Temporal parts and their individuation

I first introduce two conceptions of persons and the way in which persons exemplify pain. According to the Naïve Cartesian View persons are atomic, synchronically and diachronically unified entities that directly exemplify pain. While according to the Four-Dimensionalist View persons non-atomic entities, whose pains are directly exemplified by their person-stages and only derivatively exemplified by the person. After presenting each of these views, in the second of half of the paper, I divide the Four-Dimensionalist View into two versions, Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism (the view according to which person-stages are Cartesian Egos-in-Minature, capable of intrinsically exemplifying mental properties) and Stage Four-Dimensionalism (the view according to which persons are instantaneous whose mental properties are extrinsic/relational). Against Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism it is argued that the view requires to deny the moral permissibility of voluntarily chosen pains, and that it requires to believe that there more harms in the world than typically imagine, and that raises difficulties for our understanding of the redemptive and pedagogical pains. Against Stage Four-dimensionalism it is argued that the view denies obvious truths about punishiment and compensation, prudence (and temporal neutrality), and that the view implies that there is no well-being for persons. Inasmuch the Naïve Cartesian View avoids these difficulties we have reason to prefer it, and to prefer a metaphysical theory consistent with it.

There are long-standing debates in Descartes scholarship surrounding the metaphysics of extended substance. Some of the central topics involved are the real and modal distinctions, nominalism versus Platonism about the essence of extended things, and the unity or multiplicity (and divisibility or indivisibility) of extended substance. In the recent literature, a group of scholars—Thomas Lennon (2007), Kurt Smith (2010), and then Smith and Alan Nelson (2010)—favors a reading of Descartes as a monist about extended substance and an idealist (or even a transcendental idealist) about finite bodies. Other commentators, including Marleen Rozemond and Calvin Normore in recent papers, are loosely united by the claims that Descartes was a pluralist about extended substance and a realist about particular bodies (Rozemond 2011; Schmaltz 2009; Normore 2008; Slowik 2001; Stuart 1999; Des Chene 1996). My topic here is Descartes's account of the concept of space and its relationship to body. Because the discussion of place and space is closely connected with motion and divisibility, the texts concerning space are important for interpreting Descartes's metaphysics of the material world, and they show up frequently in that literature. My claim here is that a careful interpretation of the concept of space in Descartes's Principles of Philosophy supports the second kind of reading of the metaphysics of extension: there are many extended substances that are really distinct, and these particular parts of matter are real as opposed to phenomenal.

2003

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; xxiv + 255 pp.; pb. ¿ 15,99; ISBN: 0 19 924443 3.

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol 35, 2011

Please direct your attention to the traditional problem of the Cartesian Circle: In order to answer the skeptic, Descartes needs to show that his clear and distinct ideas (whatever they are) are true, and to show this, he needs to show that God exists and is not a deceiver. In arguing for these conclusions in the Third Meditation, Descartes seems to rely on certain premises precisely because they are clear and distinct. Thus, Descartes seems, in the course of his argument for the claim that clear and distinct ideas are true, to presuppose-illegitimately-that clear and distinct ideas are true. And that would seem to be pretty bad. This is a famous problem and I thank you for considering it. But now, forget about it because that is not the problem that I want to focus on. Instead, I want to begin by stressing the often overlooked way in which the Fourth Meditation-not the Third-threatens to generate a fascinating and perhaps more virulent form of the Cartesian circle. I will then argue that this new Cartesian circle serves as a surprising stepping stone toward the rehabilitation of the much-maligned interpretation of Descartes as holding a coherence theory of truth, an interpretation so maligned that its main (and perhaps only) defender-Harry Frankfurt-came to repudiate it. 2 I will then argue that the coherentist interpretation receives further, significant support from

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Philosophy Compass, 2016

Relativity theory is often said to support something called ‘the four-dimensional view of reality’. But there are at least three different views that sometimes go by this name. One is the B-theory of time, according to which the past, present, and future are all equally real and there is nothing metaphysically special about the present. A second is ‘spacetime unitism’ (as we call it), according to which there is a spacetime manifold, and if there are such things points of space or instants of time, these are just spacetime regions of different sorts: thus space and time are not separate manifolds. A third is perdurantism, according to which persisting material objects (rocks, trees, human beings) are made up of different temporal parts located at different times. We sketch routes from relativity to the B-theory and to unitism. We then discuss some routes to perdurantism, via the B-theory and via unitism.

Early Science and Medicine, 2007

Descartes' account of the material world relies heavily on time. Most importantly, time is a component of speed, which figures in his fundamental conservation principle and laws. However, in his most systematic discussion of the concept time is treated as somehow reducible both to thought and to motion. Such reductionistic views, while common among Descartes' late scholastic contemporaries, are very ill-suited to Cartesian physics. I show that, in spite of the apparent identifications with thought and motion, Cartesian time retains-in the form of what I will call 'successive duration'-precisely the intrinsic structure necessary to serve as an independent parameter of quantitative physics. As is often the case with Descartes, he gives the impression of embracing traditional doctrines while in fact radically transforming the underlying concepts to serve his scientific agenda. His theory of time, though formulated in Aristotelian terms, anticipates Newton in important respects.

I argue that four-dimensionalism, especially when combined with mereological universalism, is incompatible with the desire satisfaction account of well-being, because it adds to the population of suffering individuals whose interests could plausibly be said to diverge from those of the persons in whom they are embedded as temporal parts, and that in doing what is ultimately good for persons we must do what is ultimately bad for subpersons. I call this 'the frustrating problem' for the four-dimensionalist. I examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem, the Parfit-inspired claim that identity is not what matter, the pronoun revisionism of Noonan, the indirect account of Hudson, the sensible stages view of David Lewis, a 'multiple concepts' account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) the no mental states view according to which temporal parts of persons possess no intrinsic mental states and, thus, have no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions is compelling. Thus the four-dimensionalist has reason to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the adherents of the desire satisfaction view have at least some reason to reject four-dimensionalism.

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2019

If Christian hope is to be held coherently then life after death must be a metaphysical possibility for the one who holds it. Materialist accounts of human persons face serious problems in establishing this possibility. Hudson has defended a four-dimensional solution: If persons are a series of temporally scattered, gen-identical object stages then a living human organism could be a shared temporal part of two persons: one with a corpse as a further temporal part, and another with an imperishable body extending eternally from the Last Day. This solution suffers from the general problem of counterpart hope: that genidentity does not provide sufficient unity to ground prudential future concern, and the specific problem of quasi-hope: that as a living organism I cannot know whether death is a metaphysical possibility for me, and I thus cannot possess coherent Christian hope.

Analysis, 2019

In a recent article, Ned Markosian gives an argument against four-dimensionalism understood as the view that time is one of four identical dimensions that constitute a single four-dimensional manifold. In this paper, I show that Markosian attacks a straw man as his argument targets a theory known to be false on empirical grounds. Four-dimensionalism rightly conceived in no way entails that time is identical to space. I then address two objections raised by Markosian against four-dimensionalism rightly conceived.