Abstract
According to David Lewis, the argument from temporary intrinsics is ‘the principal and decisive objection against endurance’. I focus on eternalist endurantism, discussing three different ways the eternalist endurantist can try to avoid treating temporary intrinsics as relational. Two of them, generally known as ‘adverbialism’ and ‘SOFism’, are familiar and controversial. I scrutinize them and argue that Lewis’ scepticism about them is well founded. Then, I sketch a further, to some extent new, version of eternalist endurantism, where the key idea is that intrinsic monadic properties had simpliciter by objects are eternal, time-transcendent properties in Fine’s sense, i.e., properties had by objects regardless of time. Eternal properties of an object are ipso facto sempiternal (i.e., had by the object whenever it exists). When something is P at one time and not P at another, it is radically indeterminate (which does not mean ‘neither true nor false’) whether it is P simpliciter or not. I argue that an account along these lines is better placed to treat intrinsic monadic properties of changing objects than any other known alternatives insofar as (1) it recognizes that something is P simpliciter (where P is monadic); (2) it is able to account for x’s being P at a time in terms of something’s being P simpliciter; (3) it has an answer to the question ‘is \({x}\,{P}\) simpliciter?’ when x is P at one time and not P at another. I conclude that endurantism is no less at ease with intrinsics than perdurantism is.
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Notes
More precisely, according to the eternalist, reality includes entities existing at different times some of which are before others. Indeed, suppose that (i) modal realism is true, (ii) in each world only present objects exist, and (iii) no time in a world is the same as a time in another world. In such a case, eternalism would be false despite the fact that reality includes entities existing at different times.
See also Jackson (1994).
If Haslanger and Jackson are right, relational properties can sometimes be intrinsics (which is the case with other relational properties like having exactly two proper parts) and, if Haslanger and Jackson are right, this is the case of shape-relations to times. But Lewis points out that the problem of change specifically concerns intrinsic monadic properties (see Lewis 2002, p. 4).
See Eddon (2010).
Wasserman (2003) suggests that Lewis’ intuition that some actual objects are bent simpliciter is ultimately motivated by the plain truth of ordinary sentences like ‘my legs are bent’, together with the failure to take into account that they are present-tensed (see p. 418). If this were the case, Lewis’ claim that something is bent simpliciter would be ultimately ill-grounded. But this interpretation seems to be far from charitable. In Lewis’ reading, as far as I can see, the ordinary present-tensed sentence “My legs are bent” does not state that my legs are bent simpliciter. It states that my legs are presently bent, i.e., they have a present part that is bent. My legs are worms, presently-bent but sometimes straight, which also explains why the tenseless non-ordinary sentence “My legs be bent” cannot be true. As far as I can see, the source of Lewis’ claim is that “if we know what shape is, we know that it is a property, not a relation”. In other words, necessary and sufficient conditions of bentness, straightness and so on can be given that do not mention in any way times (nor anything not included in what is said to be bent). Of course, this idea is questionable and controversial. As I have just argued, however, the idea does not seem to be incompatible with special relativity.
According to dialeteists, some contradictions are indeed true, so being straight fails to imply not being bent (see Priest 2006). I shall be shortly back to this in the final part of the paper.
‘Temporal qualification has to do with the ways individuals have properties. [...] Temporal qualifiers are often adverbs. Sam is presently fat. But he is t-ly thin’ (Johnston 1987, p. 128)
See Inwagen (1990, pp. 249–250).
Compare being Hugh-ly brother, an adverbially modified property that one exemplifies just in case he is brother of Hugh. One cannot understand what way of being a brother being Hugh-ly brother is, if one ignores who is Hugh. For being a brother in such a way can only consist in bearing a relation to what “Hugh” denotes.
In ‘true at t’ and ‘obtaining at t’, the phrase ‘at t’ is ambiguous between a referential and an adverbial reading, in the same way as it was ambiguous in ‘having at t’.
See pp. 11–12
An anonymous referee made the following objection. Consider p, the proposition that a is straight simpliciter. If p is true, it follows that a does not have straightness in relation to something, and that appears to be consistent with p having its truth value in relation to a time. I reply that, if p is true at \(t^{1}\) and not at \(t^{2}\), then a has straightness at \(t^{1}\) and not at \(t^{2}\), which entails that a having redness does not depend only on a and redness themselves. It depends also on time t , i.e., it is time-relative.
‘SOFism’ is the acronym of ‘State-Of-aFfairs-ism’. See Haslanger (2003)
The bentness [...] is nothing other than the property that the candle has when the type state of affairs obtains (in other words: it is the property of the candle in the token state of affairs)’ (Haslanger 2003).
Or, according to ‘pseudo-adverbialists’, by bearing the same triadic relation of having to incompatible properties and different times.
This would be the case even if the two ‘ways of speaking’ were just as fundamental, and intertranslatable without any semantic loss.
An invariance is an equivalence class. Even times might perhaps be defined as a third kind of invariances between states of affairs tokens. If so, there would be nothing in the world, at a most fundamental and basic level, except state of affairs tokens and equivalence classes (invariances) of these tokens.
