SUO: RE: 3D/4D question
Bill,
You are right I think the per- (4D) view is useful (champion? Well I do not
know)
I am not sure what you mean by:
"I have in mind David Lewis' nominalism, in which normal objects extended
in
space-time are really 5D (4D + modal counterparts) objects."
I was under the impression that Lewis thought trans-world identity was
barbarous. And that he wholeheartedly accepted mereological essentialism
and extensionalism. Am I wrong? I hope not!
I know Achille Varsi has a paper where he makes a kind of 5D extension -
and there is another older paper whose reference I do not have here (I am
out of the office).
However, I agree with (what I think is your underlying point) that there
are a variety of metaphysical questions that need answering to get a
complete(ish) position. E.g. are tenses real (I made this point in my
original ontological architecture paper).
Regards,
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Andersen [SMTP:andersen@ontologyworks.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 6:51 PM
To: SUO
Subject: SUO: 3D/4D question
Folks,
I plead guilty of not following the discussions that closely on this topic,
but which 4D model exactly is being talked about?
I have in mind David Lewis' nominalism, in which normal objects extended in
space-time are really 5D (4D + modal counterparts) objects. I know this is
a view that Chris Partridge champions. Chris, forgive me if I'm wrong.
Without a Lewis-type view, adopting 4D leads you to accept mereological
essentialism for the 4D objects, which leads you to accept that everything
has all it's parts necessarily, i.e., cannot change - clearly a bad
situation.
.bill
--
Bill Andersen
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