Investigating Mullā Sadrā's Viewpoint on the Continuity of Objects Dichotomy in the Light of Priority Presenticism

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Secretary of the Supreme Assembly of Islamic Philosophy, departments of Humanities and theology, Mashhad

2 Tarbiat Modares

3 Trbiat Modares

Abstract

In contemporary analytical metaphysics, there are two competing theories in stating the problem of the continuity of objects in the time. They are endurantism and perdurantism. As endurantism shows, objects are three dimensional and exist in every moment of time through a total presence, while according to perdurantism, objects are four dimensional and enjoy temporal aspects as well as spatial ones. The first viewpoint is presenticism and the second one is eternalism both of which presuppose the time. According to presenticism, only the present and its elemnts matter and future and past are not true. However, eternalism, all of time elements (past, present and future) are equally true and existent. Combining the theories of time and continuity would meet four conditions: 1. perdurantism and eternalism; 2. endurantism and eternalism; 3. endurantism, presenticism; 4. Perdurantism and presenticism. Mullā Sadrā's viewpoint on the continuity of objects in time is more similar to 1 or 4 but due to internal incompatibility of 4 and incompatibility of 1, one cannot consider Mullā Sadrā's viewpoint to these two conditions. However, we might consider another fifth condition as perdurantism and priority presenticism based on which the identities of present are fundamentally existent diachronically. Thus, based on this categorization although present and past exist but they are based on the present.
 

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New Intellectual Research
Volume 4, Issue 7 - Serial Number 7
February 2019
Pages 49-72

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