Abstract
How do objects persist through time? According to endurantism, objects persist through time and do not have temporal parts. According to the transcendentist version of endurantism, objects exist at times by participating in events that occur at those times. This version of transcendentism offers specific metaphysical and semantical advantages over other versions of endurantism. In this paper, we defend transcendentist endurantism against a series of criticisms that have been recently offered by Kristie Miller.
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Notes
It is worth noting that in the philosophical literature, two senses of transcendence are distinguished: an existential one, according to which universals are transcendent if they do not ontologically depend on their instances, and a locative one, according to which universals are transcendent if they are not located in space (Lowe 2006, 98–100). The relevant sense here is of course the locative one.
We thank an anonymous referee for raising this question.
In Miller’s words: ‘For, according to transcendentism, claims about objects, at, and across, time and modal space, are made true by the existence of certain events. One might, then, think it natural to say that an object is composed of, or grounded by, or supervenes on, the events that are the truthmakers for claims about that object at, and across, times and worlds’.
We thank an anonymous referee for distinguishing these two ways in which the implication can be problematic.
In Sider’s (2001, 59) words: ‘Existence-at must be distinguished from quantification. By “there is”, I intend atemporal quantification over all objects, not just those located at any particular time (...). “Exists-at” is not the logician’s “∃”.’
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Costa, D., Giordani, A. In Defence of Transcendentism. Acta Anal 31, 225–234 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0270-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0270-z