different possible 1 According to Lewis, it would be enough to say that (ii)' (X is possibly F) ↔ (at least one counterpart of X is F) because of postulate P6 he introduces in Lewis (1968, p.111): "Anything in a world is a counterpart of itself" (that is, the counterpart relation is reflexive). My (i) is only more explicit about this. Similarly for (ii). Jerry Jerry* W1 W2 counterpart 4 world who resembles him in his important features and who resembles him more closely than any other object in that world. It is important that such individuals, his counterparts, are not (numerically) identical to him: they all exist in their own worlds and he is the only one inhabiting the actual world. There are neither causal nor spatiotemporal relations between Jerry and his counterparts – what there is, is a relation of similarity and that's how we can say that they are what he would be, would the world be different. (More on this right below.) Among the traditional motivations one can have to endorse modal counterpart theory is the fact that it easily avoids any worries with accidental intrinsic properties. Jerry is 185cm tall in W1 but he can be said to have the modal property of being possibly 175cm tall in virtue of having at W2 an other-worldly counterpart that is 175cm tall. But since the two incompatible properties (being 185cm tall, and being 175cm tall) are had by different things – different modal counterparts – no contradiction threatens to arise (see Lewis (1986, p.201-)). Now, the objection I am interested in here claims that such a modal counterpart theory leads to difficulties precisely because, to do the job it promises, it must be a world-bound individuals theory, which allows individuals to inhabit just one single world and no more. It is this feature of Lewis's theory that yields objections saying that it misses the target: counterpart theory does not provide a proper account of what may happen to us, because what are to be our counterparts are just different individuals who resemble us. So, what might happen to Jerry is not about Jerry at all, it is a story about someone else, Jerry*, living in some other world which, in Lewis's view, has neither causal nor spatiotemporal relations with the actual world. This is Saul Kripke's worry (Kripke (1972, p.45)): we have a strong common-sense belief that we have many properties only contingently and that there are many different ways for us to be different. If, for instance, I just avoided a deadly fall while climbing up the Matterhorn, it is crucial, in order to justify my sensation of relief, that I have the belief that it was me who could have fallen and died. But according to counterpart theory, my idea that I could have died is not really about me: if I say this, I'm speaking about someone else – someone who resembles me and who is my counterpart but who is not me in any way. Following counterpart theory, we then get a concept of de re modality that is quite different from our common-sense beliefs about what might happen. Alvin Plantinga (1973, p.164) raised the same point in an analogous fashion: if I say I'm able to perform a certain action A ("It is possible for me to do A.") then, according to counterpart theory, I'm speaking about someone who does A but who is not me – and of what importance and interest could this possibly be to me? How can actions done by someone else in some other world be of any help to me to know what I can do or not? Indeed, it seems that, according to counterpart theory, I (I 5 myself) cannot perform A, for when I say "It is possible for me to do A" I'm not speaking about myself but about some other individual. Yet a different way to put the worry is Trenton Merricks's (2003, p.522): "That objection charges counterpart theory with changing the subject. When I ask whether I might have been happier, so the objection goes, I am asking whether I – this very person – might have been happier. It is simply not to answer my question to say that an other-worldly someone else is happier, even if he is very much like me, even if we call him 'Merricks's counterpart'". There is a perfectly good answer to these worries. The objectors are right to insist on the fact that all these things – being smaller, dying on the Matterhorn, being happier – happen to somebody else than the individual we are concerned with in the actual world. Jerry is not 175cm tall, I did not die on the Matterhorn, and Merricks is not as happy as some of his counterparts. Some other guys are (smaller, dead, happier). So, in what sense does modal counterpart theory relate what happens to these other persons to Jerry, Merricks, or me? One way to answer the question is simply to insist that, for instance, "being possibly 175cm tall" just is "having a counterpart that is 175cm tall", the latter being the analysis of the former. But such a way to put it will hardly convince the objectors. The better – now quite standard – way to put it is in terms of representation. The idea is exactly the same as in the story about me (in the actual world) and Jerry (in the actual world) from the opening paragraph of this article. I – I myself – feel happy for me, because Jerry (not me) managed to climb up the Everest. Why? Because given how similar we are, the fact that he did it means that I could. This is the most common-sense and natural thing to say, and we often do think about de re modality in this way. There is a situation that is extremely