Abstract
It is a commonplace that things persist, though thinkers disagree over what persistence consist in. Views about time are closely related to views about persistence, though some have questioned the compatibility of certain combinations, such as Jonathan Tallant’s recent argument that presentism is incompatible with all views of persistence, including endurantism. We believe that such arguments can be avoided with neutral definitions of the terms. However, a nearly exhaustive investigation of contemporary literature revealed that, except for two that we could find, all definitions of “persist,” “endure,” and derivatives are incompatible with presentism! And, the exceptions fail to capture endurantist intuitions about endurance. But we believe that present-friendly and intuitive definitions of these concepts can be given. In this paper we offer such definitions. We go on to apply our definitions to two sample cases, showing that if our neutral definitions are used, the arguments in the cases fail.
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Notes
Apparently Lewis borrowed the concepts of endurer and perdurer from Johnson’s dissertation (1984), chapter 2 (introduced on p.57–58) - Cf. Forbes and Johnston (1987: 113), in which Johnson states that Lewis borrowed the concepts from him. If so, then the current usage traces at least back to Johnson, prior to Lewis.
In his (2019), Baron does a nice job of replying to Tallant. This does not render our project redundant, however, for two reasons. First, our primary project is not to reply to Tallant, unlike Baron’s. While we do in fact respond to Tallant in applying our proposed definitions, this is not our primary goal, but simply an application of our main goal. Our project is much broader, which is to show that nearly all definitions in the literature are incompatible with presentism, and to offer presentist friendly definitions. Second, while Baron does a nice job of replying to Tallant, we ultimately reject his proposed definition of “endure,” because it (along with Crisps) conflicts with (our) endurantist intuitions – more on which later in the paper. Thus, our project is not redundant given Baron’s.
As further justification of coming up with a good definition, consider Sider (2001: 53–55) in which Sider gives several reasons why one may want a good definition.
Crisp’s (2003) being the exception, but it won’t do for the reason to be discussed below.
For those repeating Lewis, see for example, Lowe (1987), Forbes and Johnston (1987), Rea (1998, 2003), Jackson (1998), Merricks (1999b), Hales and Johnson (2003), Lowe and McCall (2006, 2009), and Daimon (2017). And for discussion or use of definitions without question, see for example, Haslanger (1989a, b), van Inwagen (1990), Sider (2001), Fine (2006), and Magidor (2015).
Though for a definition of “wholly present” see Crisp and Smith (2005).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing us to present an argument.
Thus, we disagree with Merricks (1999a), in which he claims that endurantism entails presentism. First, we do not believe he has succeeded in his case, since his argument rests on a non-neutral definition of “endure,” and thus all the non-presentist endurantist would need to do is reject his definition of “endure.” Furthermore, a close look at his argument reveals that he in fact did not show that endurantism itself entails presentism, even with his definition of “endure.” Rather, all he showed is that endurantism, defined as he defined it, along with (i) the idea that things have properties and parts simpliciter, and (ii) the idea that the world contains real change, entails presentism. But that is three theses (endurantism, change thesis, and simplicity thesis) together entailing presentism, and not just endurantism by itself entailing presentism.
This is a modification of Sider’s (2001: 59) definition of “instantaneous temporal part.”
Will Endure: O will endure from the present = df. (i) O exists in the present, (ii) O does not and never will have proper temporal parts, and (iii) there will be some xs and a time tn, such that: (a) tn will be future of the present, (b) one of the xs will exist at tn, (c) for any time tx, if tx will be future of the present and past of tn, one of the xs will exist at tx, and (d) for each x that will be among the xs, F(O = x).
If one does not want to put this in terms of O existing in the present, one can adopt the following analogue: Endured2: O endured2 to t = df. (i) O exists at time t, (ii) O does not and never did have proper temporal parts, and (iii) there were some xs and time tn, such that: (a) tn was past of the present, (b) one of the xs existed at tn, (c) for any time tx, if tx was future of tn and past of the present, one of the xs existed at tx, and (d) for each x that was among the xs, P(O = x), and mutatis mutandas for Will Endure.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for presenting this worry to us.
So long as she doesn’t also embrace other theses, such as the Change Thesis – the thesis, roughly, that an object undergoes real change over time (for more see Crisp 2003).
Tallant puts this in (Lowe’s) terms of Identity Dependence, which he defines and discusses on p. 2211.
But, for those curious, their definitions found on p. 55 are:
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WHO. An object O is wholly present at a time iff the identity of O is intrinsic to that time;
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END. An object O endures over an interval I iff it is wholly present at each moment in I
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PER. An object O perdures over an interval I iff it exists at each moment in I, but does not endure over I.
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Argument: For any object y, if y has proper temporal parts, then y has more than one proper temporal part – x and w, such that there is no overlap between x and w. So, if x and w are proper temporal parts of y, then each of x, y, and w exist, since something can be a part of a whole only if it exists. But, since x and w are wholly distinct proper temporal parts of y, x and w must exist at different times. Thus, if time t is the present instant, and if x exists in the present instant, then w exists in a time other than the present. If so, then presentism is false. Thus, presentism entails that there are no objects with proper temporal parts.
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Hochstetter, K., Hess, K. A Presentist-Friendly Definition of “Endure”. Philosophia 48, 1837–1854 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00204-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00204-7