Lewis on Temporary Intrinsics


The problem of temporary intrinsics is that for persisting things, they change their intrinsic properties, such as shape. When I sit, I have a bent shape and when I stand I have changed my shape to a straight shape. This is distinguished from it's relations such as weight and height. For example, being the heaviest person in the room (weight) is not an intrinsic property because a heavier man may enter the room and I am no longer the heaviest man, even though nothing intrinsic about me has changed. So the problem is to explain how this change in intrinsics is possible.

Lewis’ solution to this problem is to say that things perdure, not endure. Under perdurance, I have temporal parts, and intrinsics would be properties of that particular temporal part, and obviously these parts differ from one another, so it is no mystery how a thing could change its intrinsics properties. So for example, a road perdures, that is, it has different parts at different times, but doesn’t endure in the sense that wholly present at two different places. Part of the 405 Freeway is in Long Beach and Los Angeles, but isn’t wholly in Long Beach or Los Angeles. It may have a certain shape in Long Beach that is different in Los Angeles. The same goes for temporal persons.

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