Thinker · TH-0402
Theodore Sider
Theodore Sider is an American metaphysician whose book Four-Dimensionalism gave the most systematic defence of the view that objects persist through time by having…
Theodore Sider is an American metaphysician whose book Four-Dimensionalism gave the most systematic defence of the view that objects persist through time by having temporal parts. He defends a version of the stage view, on which ordinary objects are momentary stages related to other stages by temporal counterpart relations. His later work argues that the world has an objective structure that the best theories must describe, and he has also written a widely used textbook on logic for philosophers.
Key ideas
- Objects persist by having temporal parts, as they have spatial parts.
- On the stage view, ordinary things are instantaneous stages linked by temporal counterpart relations.
- Vagueness about composition is ruled out, so composition is unrestricted.
- Metaphysics aims at describing the world's objective structure, its 'joints'.
Major works
- Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (2001)
- Logic for Philosophy (2010)
- Writing the Book of the World (2011)
In the conversation
- Debate The statue-and-clay puzzle is a verbal dispute, and metaphysicians should admit it
- Question Is Vasubandhu’s doctrine of momentariness the same as modern stage theory?
- Debate Perdurantism fits modern physics better than endurantism does
- Debate Unrestricted composition is the only principled answer to when parts make a whole
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Theodore Sider takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 1.4.1 Persistence and Change If you are bent when sitting and straight when standing, how can both be true of you?