Andrea Clemente Maria Bottani

Bringing back intrinsics to enduring things

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 Psimpliciter 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 Psimpliciter (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

Georg Gasser and Matthias Stefan (eds), Personal Identity: Complex or Simple?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 268 pp., £55.00 (US

{x}\,{P}

Van Inwagen on Temporal Parts and Identity Across Time

xPsimpliciter?’ 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.

Individuals, Essence, and Identity Themes of Analytic Metaphysics

According to the resemblance nominalism, properties depend on primitive resemblance relations among particulars, while there are neither universals nor tropes. Rodriguez-Pereyra (Resemblance nominalism. A solution to the problem of universals, 2002) contains a systematic formulation and defence of a version of resemblance nominalism according to which properties exist, conceived of as maximal classes of exactly precisely resembling particulars. In this chapter, I raise a couple of objections against Rodriguez-Pereyra’s version of resemblance nominalism. First, I argue that Rodriguez-Pereyra’s solution to the so-called imperfect community difficulty is untenable. Second, I argue that Rodriguez-Pereyra’s idea that sparse properties are bound to be lowest determinates, while determinable properties of any degree are to be treated as (infinite) disjunctions of determinates, is liable to undermine the whole approach.

Individuals, Essence and Identity

A critical review of the interesting volume edited by Gasser and Stefan, with analytical observations about the various contributions.

Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic

I shall not argue against the two main theses of van Inwagen’s paper: the idea that persons, cats and trees are three-dimensional entities lacking temporal parts; and the attack on the ‘fallacy of adverb pasting’, adverb pasting being a certain reading of the semantic role temporal qualifications play in predicative sentences, i.e. the tendency to attach them to singular terms rather than to predicates. Even if I shall not discuss these central issues, I shall deny their purported relationship, the idea that four-dimensionalism can be in some way “entailed”, “produced” or “generated” by the fallacy of adverb pasting. My thesis will be that four-dimensionalism and adverb pasting are quite independent of one another. In addition, I shall say something about the notion of a temporal part. For a major aim of van Inwagen’s paper is to define a clear, neutral concept of a temporal part in terms of which the thesis that ordinary objects have temporal proper parts can be understood, and so asserted or denied. I will claim that van Inwagen’s definition of ‘temporal part’ is not acceptable, nor does it make easier for the enemy of temporal parts to state her case. In my commentary, the latter point comes first, the former later.