Persistence Over Time
Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same person you were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the same river twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called endurantism and perdurantism. Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and the same object exists at each moment, while perdurantists believe that objects are 4-dimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie.
Read more about this topic: Identity And Change
Famous quotes containing the words persistence and/or time:
“Extreme patience and persistence are required,
Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed
The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Nor envy’s snaky eye, finds harbour here,
Nor flatterers’ venomous insinuations,
Nor cunning humorists’ puddled opinions,
Nor courteous ruin of proffered usury,
Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance,
Nor causeless duty, nor comber of arrogance,
Nor trifling title of vanity dazzleth us,
Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise;”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)