Endurantism And Perdurantism

Endurantism and Perdurantism are the two traditional accounts of the persistence of object through time. In this essay I will compare and contrast these two accounts, determine which account is more coherent. Assuming objects do persist through time I will argue that Perdurantism is a more plausible account of persistence and manages to solve Lewis’ problem of temporary intrinsic unlike Endurantism. Endurantism is a limited theory because it is only coherent if presentism is true.
What is it for an object to persist through time? First of all there is the Three-Dimensionalist view according to which persisting objects persist by “enduring through time” and they are extended across the three dimensions of space. The object is considered wholly
This problem is significant because intuitively change needs to be embraced for an object to be able to persist through time. For example how is it possible that I am the same person at age 10 where I am short and at age 35 I am tall? There is a change of properties identified with the same object. The obvious solution to this problem is to involve the passage of time in identifying myself or an object, a feature only Perdurantists acknowledge. For perdurantists change occurs when one temporal part has different temporally intrinsic properties to another temporal part. For perdurantists this problem is a problem of identity over time in which all the different temporal properties of the object are gathered together to identify the four dimensional
Which would make objects temporary properties hard to account for because of its very limited intrinsic properties. Arguably this is implausible because if we follow the internal relations solution at any moment in time an object’s properties are determined by intrinsic properties of “the object on the one hand, and of the moment on the other.”(p.214) Furthermore this applies to all the object that exists during that moment. Since properties in the universe at a moment are taken as relations between the objects and the intrinsic properties of that single moment. A major problem arises because the diversity of these properties must be accounted only by the limited intrinsic natures of the objects. Internal relation solution fails because it can’t allow the support of the variety of intrinsic properties. Furthermore it can’t give a foundation for “properties which are supposed to be internal