The Metaphysical Equivalence Of Three And Four Dimensionalism

Erkenntnis 62 (1):91-117 (2005)
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Abstract

I argue that two competing accounts of persistence, three and four dimensionalism, are in fact metaphysically equivalent. I begin by clearly defining three and four dimensionalism, and then I show that the two theories are intertranslatable and equally simple. Through consideration of a number of different cases where intuitions about persistence are contradictory, I then go on to show that both theories describe these cases in the same manner. Further consideration of some empirical issues arising from the theory of special relativity lead me to conclude that the two theories are equally explanatory, and thus finally that they are metaphysically equivalent.

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Kristie Miller
University of Sydney

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Parts: a study in ontology.Peter M. Simons - 1987 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Four Dimensionalism.Theodore Sider - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (2):197-231.

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