Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality.

Persistence realism is the view that ordinary sentences that we think and utter about persisting objects are often true. Persistence realism involves both a semantic claim, about what it would take for those sentences to be true, and an ontological claim about the way things are. According to persistence realism, given what it would take for persistence sentences to be true, and given the ontology of our world, often such sentences are true. According to persistence (...) error-theory, they are not. This Element considers several different views about the conditions under which those sentences are true. It argues for a view on which it is relatively easy to vindicate persistence realism, because all it takes is for the world to be the way it seems to us. Thereby it argues for the view that relations of numerical identity, or of being-part-of-the-same-object, are neither necessary nor sufficient for persistence realism. (shrink)

Stephen Mumford has argued that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists because perdurantism, by breaking down persisting objects in sequences of static discrete existents, is at odds with a powers metaphysics. This has been contested by Neil Williams who offers his own version of ‘powerful’ perdurance where powers function as links between the temporal parts of persisting objects. Weighing up the arguments given by both sides, I show that the profile of ‘powerful’ persistence crucially depends on how one conceptualises the (...) processes involved in the manifestation of powers. As this turns out not to be determined per se by subscribing to some view labelled ‘powers view’, further discussion is needed as to what processes are and to what kind of process theory a powers metaphysics should commit itself in order to be convincing. I defend the claim that dispositionalism is best combined with a version of process ontology that is indeed incompatible with a perdurantist analysis of persistence. However, I argue that this does not imply that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists. (shrink)

The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to, and critiques of, the core notion in the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' form of life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical development that human beings think of themselves as individual centers of agency, and that one's entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, the issue at stake also involves the question of the historical location of philosophy. What might it mean (...) to take seriously Hegel's claim that philosophical reflection is always reflection on the historical 'actuality' of its own age? Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arises in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts and in the novels of Marcel Proust. (shrink)

Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from supports in (...) that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science. (shrink)

Both advocates and opponents of the animalist view that we are fundamentally biological organisms have typically assumed that animalism is incompatible with intuitive verdicts about cerebrum isolation and transplantation. It is argued here that this assumption is a mistake. Animalism, developed in a natural way, in fact strongly supports these intuitive verdicts. The availability of this attractive resolution of a central puzzle in the personal identity debate has been obscured by a range of factors, including the prevalence in contemporary metaphysics (...) of a certain conception of the nature of organisms. I end by explaining how the animalist can use intuitive verdicts, usually thought to present a difficulty for the view, as positive evidence for claims about the persistence conditions of the relevant kind of organism. (shrink)

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of puzzle. (...) The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

Persistence in Time No person ever steps into the same river twice—or so goes the Heraclitean maxim. Obscure as it is, the maxim is often taken to express two ideas. The first is that everything always changes, and nothing remains perfectly similar to how it was just one instant before. The second is that nothing … Continue reading Persistence in Time →.

Mentalistic (or Lockean) accounts of personal identity are normally formulated in terms of causal relations between psychological states such as beliefs, memories, and intentions. In this paper we develop an alternative (but still Lockean) account of personal identity, based on phenomenal relations between experiences. We begin by examining a notorious puzzle case due to Bernard Williams, and extract two lessons from it: first, that Williams's puzzle can be defused by distinguishing between the psychological and phenomenal approaches, second, that so far (...) as personal identity is concerned, it is phenomenal rather than psychological continuity that matters. We then consider different ways in which the phenomenal approach may be developed, and respond to a number of objections. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [II.xxvii.17]. (shrink)

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding that DMN activated when the subjects are resting and deactivated during any attention-demanding cognitive tasks. To test our proposal, we used, in retrospect, the results from our two early studies ([Fingelkurts, 1998] and [Fingelkurts et al., (...) 2003]). In both studies for the majority of experimental trails we indeed found a constellation of operationally synchronized cortical areas (indexed as DMN) that was persistent across all studied experimental conditions in all subjects. Furthermore, we found three major elements comprising this DMN: two symmetrical occipito-parieto-temporal and one frontal spatio-temporal patterns. This new data directly supports the notion that DMN has a specific functional connotation – it provides neurophysiologic basis for self-processing operations, namely first-person perspective taking and an experience of agency. (shrink)

The main theme of this thesis is time travel; time travel cases—both from relativistic physics and science fiction—provide or highlight deep problems for certain positions in contemporary debates about the metaphysical nature of time and of how material objects persist through time. This thesis explores the implications of these discussions; more specifically, I draw attention to some of the interesting things we can learn about presentism and endurantism from discussions of time travel cases that have been raised recently in the (...) literature. In the end, I argue in favour of what I consider a non-standard theory of persistence, which I call transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. (shrink)