So understood, indeed, SOFism can be hardly compatible even with what Wasserman (2006) calls ‘Plato’s paradigm’, our standard model for the metaphysics of predication according to which objects have properties (however conceived of) and predicative utterances are true depending on what properties are had by objects.
According to Haslanger, of course, what is identical across time is the object involved in the state of affairs rather than the state of affairs itself (the candle, say, rather than the state of affairs type the candle’s being bent). However, if state of affairs types and tokens are regarded as ontologically basic and fundamental, while objects and properties are construed as invariances of states of affairs along the lines sketched above, nothing genuinely enduring remains at the fundamental ontological level, and a complete inventory of the world reduces to a simple list of states of affairs types and tokens. Since states of affairs do not endure, nothing enduring remains at the basic level.
Here and in the scheme (S) below, “regardless of the time” means “atemporally”, as distinct from both “permanently” and “tenselessly”. The general idea is that x is P regardless of the time just in case x is P irrespective of the content of this or that time (i.e., independently of what is the case at this or that time). In this sense, something can be permanently P without being P regardless of the time, and it can be tenselessly P without being P regardless of the time. If John is permanently fat, for example, he is fat whenever he exists, but this depends on what it is the case at any moment of John’s lifespan, and so it is not the case regardless of the time. On the other hand, it can be tenselessly the case that John’s life is about 80 years long, but it cannot be the case regardless of the time, for it depends on what it is the case at this or that time (in order for John’s life to be about 80 years long, two times \(t^{1}\) and \(t^{2}\) have to occur at which John exists and John does not exist before \(t^{1}\) and after \(t^{2}\), and \(t^{2}\) comes exactly 80 years after \(t^{1}\)). Properties like those of lasting exactly three days, of being sometimes in a good mood, of being bent at midnight of 25 July 2014, and so on, can be had tenselessly but not regardless of the time, for they are indeed relations to times. I assume that, when Lewis says that intrinsic properties are had simpliciter, he means inter alia that they are had regardless of the time. For, inasmuch as they are intrinsic, they are had by something just in virtue of how it is, which implies that they are neither relations to times (dyadic properties had by couples of objects and times), nor properties had by single objects ‘relative to times’, whatever that might mean.
If (S) is valid, “x is permanently P” follows from “x is P regardless of the time”, even though the reverse does not hold. Inferences like “The war is 30 years long, the war exists at t, therefore the war is 30 years long at t”, which has true premises and a false conclusion (in case the war, say, begins at t), would be counterexamples to (S) if a war were 30 years long regardless of the time. But this is definitely not the case, since being 30 years long is a relation the war bears to times, rather than a property the war has irrespective of the content of this or that time.
This seems to have some bearing on the debate over the purported substantive equivalence of perdurantism and endurantism (see for example Lowe and McCall 2003). For, if what I have argued for is true, then there is no working scheme of translation of ‘endurantese’ in ‘perdurantese’.
There are exceptions. See for example Heller (1990).
It is important to realize that (TDP) is restricted to properties like ‘heavy’, ‘straight’, ‘long’ and so on, and does not hold for properties like running, writing a paper, traveling thirty miles, etc, that cannot be had at a single moment but only during a temporal interval. As a consequence, any purported counterexamples to (TDP) that involve properties of the latter variety are merely apparent.
In the presentist case, this follows from Prior’s well-known ‘redundancy theory of the present tense’, which is the idea that no grounded distinction can be drawn between present tensed and tenseless sentences (see Prior 1967). An anonymous referee suggested to me that presentists might understand (1) as saying that x is, was and will be always P, which would make (3) a consequence of (1) alone. For the presentist this is certainly an option, but it is not without cost, for it obscures the distinction between being permanently P and being P simpliciter, treating ‘x is P simpliciter’ as an abbreviation of ‘x is (= is or was or will be) P-at-t for any time t of x’s lifespan’, which is heavily time-relative. Presentists often claim that they are better placed than eternalist endurantists to give intrinsic properties had simpliciter their due. Embracing this treatment of ‘being P simpliciter’ cancels the advantage.
Sider (2001) says that, if candles are stages, it becomes clear how it is that the candle can have both bentness simpliciter and straightness at times (see also Hawley 2001). I think that what stages can but candles cannot do is precisely this. It is this that prevents one to identify candles with stages.
An anonymous referee argues that the account has no explanatory value, for it does not clarify what a time-indexed predicate like ‘is straight-at-t’ means. But the account can do that in a number of ways.. Suppose s is the spatial region in which an enduring thing a is exactly located at t. One can explain what it is for an enduring thing being straight-at-t in terms of s being straight simpliciter (see above). And one can explain a’s being heavy-at-t in terms of the matter constituting a at t being heavy simpliciter It may be assumed that, for any property P, being P-at-t consists in some entity being P simpliciter.
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Bottani, A.C. Bringing back intrinsics to enduring things. Synthese 197, 4813–4834 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1157-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1157-2