Perdurance, location and classical mereology

Harold W Noonan

doi:10.1093/analys/anp073

Abstract

In his (2001) Ted Sider takes care to define the notion of a temporal part and his doctrine of perdurantism using only the temporally indexed notion of parthood 'x is part of y at f rather than the atemporal notion of classical mereology 'x is a part of y* in order to forestall accusations of unintelligibility from his opponents. However, as he notes, endurantists do not necessarily reject the classical mereological notion as unintelligible. They allow that it makes sense and applies to atemporal subject matters and to temporal subject matters when the entities under discussion are not continuants. Thus, they allow that it makes sense to say that metaphysics is a part of philosophy, or that football is a game of two halves. What (some) endurantists deny is only that the classical mereological notion is applicable to continuants: continuants (people, cats, statues, etc.), they say, have no proper parts simpliciter (if we adopt the classical mereological definition we must say that they are atoms), either because it is false to say that they have or because it is unintelligible. Thus perdurantists do not have to embrace Sider's excessive caution in defining their position.1 They can safely allow themselves classical

Highlights

In his (2001) Ted Sider takes care to define the notion of a temporal part and his doctrine of perdurantism using only the temporally indexed notion of parthood – ‘x is part of y at t’ – rather than the atemporal notion of classical mereology – ‘x is a part of y’ – in order to forestall accusations of unintelligibility from his opponents
A reason for not doing so is a well-known difficulty with Sider’s own definitions. It is controversial whether any continuant has a Siderian temporal part other than itself since by his definition (2001: 59) if x is a temporal part of y at t, x is a part of y at t and x overlaps at t any part of y at t – so if x is not y x is a proper part of y at t yet x is as big as y at t
If we replace the clause ‘x is a part of y at t’ with the clause ‘y overlaps at t any part of x at t’ this difficulty is avoided, but it becomes controversial whether any of a continuant’s Siderean ‘temporal parts’ other than itself are parts at all

Summary

Introduction

In his (2001) Ted Sider takes care to define the notion of a temporal part and his doctrine of perdurantism using only the temporally indexed notion of parthood – ‘x is part of y at t’ – rather than the atemporal notion of classical mereology – ‘x is a part of y’ – in order to forestall accusations of unintelligibility from his opponents. Perdurantists do not have to embrace Sider’s excessive caution in defining their position.1 They can safely allow themselves classical mereological notions as long as it is a consequence of their definitions that continuants are perdurers/have temporal proper parts only if they have atemporal proper parts.2

Results

Conclusion