One of the central issues in comparative law and political economy is whether the forces of globalization will result in the convergence of public policies across countries. Noting in particular that taxes collected still cover a considerable range across industrialized countries — from a low of 20% of GDP to a high of 50% — some have argued that globalization has not resulted in a loss of tax sovereignty. However, following a review of the evidence, in this Article we conclude (...) that globalization has had significant but subtle effects on tax levels and structures. Moreover, these pressures will make it increasingly difficult for countries to raise revenue to finance new public needs and to structure their tax systems in order to achieve a more socially acceptable distribution of income than what market forces dictate. Tax levels in most countries have remained essentially flat over the past twenty years, but there is a host of reasons for thinking they would have continued to rise were it not for the pressures of globalization. Statutory corporate tax rates have declined dramatically and, although corporate tax revenues have remained robust, this has been due to factors unrelated to deliberate tax policy choices. Personal marginal tax rates have also declined sharply and tax revenues have been increasingly raised by regressive consumption taxes. These trends stem from tax competition brought on by the forces of globalization, not from changing ideas or other political variables. In this Article we conclude that in order to prevent tax competition from completely eroding the ability of countries to fashion their own tax systems, there will have to be considerable cooperation among the major countries and some harmonization of aspects of their tax systems, particularly as they apply to footloose factors of production. (shrink)

André Gallois’s Occasions of Identity is a detailed, well-written presentation and defense of one attempt to solve many of the recently much discussed puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects. It is engaging not only for Gallois’s ingenious attempt to defend his view that objects can be “occasionally identical”—identical at one time but not another —but for his discussion throughout of the puzzles and of alternative solutions. Gallois does a fine job of keeping the motivations for a position, whether his (...) own or others’, in view while working out details and responding to objections. Even where one disagrees, there is excellent food for thought and discussion here. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in (...) the metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

When do the folk think that material objects persist? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view which fits with folk intuitions, yet there is little agreement about what the folk intuit. I provide a range of empirical evidence which suggests that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence: the folk tend to intuit that a material object survives alterations when its function is preserved. Given that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence, I argue for (...) a debunking explanation of folk intuitions, concluding that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions as tied into a benighted view of nature. (shrink)

In _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought,_ Chris L. Firestone, Nathan A. Jacobs, and thirteen other contributors examine the role of God in the thought of major European philosophers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The philosophers considered are, by and large, not orthodox theists; they are highly influential freethinkers, emancipated by an age no longer tethered to the authority of church and state. While acknowledging this fact, the contributors are united in arguing that this is (...) only one side of a complex story. To redress the imbalance of attention to secularism among crucial modern thinkers and to consolidate a more theologically informed view of modernity, they focus on the centrality of the sacred in the thought of these philosophers. The essays, each in its own way, argue that the major figures in modernity are theologically astute, bent not on removing God from philosophy but on putting faith and reason on a more sure footing in light of advancements in science and a perceived need to rethink the relationship between God and world. By highlighting and defending the theologically affirmative dimensions of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, and others, the essayists present a forceful and timely correction of widely accepted interpretations of these philosophers. To ignore or downplay the theological dimensions of the philosophical works they address, they argue, distorts our understanding of modern thought. "Over the past twenty-five years there has been a gradual change in the study of modern philosophy toward recognizing the centrality of our relation to God in the work of most of the major modern thinkers of the period. _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought_ is a timely and useful collection that has the potential to crystallize this important development in the study of modern philosophy." —_John E. Hare, Yale Divinity School_. (shrink)

"Caroline Williams marks what is distinctive about 20th Century French philosophy's interrogation of the subject and demonstrates its historical continuity in a ...

We show that the Bohmian approach in terms of persisting particles that move on continuous trajectories following a deterministic law can be literally applied to QFT. By means of the Dirac sea model – exemplified in the electron sector of the standard model neglecting radiation – we explain how starting from persisting particles, one is led to standard QFT employing creation and annihilation operators when tracking the dynamics with respect to a reference state, the so-called vacuum. Since on the level (...) of wave functions, both formalisms are mathematically equivalent, this proposal provides for an ontology of QFT that includes a dynamics of individual processes, solves the measurement problem and explains the appearance of creation and annihilation events. (shrink)

The publication of Form and Object: A Treatise on Things by Tristan Garcia, Prix de Flore-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, and screenwriter is a genuine event in the history of philosophy. Situating this event within classical, modern, and contemporary dialectical space, Jon Cogburn evaluates Garcia's metaphysics, differential ontology, and militant anti-reductionism through a series of seemingly incompatible oppositions concerning: substance and process, analysis and dialectic, simple and whole, and discovery and creation. Cogburn also includes a critical assessment of the consequences of (...) Garcia's philosophy, the various unresolved problems in his treatise, and the future prospects of speculative metaphysics. (shrink)

There are famously two main metaphysics of persistence, namely three and four-dimensionalism. Both yield a particular solution to the so called puzzle of change. I argue that typical three-dimensionalist solutions to the puzzle face insurmountable difficulties even in the simplest relativistic setting, that of Minkowski spacetime.

