Concept
Endurantism
Overview
Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view, material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence, which goes with an A-theory of time. This conception of an individual as always present is opposed to perdurantism or four-dimensionalism, which maintains that an object is a series of temporal parts or stages, requiring a B-theory of time. The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Lewis.
One serious problem of endurantism is the problem of temporary intrinsics raised by David Lewis. Lewis claims that intrinsic properties of objects would change over time. Thus, endurantism cannot harmonize identity with change and then cannot explain persistence clearly even if endurantists appeal to intrinsic properties. Endurantists may argue that intrinsic properties are related to time. However, this would produce another problem. If intrinsic properties are related to others, they are not intrinsic property (see intrinsic and extrinsic properties). Therefore, Perdurantism is a better position of persistence (see prominent arguments in favor of four-dimensionalism).
However, some philosophers, such as Sally Haslanger, find a way to resolve this problem as Lewis's perdurantism does. Haslanger claims that Lewis's perdurantist solution is not the only solution, and endurantism can resolve this problem as well. She believes that Lewis's way does not directly answer the problem that objects that persist can change their intrinsic properties; he just finds a way to bypass it—the perdurer is not an object that keeps intrinsic properties unchanged over time (see identity and change). Similarly, endurantism could find a way to bypass this problem and to reconcile the persistence of objects and intrinsic properties. Her method is in virtue of adverbial modification. According to this method, a sentence that objects have properties is related to time, but the time modifies ‘have’ rather than objects or properties. A person, for example, had-at-t1 bentness and had-at-t2 straightness. It seems like that objects can at different times through different ways obtain properties. After such treatment, objects that exist can through different ways at different times instantiate different intrinsic properties (these properties are not related to time directly). Through this method, endurantism can resolve the problem of temporary intrinsic as Lewis's method does.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Only with the subject as model we invented _thingness_ and read it into the pell-mell of sensations. If we cease from believing in the _acting_ subject, the belief in _acting_ things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces. In this case the world of _acting atoms_ also disappears: for this world is always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
States what Endurantism is.
The logical basis of the theory alone belongs to philosophy, and alone will occupy us to-night. The way the problem of continuity enters into philosophy is, broadly speaking, the following: Space and time are treated by mathematicians as consisting of points and instants, but they also have a property, easier to feel than to define, which is called continuity, and is thought by many philosophers to be destroyed when…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
States what Endurantism is.
Now the protraction of duration seems to belong to operation rather than to being; hence time is the numbering of movement. Reply Obj. 3: Eternity is called whole, not because it has parts, but because it is wanting in nothing. Reply Obj. 4: As God, although incorporeal, is named in Scripture metaphorically by corporeal names, so eternity though simultaneously whole, is called by names implying time and succession.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Endurantism is.
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Ontology.