similar to my own situation, and something happens in this situation. So, it could happen in my situation as well. And that's all. The main counterpart-theoretic claim is no more loaded than that: the fact that this other very similar situation exists represents the possibility for my situation to be such as well, exactly as Jerry's success (in the actual world) represents the possibility that I could succeed (in the actual world) as well, given how similar we are. §3. In this article, I will discuss and compare four "Humphrey2 objections": 2 This label comes from the original formulation of Kripke's objection to Lewis: "The counterpart of something in another possible world is never identical with the thing itself. Thus if we say 'Humphrey might have won the election (if only he had done such-and-such)', we are not talking about something that might have happened to Humphrey but to someone else, a 'counterpart'. Probably, however, Humphrey could not care less whether 6 Modal counterpart theory à la Lewis Modal realism à la Lewis Modal ersatzism (and similarly for modal counterpart theory under ersatzism) Temporal counterpart theory That I can possibly climb the Everest is one thing, and that a counterpart of me climbed the (counterpart of) Everest is another. I myself do not have the property of possibly climbing the Everest, since only the counterpart did it. What the counterpart does is irrelevant to what properties I have. That the actual world could be different is one thing, and that there exist other spatio-temporally and causally disconnected universes is another. These universes are just there, but they have nothing to do with modality, it's just things that exist. That the actual world could be different is one thing, and that there exist some abstract entities is another. These entities are just there, but they have nothing to do with modality, it's just things that exist. That I climbed the Everest yesterday is one thing, and that somebody else did it is another. If a counterpart of me – who is not me – did it, this does not mean that I did. We have seen above the first objection, and we have seen that it can be satisfactorily answered by appealing to the notion of representation. What we realize here is that the way something has its modal properties is a very different story from the way it has its non-modal intrinsic properties. Jerry is 185cm tall. This is an actual intrinsic property he has, perhaps it is a trope, perhaps it is a universal, perhaps it can be reduced to more fundamental properties about the particles he is composed of, but whatever the correct analysis of this property is, it is something he has, or something that constitutes him in one way or another. Modal properties are different. The property "being possibly 175cm tall" is not something that Jerry has in any comparable way. He does not instantiate, say, the trope of being possibly 175cm tall. There is no such trope. Rather, under modal counterpart theory, the better way to put it is to claim that it is correct to say that Jerry could have been 175cm tall, because there is a situation very similar to his where an individual very similar to him is 175cm tall – in the way we have seen at the end of the preceding section. Modal properties are things of a different kind than actual intrinsic properties, and modal counterpart theory acknowledges this fact very well – indeed, it requires it. But this is no defect of the theory, it is a virtue. To say that Jerry "has" a "modal property" is nothing more than to say that something is possible for him, and this is someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world." Kripke (1972, p.45) 7 represented by the existence of a situation where this something is actual for somebody else, suitably similar to Jerry – thus, it is consistent/compatible with the way Jerry is. Let us now move on to the other Humphrey objections. §4. The kind of worry that lies behind the Humphrey objection to modal counterpart theory can be raised in a similar way against modal realism itself, and against ersatzism itself as well. Modal realism à la Lewis is, in short, the claim that there are many possible worlds as concrete and flesh-and-blood as the actual world. All possible worlds (including the actual world) are things of the same kind, and all possible worlds (including the actual world) are spatio-temporally and causally disconnected from each other – they are isolated – this is how they are distinguished one from each other. The notion of actuality is then given an indexical analysis: to be actual is no more than to be here, in this world. Possibility and necessity are then analysed in terms of possible worlds in a standard way: it is possible that P iff there is at least one world where P, and it is necessary that P iff in all possible worlds P. The way Merricks formulated (see above) the Humphrey objection against modal counterpart theory was that it changes the subject. A similar objection can be raised against modal realism itself: that the actual world could be different is one thing, but that there exist other spatio-temporally and causally disconnected universes is another; these universes are just there, but they have nothing to do with modality, it's just things that exist. So, even if we grant Lewis all the worlds he claims there to be, he still did not say anything about possibility and necessity, he only made a claim about what there is, and the