Bringing back intrinsics to enduring things

Abstract

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 (Formula presented.)simpliciter?’ 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.