Persistence and Spacetime - Softcover

Balashov, Yuri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199679657 ISBN 13: 9780199679652

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Material objects persist through time and survive change. How do they manage to do so? What are the underlying facts of persistence? Do objects persist by being "wholly present" at all moments of time at which they exist? Or do they persist by having distinct "temporal segments" confined to the corresponding times? Are objects three-dimensional entities extended in space, but not in time? Or are they four-dimensional spacetime "worms"? These are matters of intense debate, which is now driven by concerns about two major issues in fundamental ontology: parthood and location. It is in this context that broadly empirical considerations are increasingly brought to bear on the debate about persistence.
Persistence and Spacetime pursues this empirically based approach to the questions. Yuri Balashov begins by setting out major rival views of persistence -- endurance, perdurance, and exdurance -- in a spacetime framework and proceeds to investigate the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity for the debate about persistence. His overall conclusion -- that relativistic considerations favour four-dimensionalism over three-dimensionalism -- is hardly surprising. It is, however, anything but trivial. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no straightforward argument from relativity to four-dimensionalism. The issues involved are complex, and the debate is closely entangled with a number of other philosophical disputes, including those about the nature and ontology of time, parts and wholes, material constitution, causation and properties, and vagueness.

About this title

About the Author

Yuri Balashov is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Georgia. His current interests are in analytic ontology and philosophy of time. He has published extensively in major philosophy journals, such as Nous, Philosophical Studies, American Philosophical Quarterly, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, The Monist, and British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and is a co-editor of Einstein Studies in Russia (Birkhauser, 2002) and Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings (Routledge, 2002).

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199679657
• ISBN 13: 9780199679652
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248