claim is that there are much more concreta than what we thought. But the fact that there are more people, more planets, and more donkeys has nothing to do with what is possible or necessary, it only has to do with what there is. Ersatzism is not very different from modal realism in this respect, although it is a very different theory of possible worlds. Ersatzsim goes around by different names like "actualism", "moderate modal realism", or "abstractionism". "Ersatz modal realism" is the label given to this family of theories by David Lewis (1986a, chap. 3), since according to this view possible worlds just are not worlds. Instead of a plurality of 'genuine' concrete spatiotemporal worlds à la Lewis, the ersatzers postulate a plurality of abstract non-spatio-temporal entities that play the theoretical role of possible worlds. This is why the view is also properly called "abstractionism" (see, for instance, Van Inwagen (1986)) since it makes extensive use 8 of abstract (i.e. non-spatio-temporal) entities, and makes them to be a central piece of modal metaphysics. According to this view, there really is only one world (quantifying unrestrictedly), the actual world (that is absolutely, and not relatively, actual), and it contains abstract entities that play the role of possible worlds. Thus, on this view, possible worlds really are actual entities – and that's why the view is also often called "actualism" since the claim is here that only what is actual exists, and merely possible non-actual things don't. So, here we have a theoryschema: instead of a plurality of concrete possible worlds, we have here a plurality of actual abstract entities that play the same theoretical role. The question that arises now is – how? How do those entities manage to play the role they are intended for? And, in the first place, what are they? The answer here is not simple because many different versions of ersatzsim are on the market. Abstract possible worlds have been said to be (maximal and consistent) states of affairs, sets of propositions, or special properties – ways things might have been. One of the best-developed version of ersatzism is Mark Heller's (1998a, 1998b) linguistic ersatzism. In Heller's (1998a) view a possible world looks roughly like this: {<<13,69>, {3,48}>, <<589,38>, {7,19}>, <<88,235>, {3}>, ...} a point a set of numbers in the representing manifold properties properties being exemplified at a certain point of the manifold the representation world = a set of sets/ordered pairs This Quine-style view takes possible worlds to be complex sets that represent a consistent distribution of properties in a space-time manifold (only two-dimensional in the schema above). At this point it should be obvious how a Humphrey-style objection can arise here as well. Indeed, exactly as we have seen above in the case of modal realism, one can worry here that it is one thing to say that the actual world could be different, but that it is an entirely different 9 thing to say that there exist some abstract entities or complex sets. "The sets just sit there", as Merricks (2003, pp.535,539) nicely puts it. As before, the worry is that these entities (sets or other) are just there, but they have nothing to do with modality, it's just things that exist. So again, the objection goes, ersatzism is not a theory about possibility and necessity, it is a theory about what there is, and it claims that in addition to the concrete entities of the actual world there are also many abstract (actual) entities, like sets of numbers, propositions, or other. But, as before, the fact that there are such abstract entities has nothing to do with what is possible or necessary, it only has to do with what there is (in the actual world). Ersatzism can also come in a 2-in-1 package, combined with modal counterpart theory, as illustrated in the figure below where the abstract possible worlds are sets of propositions (to make the schema easier to read than Heller-style sets of numbers): {Jerry is 185cm tall., ...} re pr es en ts c or re ct ly 'is a ct ua li se d' {Jerry is 120cm tall., ...} {Jerry is 175cm tall., ...} re pr es en ts f al se ly re pr es en ts f al se ly a b r s t r a c t p o s s i b l e w o r l d s c o n c r e t e a c t u a l w o r l d 10 According to this view, the counterpart relation holds between the different abstract representatives of individuals from different possible worlds – and not between individuals themselves. Similarity also plays an important role here, like in the case of Lewisian modal counterpart theory. The idea is that it makes sense to claim that some abstract entity can resemble some other abstract entity. The explanation of how it is that two abstract entities can resemble each other will depend on what kind of abstract entities one chooses to make up possible worlds. Perhaps abstract entities can have similar internal structures. In Heller's (1998a) view, where as we have seen worlds are sets of ordered pairs of numbers representing properties, counterpart relations are understood as relations between properties instantiated at points of the manifold – the relevant similarity involved in the counterpart relation is then the similarity between these sets, which is roughly the question of how many members they have in common (see Heller (1998a, p.301-) for more details). This does not make things better, in the eyes of the objector, when it comes to the worry that this view has