Alright, we have been discussing the doctrine of temporal parts in my metaphysics class and i am taking the side of the doctrine. We discussed today an analogy to someone's lifespan and the consequences. he said if we break the person into temporal parts, 2 being enough, we can say that person a is made up of part one and part two together. then he asked if it was possible that the person had died sooner. I answered well not now but before he died it was possible. then he said he would say part two refers to the part after the 'potential' death. in reality's situation person a = part one + part two and in the the potential situation person a = part one therefore person a does not equal person a. He said that this was a contradiction based on a provable statement of "if x=y , then it is not possible that x does not equal y" Now there are two ways i thought about responding, comparing it to his position of enduritism and showing the same problem exists for him. And the second was to show that no problem exists because they are talking about the existance of two different things. I choose option one and he tried to explain to me that his side didnt have a complication with this for some reason but i didnt understand his point. If anyone could help me understand his side i would be glad to listen. I have tried to analogize the two situations. in my side - person a - choice one - reality - died how they did - temporal parts equals time up to potential death plus remaining part up to end of actual life - choice two -possibility - died early - temporal parts equals time up to potential death - Result - temporal parts in choice one does not equal temporal parts in choice two on his side person a's lifespan - choice one - reality - died how they did - lifespan equals time up to potential death plus remaining part up to end of actual life - choice two - possibility - died early - lifespan equals time up to potential death - result - lifespan in choice one does not equal lifespan in choice two Another interesting aspect i picked up from that if x = y then it is not possible that x did not equal y is that this infers that the universe could not have come out different in any aspect than it did. ie predeterminism ie no actual free will ie go with the flow to the extreme. Does anyone see any faulty reasoning here by me?
hockeywings, Wow. I can't believe you're taking a metaphysics course. Judging solely from your post, you need to take an introductory logic course, and a spelling and grammar course wouldn't hurt either. Your entire case assumes a linear, objective temporality. Furthermore, simply because you find a case where it is provable that x=y, it doesn't follow that all x's are therefore y's.
