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Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.^[1] The perdurantist view is that an individual has distinct temporal parts throughout its existence. (As opposed to endurantism, which is the view that an individual is wholly present at every moment of its existence).^[1] The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Kellogg Lewis (1986). However, contemporary debate has demonstrated the difficulties in defining perdurantism (and also endurantism). For instance, the work of Ted Sider (2001) has suggested that even enduring objects can have temporal parts, and it is more accurate to define perdurantism as being the claim that objects have a temporal part at every instant that they exist. Zimmerman (1996) has said that this won't work, as there have been many self-professed perdurantists who believe that time is 'gunky' and that for every interval of time, there is a sub-interval. Some perdurantists think this means there are no instants, since they define these as intervals of time with no subintervals. Currently there is no universally acknowledged definition of perdurantism (see also McKinnon (2002) and Merricks (1999)).

Worm theorists and stage theorists[link]

Perdurantists break into two distinct sub-groups, worm theorists, and stage theorists.

Worm theorists believe that a persisting object is composed of the various temporal parts that it has. So all persisting objects are four-dimensional 'worms' that stretch across space-time, and that you are mistaken in believing that chairs, mountains and people are simply three-dimensional.

Stage theorists take you to be identical with a particular temporal part at any given time. So, in a manner of speaking, a subject only exists for an instantaneous period of time. However there are other temporal parts at other times which that subject is related to in a certain way (Sider talks of 'modal counterpart relations', whilst Hawley talks of 'non-Humean relations') such that when someone says that they were a child, or that they will be an elderly person, these things are true, because they bear a special "identity-like" relation to a temporal part that is a child (that exists in the past) or a temporal part that is an elderly person(that exists in the future). Stage theorists are sometimes called 'exdurantists'.

Arguments supporting perdurantism[link]

This section requires expansion.

A number of authors have advanced arguments supporting perdurantism, ranging from problems in logic, to the problem of temporary intrinsics, to the problems of the Ship of Theseus. A survey can be found in Sider (2001).

See also[link]

• Counterpart theory

External Links[link]

• Temporal parts at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lewis, D.K. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds Oxford: Blackwell
• McKinnon, N. 2002. "The Endurance/Perdurance Distinction", The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80:3 p. 288-306.
• Merricks, T. 1999. "Persistence, Parts and Presentism", Noûs 33 p. 421-38.
• Sider, T. 2001. Four-Dimensionalism Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Zimmerman, D. 1996. "Persistence and Presentism", Philosophical Papers 25: 2.

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