Talk:Perdurantism

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This article is not in line with the usage you'll find in the literature: "Perdurantism" (and talk of "temporal parts") implies the "worm" theory - in stage theory, persisting things don't have temporal parts. There's a nice clear discussion of this in Sally Haslanger's article "Persistence through time" in the Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. (She coins the term "exdurance" as a name for the type of persistence stage theorists believe in). So stage theory should not be described as a variety of perdurantism ("four-dimensionalism" is available as a label for the view of which perdurantism and stage theory are variants - this is Sider's usage). And Sider and Hawley should not be described as perdurantists - they are stage theorists. Josh Parsons 07:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The bearing of time's divisibility on the existence of instants
From the article: "[...] for every interval of time, there is a sub-interval. Consequently there are no instants [...]." I can't be arsed to comb through Zimmerman, but we need verification that this conclusion is in the reference and not original research. Particularly because it is incorrect. The same argument could be made: the real line is arbitrarily divisible and so there are no numbers. Thanks in advance. 02:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The above is incorrect (and contains an inaccurate parallel). In the philosophy of time, instants are defined as intervals of time which have no subintervals. If time is gunky, then every interval of time has subintervals. So, necessarily, if time is gunky, there are no instants. A better parallel is this: if space is infinitely divisible (gunky), then there are no point-sized regions of space. This, of course, is true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.74.230.154 (talk) 20:40, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The article also seems to state this falsehood as fact. Minimally it should be reworded to make it clear it is the false insistence of a specific article. Kaell (talk) 22:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Disambiguate. What falsehood, and why do you take it to be false?
 * This isn't really the place to argue the point. It is not a conclusive fact. It may be a conclusive fact that it is wrong for the same reason that individual numbers can exist on a number line, even though you can find a midpoint between any two distinct points. Again, not the place to really argue these facts though. Kaell (talk) 03:28, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

24.78.210.79 (talk) 07:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Reasons to be a Perdurantist
This section appears to be little more than an attempt to persuade people to the author's viewpoint. I suggest removing it entirely. I also suspect, and I realise I'm on shaky ground with such an assertion, that Ted Sider himself added all the references to him in the article.92.0.193.240 (talk) 13:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support deleting, or a re-write at the least. Dick Holman.Archolman 02:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I tried to rewrite, but it still needs a lot more content (with sources) to merit staying in the article. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 23:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Stage and Worm theory. Differences?
I have always had trouble learning about the distinction between the stage and the worm theories of perdurantism, specifically in what it entails for our experience. Currently, here is my take on the issue (but note I am assuming both views entail a B-theory of time):

Worm View: Objective change is not real, but subjective change is. We exist as a four dimensional object, but we only experience a portion of it at any time. I consider here that these portions are experienced in sequence, as is the nature of our being extended in time as worms, but not wholly aware of it, hence the addition of "subjective change".

Stage View: Neither subjective change nor objective change is real. Who we are is associated with only a single temporal part, or "stage", of an even bigger culmination of related objects connected over time. The whole "persists" in label only. As we are not extended in time this explains why we experience a single portion of time and not the whole, which is why subjective change is not applicable either.

I think that the article can benefit from making this point clearer, but that is just partly due to my confusion with the terms themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.234.151.95 (talk) 16:40, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Additional resources
Jeremy Butterfield (Philosophy of Science, Cambridge) has written extensively on the endurance/perdurance debate. See, for example, arXiv:physics/0401112v1, arXiv:physics/0406021v1, and arXiv:physics/0512064v1.

It may also be helpful to make reference on this page to the philosophical concepts of "haecceity" and "quiddity" - and perhaps even Martin Heidegger's notions of "thisness" and "whatness" - as these contribute to the formulation of theories of identity and inform the endurance/perdurance distinction. George963 au (talk) 03:08, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

"Humean"
I've linked the word "Humean". I suspect an even better link would be to Humean definition of causality, but I don't know the subject matter well enough to make that judgment. If it is the right link, can someone make it? If not, can you suggest a better one? 2A00:23C4:AF34:4E01:B9C3:36EB:8AE0:E9B8 (talk) 09:40, 10 May 2022 (UTC)