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A Puzzle About Persistence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity (simpliciter) as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will begin by formulating the two widely held doctrines and our puzzle more fully and more carefully. Then, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to analyzing views one might adopt that could minimize the tension.
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References
1 Eventually, we will also need to be careful about the phrase ‘exists at’ as it occurs in the face-value analysis. When we consider the doctrine of temporal parts, we will see that authors disagree about the meaning of this phrase. Some, like Heller, Mark in The Ontology of Physical Objects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), 5Google Scholar and 12-13, equate ‘exists at’ with ‘wholly exists at.’ Other authors will understand ‘exists at’ in a way that equates it with ‘partially exists at.’ This difference will not be important until Section V.
2 Shoemaker, S. Identity, Cause, and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984), 240Google Scholar
3 Swoyer, C. ‘Causation and Identity,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1984) 593-622, at 601CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Whenever causation is a topic of discussion, there are questions about the nature of the causal relata. We find it useful to think of each of the causes and effects to be mentioned here as an object's having a property at a time. For convenience, we will sometimes refer to these things as states of affairs. But absolutely nothing turns on the issue of what ontological category an object's having a property at a time falls into. As far as our paper is concerned, the reference of phrases of the form ‘x's having F at t’ might be an event or a trope or a fact or even a State of affairs in some more loaded sense of ‘state of affairs.’ Such nuanced ontological matters are not our present concern. It will be important to understanding our paper that the reader recognize that the causal relations of interest to us are not fundamentally relations between material objects. We are not talking about so-called object causation. Occasionally, we may speak loosely about an object standing in a causal relation, but this should always be construed as shorthand for speaking of the object being part of a state of affairs that stands in the causal relation.
5 See Shoemaker, S. Identity, Cause, and Mind, 234-60Google Scholar; Swoyer, C. ‘Causation and Identity’ D. Armstrong, ‘Identity Through Time,’ in Inwagen, P. van ed., Time and Cause (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980)Google Scholar; Zimmerman, D. ‘Immanent Causation,’ Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997) 433-71Google Scholar.
6 Cf. Shoemaker, S. and Swinburne, R. Personal Identity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1984), 75.Google Scholar
7 Armstrong, D. A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), 15-16 and 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Armstrong would understandably take exception to our labeling these sentences as identity-over-time sentences, given that when we use the word ‘identity’ elsewhere in the paper we mean strict identity. Jubien, Michael (M. Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics [Malden, MA: Blackwell 1997], 73-4)Google Scholar holds a view that is similar in some ways to Armstrong's. Unlike Armstrong, Jubien thinks the four-dimensionalism/three-dimensionalism issue is a conventional matter not decided by the facts; whether objects like the truck that Jill test-drove endures or perdures is a conventional matter. But about a sentence like (1), as it is used in ordinary contexts, Jubien thinks that ‘is identical to’ expresses what he calls a similarity relation, one of what may be many same-truck-as relations. (As Jubien sees it, the truck that Jill test-drove, even if it does endure, is a scattered object by 6:00 P.M. with many of its parts spread all about — there will be bits of rubber left on the road — and so is not strictly speaking identical to the one Pam bought.) Theodore Sider also adopts a view with some similarities to Armstrong's. According to Sider (Sider, T. ‘All the World's a Stage,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 [1996] 433-53, at 446)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, all identity-overtime sentences like (1) are — strictly speaking — false, since they are present-tense sentences. Analogous past-tense and future-tense sentences can be true, but only because the verb phrases ‘was identical to’ and ‘will be identical to’ do not express identity. These sentences are analyzed in terms of Lewis's I-relation, which is discussed in our Section V.
9 See Chisholm, R. ‘Identity Through Time,’ in Kim, J. and Sosa, E. eds., Metaphysics (Malden, MA: Blackwell 1999), 277Google Scholar; Butler, J. ‘Of Personal Identity,’ in Perry, J. ed., Personal Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press 1975), 101Google Scholar; and T. Reid, ‘Of Identity,’ in Perry, Personal Identity, 112. Some further evidence of Shoemaker's commitment to the face-value analysis is his reporting his disagreement with much of what Butler, Reid, and Chisholm have to say about identity (Identity, Cause, and Mind, 237).
