The painful implications of four-dimensionalism

Abstract

Summary This paper introduces two conceptions of persons and their pain(s). The “Naive Cartesian View” holds that persons are atomic, synchronically and diachronically unified entities that directly exemplify pain. While the “Four-dimensionalist View” holds that persons are non-atomic entities, whose pains are directly exemplified by their person-stages and only derivatively exemplified by the person. Two forms of “Four-dimensionalist View” are developed: “Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism”, and “Stage Four-Dimensionalism”. Against “Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism”, I argue that it (i) requires us to deny the moral permissibility of voluntarily chosen pains (ii) to believe that there more harms in the world than we thought, and (iii) it raises difficulties for our understanding of redemptive and pedagogical pains. Against “Stage Four-Dimensionalism”, I argue that it denies commonsense truths about punishment, compensation, and temporal neutrality, and well-being. The “Naive Cartesian View” avoids these difficulties, so we have reason to prefer it, and a metaphysical theory consistent with it.