At 04:22 PM 6/11/2007, Pat Hayes wrote:
>Big snips to shorten the message...
>
>>>>>
>>>>>After thinking and arguing about endurance and perdurance for
>>>>>longer than I care to remember, I have come a rather mundane
>>>>>conclusion which can be summed up as follows: the
>>>>>continuant/occurrent distinction is basically a distinction
>>>>>between *how we use names* when talking about spatiotemporal
>>>>>entities. It should not be seen as a fundamental ontological
>>>>>distinction: it is merely a linguistic distinction between modes
>>>>>of expression. Things we call continuants are things for which
>>>>>we tend to use the same name at different times, so it is
>>>>>natural to encode changes to their properties by attaching the
>>>>>temporal parameter to their properties and relations rather than
>>>>>to them: we write things like
>>>>>
>>>>>(inside Fritz Bratwurst Morning)
>>>>>
>>>>>but we don't tend to talk of Fritz having temporal parts.
>>>>>Special terminologies are used to distinguish these
>>>>>temporally-sensitive relations and properties: "fluents", "roles".
>>>>>
>>>>>Occurrents, on the other hand, are things that we do tend to
>>>>>speak of as having temporal parts or 'episodes', so it is
>>>>>natural to formalize temporally-relative talk of those entities
>>>>>by attaching the temporal qualifier to the name itself. If Fritz
>>>>>and the Bratwurst were occurrents, we might write
>>>>>
>>>>>(inside (episode Morning Fritz)(episode Morning Bratwurst))
>>>>>
>>>>>instead.
>>>>
>>>>So there is a distinction between continuants and occurrents
>>>>which is prior to our use of names -- for otherwise in virtue of
>>>>what would we attach the first kind of name to the first kind of
>>>>entity and the second kind of name to the second kind of entity?
>>>
>>>Simply from linguistic habit.
>>
>>If you apply term A to some sorts of things, and term B to other
>>sorts of things, then there has to be something about the As (the
>>things which get called 'As') and the Bs (the things which get
>>called 'Bs'), which allows us to make the assignment. It does not
>>seem to be entirely random.
>
>Not random, no. It may be rooted in the noun/verb distinction. But
>this, it seems to me, is a matter best left to the linguists. There
>is a case to be made, which you seem to think is obvious, that a
>linguistic difference must reflect an ontological distinction. (I
>think this is often assumed without adequate justification, and is
>often false. Thinking about the history of 20th-century English
>philosophy, one might call it the Oxford fallacy :-)
>
>>Moreover, it seems to be a habit which we all share, and are good
>>at exercising. Yet more evidence that there is some easily
>>apprehendable corresponding difference on the side of the entities.
>
>Or simply that we all speak the same language, or languages with a
>common ancestor and similar structure.
>
>But surely you do not think that a rigid, logically necessary,
>distinction can be based simply on a loose verbal habit? (01)
The issue is independent of the 'rigid, logically necessary', and in
any case points in the opposite direction. In virtue of what do we
reliably apply A rather than B (say to dead sheep lying in the middle
of the read) and B rather than A (say to incidents where trucks send
said sheep flying)? (02)
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