nothing to do with modality – that it changes the subject. As Merricks (2003, p. 536) puts it, "My being possibly 40 feet tall is not the same thing as there being a particular set of ordered pairs of ordered quadruples of numbers and sets of numbers". Things seem here to be even worse than in the case of a Lewisian modal counterpart theory, for at least people were involved in the Lewisian analysis of what is possible for Jerry. Here, it's just sets of numbers. But to say that there are such sets is one thing, and to say that Jerry could have been smaller is another – and a very different thing to say. To sum up, the family of worries arising here against modal realism, against ersatzism, and also against a modal counterpart theory under ersatzism is very similar to the initial worry we had with modal counterpart theory à la Lewis. When it comes to the two theories of possible worlds (modal realism and ersatzism), the worry is that they have nothing to do with modality but only with what there is, and when it comes to an ersatzist modal counterpart theory the worry is the same as the initial Kripkean one supplemented with the additional worry that sets are even weirder entities than other people to play the role ersatz counterpart theorists want them to play. §5. In the preceding section we have seen three different theories (modal realism, ersatzism, ersatz modal counterpart theory), and we have seen how a Humphrey-style objection can arise against all of them. Now, it is time for answers. There is a perfectly good answer, very similar to the answer provided to the initial Kripkean objection in §2 above. There are two crucial 11 components that constitute the answer: first, to "have" a "modal property" is a different thing than to have an intrinsic actual property (see §3 above), and second, the best way to understand how our three theories work is in terms of representation. It is true that there is nothing modal in the possible worlds themselves or in the counterparts themselves. They are just things there are. But the fact that they are out there means something. It means at the very least that it is possible for something or some world to be such and such, since it is such and such. Take Lewisian modal realism first. If it is the case that there is a spatio-temporal universe exactly like ours except that Jerry is 175cm there, it means that there is no (logical, metaphysical, and perhaps also nomic and biological) contradiction in this situation – otherwise it would not exist (at least under the assumption that there are no contradictions instantiated in a concrete world). This means something. It means that the existence of this world represents the possibility that our world could have been such. Think again about the story of Jerry (in the actual world) and me (in the actual world) from the beginning of this article. The fact that Jerry exists, that he is so much like me, and that he managed to climb up the Everest means to me that I could do it as well. So, we don't even have to look in other possible worlds to get to modality. Modality is to be found in every situation similar to mine. Yes, Jerry (the actual Jerry) is "just a thing that exists". But his existence and the way he is are enough for me to say that something is possible for me. It's exactly the same story with possible worlds, especially in the case of Lewisian modal realism. Indeed, to be able to say that I could climb up the Everest I do not need to look in other worlds – in my own world, there is the actual Jerry, and that's enough. But for other possibilities that concern me there is no such suitable doppelganger to be found in my own world. For instance, say that it is possible for me to climb up the K2. But, Jerry didn't climb up the K2 and nobody else similar enough to me did. So, this is how the simple fact that there are more concreta than those that inhabit my own world is useful, for in some world or another there is someone, suitably similar to me, who did climb up the K2 (or not, in which case it is not possible for me to climb up the K2). So, the existence of all the concreta Lewis postulates has everything to do with modality3. 3 A notable defect of modal realism à la Lewis is that perhaps even the huge number of concreta he postulates there to be is not enough to account for all possibilities. This is Bricker's (2001) objection which claims that 'island universes' are possible – this is the possibility of a single universe containing spatio-temporally and causally disconnected parts. If this possibility is genuine, as Bricker argues, Lewis's theory cannot account for it since it would count such a universe as two (or more) and not as one, given that causal and spatio-temporal isolation is Lewis's criterion for distinguishing possible worlds one from each other. 