Abstract
While there has been considerable recent criticism of perdurance theory in connection with a Humean understanding of causality, perdurance theory conjoined with causal realism has received relatively little attention. One might, then, form the impression that perdurance theory under the auspices of causal realism is a relatively safe view. I shall argue, however, to the contrary. My general strategy is to show that there is no plausible way of spelling out the perdurance position (of the non-Humean, causal realist sort). I implement this strategy by revealing several general problems concerning the causally-connected temporal parts scheme. I begin with a short account of perdurance theory. There follows a description of two general views of causality and the two subsequent accounts of the perduring object; then, the criticism.
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Oakes, M.G. Perdurance and Causal Realism. Erkenntnis 60, 205–227 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ERKE.0000012882.97341.8c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ERKE.0000012882.97341.8c