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four-dimensionalism

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Examples

  • Indeed, the platitude is about the responsibility of persons, but four-dimensionalism offers only a solution regarding the responsibility of person-stages (Ibid.; see also Parfit 1976).

    Personal Identity and Ethics Shoemaker, David 2008

  • On any view of personal identity other than four-dimensionalism, recall, I cease to exist if I undergo fission.

    Personal Identity and Ethics Shoemaker, David 2008

  • Now these are just standard puzzles for four-dimensionalism about persons (see Olson 1997b, van Inwagen 2002, and the entry on personal identity).

    Personal Identity and Ethics Shoemaker, David 2008

  • Second: ˜four-dimensionalism™ is sometimes used as an umbrella term for perdurance theory and stage theory, and

    Temporal Parts Hawley, Katherine 2004

  • Parsons (2000) develops four-dimensionalism without temporal parts.

    Temporal Parts Hawley, Katherine 2004

  • And beware: other authors use ˜four-dimensionalism™ and

    Temporal Parts Hawley, Katherine 2004

  • This view is typically defended by advocates of four-dimensionalism, according to which objects have both spatial and temporal parts (see, e.g.,

    Personal Identity and Ethics Shoemaker, David 2008

  • The multiple-occupancy view is almost invariably combined with the general metaphysical claim that people and other persisting things are made up of temporal parts (often called “four-dimensionalism”; see Heller 1990: ch.

    Personal Identity Olson, Eric T. 2008

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  • "I feel a bit apologetic for retaining the term 'four-dimensionalism' as a name for the thesis that things have temporal parts. This is one standard usage of the term, but the term is also sometimes used (particularly in Australia) for the B-theory of time, or for the conjunction of the B-theory and the doctrine of temporal parts. The term also has the disadvantage of not wearing its meaning on its sleeve. For example, what I call four-dimensionalism implies the existence of instantaneous objects: temporal slices of spacetime worms. Since temporal slices have non-zero extension in only the three spatial dimensions, someone not familiar with the debate might expect me to be a three-dimensionalist. Despite these shortcomings, my terminology is familiar and entrenched enough to be useful, if handled with care."

    --Theodore Sider, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Oxford (2001), pp. xiii-xvi.

    October 31, 2010