12 The answer is similar in spirit but technically a bit different in the case of ersatzism like Heller's and in the case of an ersatz modal counterpart theory. Of course, one can say, following Merricks, that Jerry's being possibly 175cm tall is a completely different thing than there being a set of sets of numbers. But these numbers represent something. They represent properties, instantiated in a space-time manifold. (To be able to do this, Hellerian worlds need to be interpreted – a number in itself does not represent anything, of course (see Heller (1998a, p.296)). If the distribution of properties in a space-time manifold is such that it makes up for the existence of someone very much like Jerry except that he is smaller, we get all we need in the same sense we have just seen in the case of modal realism. The fact that there is a (maximal and consistent) representation of a distribution of properties in a space-time manifold where there is a person like Jerry with such-and-such properties is not but means/represents that Jerry could have been smaller. This is how, again, the simple existence of these sets of numbers has everything to do with modality. §6. I hope that in the preceding sections I gave some support to the claim that Humphreystyle objections to modal realism, ersatzism, and to modal counterpart theory (both under modal realism and under ersatzism) do have good answers. In this last section I will try to show why a Humphrey-style objection raised against temporal counterpart theory is stronger and why the good answers from the preceding sections are not available here. Temporal modalities and alethic modalities will turn out to be relevantly different. In short, temporal counterpart theory says that "an object will be F iff it has a future temporal counterpart that is (tenselessly) F, and that an object was F iff it has a past temporal counterpart that is (tenselessly) F" (Sider (2006, p.14)). According to this view, a person like Jerry exists at only one time (he is time-bound, in a similar sense in which he is world-bound according to modal counterpart theory): he is an instantaneous stage that persists through time not by existing at other times but by having different temporal counterparts at other times. Thus, there is a series of stages interrelated by a counterpart relation, and ordinary objects such as Jerry are conceived of as being the stages rather than the whole composed of them (that would be the perdurantist 'worm view'). While persistence through time is thus understood as the having of temporal counterparts at different times, temporal counterpart theory does not deny the existence of temporally extended objects – the four-dimensional entities that are aggregates of stages – they exist as well as the stages do. It's just that, according to this view, the objects we ordinarily name and quantify over are stages rather than four-dimensional worms. 13 To get to see where a Humphrey-style objection comes from here, we can start by asking how this view accounts for there being change in intrinsic properties. Change, according to all perdurantists – friends of temporal counterpart theory or not –, is simply the having of different properties at different times. The trouble with temporal counterpart theory is that there is no one thing that ever has the different properties. Since all objects only exist at one time, there just is nothing in the stage view theorist's world that can undergo a change – it slips out of existence before it can change. Change takes time. But the counterpart theorist's stages do not last long enough. The friend of temporal counterpart theory will of course reply here that a given stage at t1 is F and will be ¬F at t2 in virtue of having as a temporal counterpart another stage existing at t2 that is ¬F. But, the objector says – and here starts the Humphrey objection –, this is only an appearance of a solution for these two stages are just two completely different things. Mellor (1998, p.89) claims that "change needs identity as well as difference" but there is only difference in the stage view, there are only different things with different properties – and nothing that undergoes any change at all. A similar way to put it is this: temporal counterpart theory does not allow ordinary objects to do the things they typically can do. People are stages. But stages are instantaneous entities, they do not have temporal extent. The unwelcome consequence of this is that people cannot do many of the things we would expect them to be able to do. For instance, it seems that a person should normally be able to utter a sentence. But, on the stage view, this turns out to be, strictly speaking, impossible: the utterance of a sentence takes some time and a stage does not last long enough to make such a performance. Or, normally, we would say that a person is able to run, but again, not according to the stage view; strictly speaking, nobody can run because a person is an instantaneous entity and running takes time. What is involved in such objections to the effect that temporal counterpart theory does not provide a good account of change and persistence is a version of a Humphrey objection, applied to temporal counterpart theory: if Jerry says now that he climbed up the Everest last week, the sentence turns out to be true iff he did climb up the Everest last week. But this is, according to temporal counterpart theory, simply impossible, because the person who says now that he climbed up the Everest is a stage, a momentary entity that did not itself exist last week and thus was not able to climb up anything. Jerry, the person who is doing the speaking (or perhaps not even that, see above), is simply not identical, in any sense, to the person who's done the climbing. Granted, Jerry has a counterpart last week that climbed up the Everest. But whatever the counterpart relation is, it is not identity. So, the objection goes, if Jerry says he 14 climbed up the Everest, he is not telling the truth – why should he be allowed to boast that someone else, similar and causally connected to him but still someone else, climbed up the Everest? If one generalizes this objection, one can claim that temporal counterpart theory denies persistence altogether, for it only provides us with different instantaneous entities. Sider defends temporal counterpart theory against this objection as follows: "[It] is wrong to say that the stage view [i.e. temporal counterpart theory] denies that 'You will do it' means that you will do it. 