Computers are used to make decisions in an increasing number of domains. There is widespread agreement that some of these uses are ethically problematic. Far less clear is where ethical problems arise, and what might be done about them. This paper expands and defends the Ethical Gravity Thesis: ethical problems that arise at higher levels of analysis of an automated decision-making system are inherited by lower levels of analysis. Particular instantiations of systems can add new problems, but not ameliorate more (...) general ones. We defend this thesis by adapting Marr’s famous 1982 framework for understanding information-processing systems. We show how this framework allows one to situate ethical problems at the appropriate level of abstraction, which in turn can be used to target appropriate interventions. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, aestheticians and art theorists declared the 'death' of beauty as a serious, meaningful concept for aesthetics and art practice. Such declarations are better understood as polemical provocations, making their obituarism premature. Careful attention to the writings of those cited testify to the persistence of beauty, albeit in new, 'difficult', 'challenging' forms. Beauty persists, taking on new forms and inflections.

In this thesis I will defend a Reductionist criterion of personal identity, and show that that criterion supports certain commonsense claims about the morality and rationality of special concern and about the morality of the distribution of goods among persons. ;In Chapter 1 , I will introduce the problem of personal identity across time. We will see that a plausible theory of personal identity supports and motivates the commonsense claim that we should be specially concerned about our future selves and (...) intimates. ;In Chapter 2 , I will argue that we should reject a Non-Reductionist theory of personal identity. Non-Reductionism is unable to provide a coherent account of why persons persist through certain changes and not others, thereby committing us to a general skepticism about personal identity. Therefore, we should conclude that persons are not separately existing entities. ;In Chapter 3 , I present certain cases that suggest that we should reject our initial intuition that persons can swap bodies. I then consider whether we should accept the claim that it is not our identity that matters in our survival, and suggest that Reductionists can continue to claim that identity matters. ;In Chapter 4 , I defend the commonsense view of special concern. I claim that this commonsense view can be motivated and supported by the plausible Reductionist criteria discussed in Chapter 3. I show that the commonsense conception is more plausible than the Impersonalist view that tries to ground special concern in terms of impersonal values. ;In Chapter 5 , I show that Parfit's view of personal identity and what matters actually supports a moral theory in which the relationships in which persons stand to one another have intrinsic significance, rather than supporting the person-neutral theory of Utilitarianism. (shrink)

ExcerptMore than six hundred not entirely new pages from Fredric Jameson is an occasion that provides something for almost everyone. In Valences of the Dialectic, philosophers, all sorts of theorists (political, literary, social), historians, and even people with activist inclinations (for is not Marxism a type of praxis?) will discover rich provocations. By my count a little more than half of the book is new material; the rest is a varied set of articles brought together here to give greater breadth (...) to Jameson's long engagement with dialectical thought. Valences is not the culmination of that engagement, but rather Jameson keeping…. (shrink)

Conservation Biologists have found that demographic stochasticity causes the mean time to extinction to increase exponentially with population size. This has proved helpful in analyses determining extinction times and characterizing the pathway to extinction. The aim of this investigation is to explore the possible interactions between environmental/demographic noises and the scaling effect of the mean population size with its variance, which is expected to follow Taylor’s power law relationship. We showed that the combined effects of environmental/demographic noises and the scaling (...) of population size variability interact with the population dynamics and affect the mean time to extinction. (shrink)

This article is constructed around the author’s reflections on ‘trace, print, remains’. Greisch uses three personal anecdotes to establish a preliminary understanding of the concept of trace. He then considers trace and memory, drawing on Ricœur. He examines whether the notion of trace can be approached from the angle of life as well as death, and attempts to outline a phenomenological approach. He considers philosophical views of ‘trace’ from Plato onwards. Finally, he discusses Eco’s ‘Signor Sigma’, creating his own conceptual (...) character ‘Herr Spur’ or ‘Mr Trace’. (shrink)

Debates about “populism” in recent years have used thin understandings of the term, which conceal theoretically richer possibilities. This essay explores the thicker understanding of populism developed in Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven and bell hooks’s belonging. In so doing, the essay suggests other roads forward for arguments about populism in America.