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June 25, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XV
The 15th Philosophers' Carvnival is at The Buckingham Inquirer. Irem's post on temporary intrinsics made the final cut.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:28 PM
June 18, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XIV (and XV Plug)
I just realized that the 15th Philosophers' Carnival is next week (if you want to submit a post, please do so very soon), and I forgot to link to the 14th. Here it is. There's actually an OrangePhilosophy post in it, for the first time in a while.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:55 AM | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
On being multi-located
It occurred to me last night that there is something about the problem of temporary intrinsics that I cannot understand. If there is any problem with an object's having contradictory properties without violating Leibniz' Law, then there should equally be a problem about an object's having two contradictory locations. For an object to undergo change and survive, it must be located at two distinct times. How can something be located at two distinct times? The answer is easy for friends of temporal parts: "The object is partially located at one time, and partially located at another time, that's how." But what would the three-dimensionalist say? The standard strategy when responding to the problem of temporary intrinsics is to take it seriously that the contradictory properties are had not simultaneously (which would be a violation of Leibniz' Law) but at different times. You are taking this seriously if you construe properties as disguised relations to times. E.g. One has not the property of being bent and the property of being straight (which contradict), but rather the property of being bent-at-t-1, and the property of being straight-at-t2 (which do not contradict.) It seems that in the case of the problem of contradictory locations, there is no such way out. One couldn't say: Being located at t1 contradicts being located at t2, but being located at t1 at t1 doesn't contradict being located at t2 at t2. (Funny thing: One couldn’t say this, but not because "if we know what being located is, we know it's not a relation," but precisely because we already knew that to be located at a time is to have a relation to that time!) The only (eternalist) way out for the three-dimensionalist is to insist that objects can be wholly located at two distinct times without contradiction. In particular, she can insist that to assume that being wholly located at t1 contradicts with being wholly located at t2 is to beg the question against the three-dimensionalist. Somehow, this alone doesn't seem satisfactory to me.
Posted by ikurtsal at 12:45 PM | Comments (13)