'Ted was once a boy' attributes a certain temporal property, the property of once being a boy, to me, not to anyone else. Of course, the stage view does analyse my having this property as involving the boyhood of another object, but I am the one with the temporal property, which is the important thing. The stage view is consistent with stages having temporal properties; it's just that temporal properties are given a counterpart theoretic analysis." (Sider (2001, p.195)) But this reply is not likely to give satisfaction to the objector. Granted, the stage view is consistent with stages having temporal properties, but not the ones we want. To take Sider's example, if we say "Ted was once a boy", we are ascribing a certain temporal property to Ted (who exists now). But if we endorse temporal counterpart theory, it is not the property of "once being a boy", but rather, the property of "once there being a counterpart of Ted that is a boy". If the counterpart theorist allows these two properties to be equivalent then, the objector claims, he is mistaken – for if it is the former that we ascribe to Ted, it is solely about Ted that we are speaking, but if we ascribe him the latter, we are speaking about Ted and someone else, and that makes all the difference. Sider's response can only appear to be satisfactory if one takes the expression "once being a boy" to be a suitable paraphrase of the expression "once there being a counterpart of x that is a boy", but such a strategy, objectors like Sally Haslanger will claim, "strains the limits of credibility" (Haslanger (2003, p.337)). I can boast that I can climb up the Everest even if I did not – only my doppelganger Jerry did. Yes, I can boast that I can, but I cannot boast I did. Somebody else did. This somebody else's achievement represents the possibility of me being able to do it, as we have seen. Representation is fine and enough when it comes to alethic modalities. But it's not what we want in the temporal case. In the temporal case, I want to say that I did it, and not that although I didn't do it something represents me as having done it. If I didn't do it, then I didn't do it, and no representation can be of any help. That I climbed the Everest last week is one thing, and that somebody else (Jerry) did it is another. The latter is true, the former is false. And even if a temporal counterpart of me – who is not me – did it, this still does not mean that I did. In the case of alethic modalities it is enough to say that even if I did not climb up the 15 Everest, I could, because there is a suitably similar situation where somebody else does. But in the temporal case, a stronger claim is needed. It is not enough to be similar and causally connected to someone who did something to say that I did it (given that temporal counterpart theory explicitly states that I did not). Mere representation is not enough here. In the temporal case we need the real thing, for the story here is about my past and my future, not just mere possibilities. I don't want to have a merely represented past and future, I want to have a past and a future, full stop. As is apparent in the quote above, Sider will simply reply that this is just the paradox of analysis. I cannot refute this response, but I tried to say why in my mind it indeed "strains the limits of credibility". To repeat it: representation is enough in the case of possibility and necessity, but not in the temporal case4. References : BRICKER, P. 2001. Island Universes and the Analysis of Modality. In G. Preyer, F. Siebelt (eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis, Rowman and Littlefield. HASLANGER, S. 2003. Persistence Through Time. In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. 315-354. HELLER, M. 1998a. Property Counterparts in Ersatz Worlds. The Journal of Philosophy pp.293-316. HELLER, M. 1998b. Five Layers of Interpretation for Possible Worlds. Philosophical Studies pp.205-214. KRIPKE, S. 1972. Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press. LEWIS, D. 1968. Counterpart theory and quantified modal logic. Reprinted in Loux, M.J., ed. 1979. The possible and the actual. New York: Cornell University Press. LEWIS, D. 1986. On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. MELLOR, D. H. 1998. Real Time II. London: Routledge. MERRICKS, T. 2003. The End of Counterpart Theory. Journal of Philosophy 100(10):521-549. PLANTINGA, A. 1973. Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals? In Logic and Ontology, M. Munitz (ed.), New York, NY: New York University Press. SIDER, T. 2001. Four-dimensionalism. Clarendon Press. SIDER, T. 2006. Beyond the Humphrey objection. Unpublished. VAN INWAGEN, P. 1986. Two concepts of possible worlds. In Van Inwagen, Ontology, Identity and Modality, Cambridge University Press. 4 I would like to thank Baptiste Le Bihan for stimulating discussions while I was writing this article, and an anonymous referee of Kriterion for very useful comments that helped me to improve it.