Abstract
AbstractModal counterpart theory identifies a thing’spossibly being Fwith its having a counterpart that isFat another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’shaving been Forgoing to be F, with its having a counterpart that isFat another time.Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.”Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy29: 18–34 in this journal endorses modal counterpart theory but holds that temporal counterpart theory is untenable because it does not license the ascription of the intuitively correct temporal properties to ordinary objects, and hence that we should understand ordinary objects, including persons, as transtemporal ‘worms’. I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence.
Highlights
Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Benovsky, J. 2015
I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence
The way things are for our modal counterparts does not merely show what is possible for us; it is, rather, what makes things possible for us and so licenses the ascription of modal properties.7. This poses the question of whether we can provide an account of representation and counterparthood that licenses the ascription of properties to an object in virtue of the way things are for its counterparts. It poses the question of whether the causal relation, which holds on temporal counterparts at different times, licenses the ascription of temporal properties or if, as Benovsky and other critics of temporal counterpart theory suggest, only identity will do in the temporal case—where for worm theorists the identity in question is the identity of persons understood as maximal aggregates of person-counterpart-related stages
Summary
According to modal counterpart theory, developed by David Lewis as an alternative to Kripkean possible worlds semantics for quantified modal logic, the way. Stages of ordinary objects are ordinarily understood to be bound together by causal relations—which is by itself another reason to reject the suggestion that ordinary objects may be gerrymandered transworld worms consisting of stages at different causally isolated worlds Given these constraints on temporal counterpart relations for persons and other ordinary objects, barring science-fictional cases of fission and fusion, ordinary objects do not overlap: every stage belongs to just one maximal counterpart-interrelated aggregate of stages of a given kind so that there is no more than one object of that kind occupying a place at any time—as we commonsensically assume. He endorses the doctrine that ordinary objects are transtemporal individuals, which does not cause trouble, and rejects temporal counterpart theory, according to which they are instantaneous, time-bound stages This poses the question of why, given that he endorses counterpart theory as an account of modality he should reject temporal counterpart theory as an account of persistence.. Offers a friendly amendment to Lewis’s account: there is, he argues, independent reason to reject temporal counterpart theory
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