The identification

Reality week 6: 1. Ordinary objects as regions of spacetime

We’ve already encountered the minimalist picture
according to which reality is just a four-dimensional
Objects and spacetime 2. Objections to the identification spatiotemporal manifold.
Challenge: what about people, tables, trees, books,
Cian Dorr 3. Ordinary objects as occupants of spacetime
21 February 2012 planets...?
4. No-overcrowding views
• Eliminativist response: No such things!
• The obvious “reductionist” alternative: these things do
exist, but they are themselves regions of spacetime.

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How this looks The mereology of regions An elementary consequence

If instants and intervals of time and material objects

Standard assumptions about how regions work:
• Any two regions R1 and R2 have a sum (join)
• Any two regions R1 and R2 that share a part have an
intersection (meet), R1⊓R2
are all spacetime regions, the following are plausible:
• O exists during t: O overlaps t
• O exists only during t: Every part of O overlaps t
• O1 and O2 coincide during t: O1⊓t = O2⊓t
The doctrine of temporal parts: whenever a material
object O exists during a time t, O has a part that
exists only during t, and coincides with O during t.
• Q: Are all parts of material objects themselves material
objects?

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Examples of coincidence among ordinary objects: Which regions are people (etc.)? ‘Part at t’
The inclusion relation on regions is not a good fit to
• Parts of people are not, normally, people. This applies to our ordinary use of ‘part’.
familiar parts like their heads, and unfamiliar parts like
their time-slices. • The steering wheel is not part of the car, since it existed
Smaller lump
clay

Statue earlier.
• Otherwise, we will have to say that there are many
• We ordinarily think of parthood as a time-relative matter:
people giving this lecture right now, some of them very
Statue short-lived.
parts can be gained and lost.
Big lump
Lump of

Standard solution: distinguish ‘x is part of y at t’ from

• Beware of using labels like ‘Fred at noon’ for time-
‘x is part of y simpliciter’.
slices—you will be tempted to forget they are not
people. • Sider’s analysis: x is part of y at t iff x’s temporal part at t
• Schematic analysis of ‘person’: a person is a maximal is part (simpliciter) of y’s temporal part at t.
sum of person-slices which are related to one another in • Problem: Consider a ham sandwich H. Cleopatra+H and
the right way (Lewis, ‘Survival and Identity’). H are parts of one another right now. (Fine, ‘Things and
Their Parts’)
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 What is it to be F at t?
Sometimes friends of temporal parts say things that
suggest the following completely general schema:
(*) x is F at t iff x’s instantaneous temporal part at t is F.
• This might be OK for ‘x is straight at t’ and ‘x is red at t’.
But it is looks bad for ‘x is a philosopher at t’ or ‘x is a
child at t’.
• All philosophers and children are people. No
instantaneous temporal parts are people. So...
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1. Leibniz’s Law: nonmodal properties
I brush my teeth every day
No spacetime region brushes its teeth every day
Therefore, I am not a spacetime region
• How strong is the second premise?
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4: ‘One object to a place!’
A widespread intuition: Two material objects can’t be
in the same place at the same time.
• There wouldn’t be room, at least if they are ordinary
objects without special ghostlike powers of
interpenetration.
• If you accept this intuition, you can’t accept the
previously discussed account of the statue-clay cases.
• The ‘paradoxes of material constitution’.
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1. Ordinary objects as regions of spacetime
2. Objections to the identification
3. Ordinary objects as occupants of spacetime
4. No-overcrowding views
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2. Leibniz’s Law: modal properties
I last more than 35 years, but could have lasted less
than 30.
No spacetime region that lasts for more than 35 years
could have lasted less than 30.
Therefore, I am not a spacetime region.
• Standard response: appeal to the context-sensitivity of
‘could have’.
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1. Ordinary objects as regions of spacetime
2. Objections to the identification
3. Ordinary objects as occupants of spacetime
4. No-overcrowding views
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Background to the objections
Leibniz’s Law: if x=y and Fx, then Fy.
Contrapositive version: if Fx and not Fy, then x≠y.
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3. Leibniz’s Law: coincident objects
Lumpl could have survived squashing
Goliath could not have survived squashing
Goliath and Lumpl are material objects that occupy
the same spacetime region
Therefore, two material objects sometimes occupy
the same spacetime region
Therefore, it is not true that every material object is
identical to the spacetime region it occupies
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Occupation
Even if we deny that material objects are identical to
regions of spacetime, it is natural to think of each
material object as intimately related to a unique
region of spacetime—the one it ‘occupies’; its ‘exact
location’.
• Some questions we can ask using ‘occupy’:
(i) Do some regions have more than one occupant?
(ii) Are all parts of occupied regions occupied?
(iii)Do distinct material objects ever occupy regions that
coincide at a time?
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 A common “four-dimensionalist” package:
Whether or not objects are identical to the spacetime
regions they occupy:
(i) Each region has at most one occupant
(ii) Every part of an occupied region has an occupant
(iii)(Hence:) Distinct objects often do coincide at a time.
Also:
(iv)there is a basic relation of timeless parthood among
material objects. x is part of y iff the region x occupies is
part of the region y occupies.
• Note that (ii) and (iv) jointly entail that each material
object has a temporal part at every time it exists.
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1. Ordinary objects as regions of spacetime
2. Objections to the identification
3. Ordinary objects as occupants of spacetime
4. No-overcrowding views
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2. Dominant sortal view (Burke)
• Statues are formed and destroyed when we
generally think they are.
• Lumps of clay are less long-lasting than we think:
when a new statue is formed, the original lump of
clay goes out of existence.
• When a statue is squashed, a lump of clay that
didn’t exist a moment previously starts to exist.
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A dreadful argument for temporal parts
The person who went into the barber shop had long
hair.
The person who came out of the barber shop did not
have long hair.
So, the person who went into the barbershop ≠ the
person who came out of the barber shop.
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An argument for overcrowding
P1 There is a person-shaped object on the table (a
statue) that came into existence about an hour
ago.
P2 There is a person-shaped object on the table (a
lump of clay) that came into existence many
years ago.
P3 Therefore, there are at least two person-shaped
objects on the table.
• Which premise will no-overcrowding theorists reject?
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The argument from temporary intrinsics
Lewis: ‘If we know what shape is, we know that it is
a property, not a relation.’
So [?], the facts about which things are straight at this
or that that time must be explained in terms of the
facts about which things are straight simpliciter, thus:
To be straight at t is to have a temporal part that
exists only at t and is straight simpliciter.
• Note that we’d better not say the same thing about being
a child at t, being a philosopher at t, being old at t...
• Is ‘straightness is a property, not a relation’ any more
compelling than ‘oldness is a property, not a relation’?
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1. Mereological essentialism (Chisholm).
For each set of atoms S, at most one material object
ever has exactly the members of S as parts. It exists
at t iff all of the members of S exist at t.
• Consequence: objects never gain or lose parts.
• Q: are these things statues some of the time? People?
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