Persistence Through Time, and Across Possible Worlds

Jiri Benovsky

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9783110322828
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110323245
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

How do ordinary objects persist through time and across possible worlds? How do they manage to have their temporal and modal properties? These are the questions adressed in this book which is? "guided tour of theories of persistence". The book is divided in two parts. In the first, the two traditional accounts of persistence through time (endurantism and perdurantism) are combined with presentism and eternalism to yield four different views, and their variants. The resulting views are then examined in turn, in order to see which combinations are appealing and which are not. It is argued that the 'worm view' variant of eternalist perdurantism is superior to the other alternatives. In the second part of the book, the same strategy is applied to the combinations of views about persistence across possible worlds (trans-world identity, counterpart theory, modal perdurants) and views about the nature of worlds, mainly modal realism and abstractionism. Not only all the traditional and well-known views, but also some more original ones, are examined and their pros and cons are carefully weighted. Here again, it is argued that perdurance seems to be the best strategy available.

Table of contents

• List of chapters
• Foreword
• Part IPersistence through time
• Chapter 1, Introduction & definitions
• Chapter 2, Problems with presentism
• Chapter 3, The presentist perdurantist view
• Chapter 4, The problem of change in temporary intrinsic properties
• Chapter 6, The Ship of Theseus
• Chapter 8, Four-dimensionalism and common sense
• Chapter 9, The modal objection
• Part IIPersistence across possible worlds
• Chapter 1, Introduction
• Chapter 2, Modal realism
• Chapter 3, Straightforward trans-world identity
• Chapter 4, Modal counterpart theory
• Chapter 6, Modal perdurants
• Chapter 7, Genuine actualism – modal fictionalism
• Chapter 8, Abstractionism-Ersatzism-Actualism
• Chapter 9, Abstractionism and trans-world identity
• Chapter 10, Abstractionism and counterpart theory
• Chapter 11, Abstractionism and modal perdurants
• Chapter 12, Bundle-bundle-bundle theory
• List of figures :
• Bibliography