10 Hirsch, E. The Concept of Identity (New York: Oxford University Press 1982), 218-22Google Scholar
11 This puzzle was brought to our attention by an insightful e-mall message from David Robb. Noonan, Harold Personal Identity (London: Routledge 1991), 105-6Google Scholar and Akiba, Ken ‘Identity is Simple,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 37 (2000) 389-404, at 390-2)Google Scholar, both citing Lewis, are concerned with issues with certain similarities to our puzzle. They are concerned with the appropriateness of attempting to analyze identity-over-time given that identity is well understood. Our puzzle is even more reminiscent of Salmon's, Nathan argument in ‘Modal Paradox: Parts and Counterparts, Points and Counterpoints,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1986) 75-120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 111-12 against x's equaling y being grounded in or reducible to facts about material origins, bodily continuity, or memory. His argument is based on x's equaling x not being grounded in anything but x's existence.
12 In something of a similar spirit, one might suggest that the causal character of identity-over-time is not conceptually necessary at all; perhaps it is an a posteriori necessary truth that has no conceptual origins. This would be almost as disappointing an end to our puzzle as would be the two-faced analysis, one quite at odds with the a prion'/analytical flavor of typical philosophical discussions of the causal character of identity-over-time.
13 Cf. Carroll, J. Laws of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994), 148-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 See Slote, M. ‘Causality and the Concept of a “Thing,”’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4(1979)387-400, at 393CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Cartwright, R. ‘Scattered Objects,’ in Lehrer, K. ed., Analysis and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1975)Google Scholar appears to be one example.
16 Kim, J. ‘Noncausal Connections,’ Nous 8 (1974) 41-52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 We are setting aside Sider's stage view. Sider takes the stage view to be a four-dimensionalism, but this seems to be because he equates four-dimensionalism with the thesis that objects do not endure; stages do not endure — they are not wholly present at more than one time. But neither is it true, according to the stagist, that material objects persist through time by having temporal parts, by perduring. So, by the same sort of reasoning, one might just as well conclude that stagism is a 3D view. Indeed, it makes sense that these objects neither endure nor perdure since the main point of stagism is that material objects do not persist at all. In any case, whether or not his view should be labeled a four-dimensionalism, the relevance of Sider's view to our puzzle is addressed elsewhere in our paper. (See Note 8.)
18 E.g., Quine, W.V.O. From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1953), 65-8.Google Scholar
19 Merricks, T. ‘There Are No Criteria of Identity Over Time,’ Nous 32 (1998) 106-24, At 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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23 Lewis, D. Parts of Classes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991), 7 and 79-81Google Scholar
24 We have to be a little careful. Unrestricted composition says that whenever we have at least two things, there is also their fusion. Strictly speaking, it does not say that their fusion is a material object, only that it exists. With something like the fusion of Elvis's left arm from 1965 to 1975 and the tallest mountain on Pluto from 1991 to 1999, there is no question about its being material (assuming it exists), but there might be some question about its being an object.
25 As was true of Shoemaker and Armstrong (see Section I), Lewis has not exactly endorsed the causal principle. But we think Lewis will accept that if a property of a temporal part of person X at t causes a property of a temporal part of person Y at t*, then there are properties F and G such that X's having F at t causes Y's having G at t*.
26 We want to express our thanks to David Robb for raising the puzzle. Thanks also to Randy Carter, Laura Ekstrom, Mark Heller, Trenton Merricks, David Sanford, Jonathan Schaffer, Peter Unger, and some anonymous referees for their guidance. A version of this paper was read at the 1999 Midsouth Philosophy Conference and the 2001 meetings of the North Carolina Philosophical Society.