Persons do not possess temporal parts.

---- STR and LET ---- My opponent combats STR with LET. LET requires for there to be an "undetectable aether." Because STR does not require this aether's existence (and because assumptions on space and time made by STR helped Einstein develop general relativity), LET is not a worthy competitor of STR. My opponent brings up that scientific theories are "underdetermined," but doesn't realize that it does not justify him using a theory that is disproved. STR destroyed the need for a single universal frame of reference (such as in presentism), and thus vanquished LET and it's luminiferious aether. Einstein continued to destroy LET when he introduced the solution to the photoelectric effect. Showing that particles are wave like [1], Einstein proved that particles (and thus light) do not need a medium to travel through. LET's aether became obsolete. Until my opponent can disfigure STR's concept of time and space, presentism has no scientific evidence to back it. This leaves my opponent's theory with no current empirical evidence he can hold on to. Einstein's experiments that proved space-time do place empirical evidence for perdurance - and thus temporal parts. My opponent continues his arguments against STR by bringing up STR's apparent replacement: Quantum Gravity. What my opponent doesn't seem to understand is that QG is a theory that is under construction that will try to marry general relativity and quantum theory - not replace STR. The Principle of Relativity has been proven through experiment - I can not stress this enough to my opponent. The interpretation that PRO is looking at that would help QG prove presentism violates this Principle of Relativity. The argument presentists use to say that QG could prove presentism is CMC (constant mean curvature). This argument was brought up by Bradley Monton. Using my opponent's own source: "Christian Wï¿½thrich (2010) takes Monton to task on a variety of both technical and non-technical grounds. He rightly questions Monton's claim that the CMC approach really is an approach to quantum gravity, in the same sense as string theory and loop quantum gravity. It is more of a piece of machinery that is used within a pre-existing approach (namely, the canonical approach)." [2] [3] Wuthrich shows that there is no presentism in quantum gravity. As for pro's labeled number 2 argument against STR - Time "passes" just as space "passes." One can travel across space just as one can travel across time - and back again. It is as simple as that. ---- Too Many Thinkers Argument ---- My opponent has misconstrued my argument. What I am referring to when I say "when PCP says "I" is when PCP is talking about himself as a whole - the person he has been from birth to the present (and the future). When PCP is talking about himself during a certain slice of time, he says "I AM hungry" - indicating a present state. If he was referring to a slice of time that came before the moment in time in which he referenced a past occasion, he would say "I WAS hungry." This indicates a plotting - much like when someone says "Chicago is west of New York," PCP is saying "Being hungry is prior to this moment." The hungry piece of PCP (including trillions of other things that are happening to PCP during this time slice) is a part of the whole PCP - and this hungry PCP slice can have the property of the thought "I'm hungry." This does not indicate that there are too many thinkers, or that PCP is constantly referring to his whole self when he says "I." He is only referring to his whole self when he speaks of himself as a whole - when he says "I am PCP." But again, this is a slice of himself making a reference to his whole self. ---- Too Many Grabbers Argument ---- The muscles are a PART of the hand - just as a time slice of PCP is a PART of the whole PCP. Let me use another example for my opponent. Let us introduce the "too many digesters" problem. The stomach digests the food PCP eats. PCP's body holds his stomach which does this digesting. Thus because his stomach is a part of his body, this must conclude (using PCP's logic) that the body is also digesting (just as PCP whole is thinking "I'm hungry" when PCP time slice X is thinking "I'm Hungry.") We can see that this is trivial. The stomach is doing the digesting and it is only a part of the body that houses it. PCP time slice X is saying "I'm Hungry" and it is only a part of the whole PCP that houses it. References: 1. http://www.phy.davidson.edu... 2. http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu... -------------- THIS DEBATE IS NOT OVER - ANOTHER 1 ROUND DEBATE WILL BE USED TO CONTINUE ROUND 3. THE LINK TO ROUND THREE WILL BE PROVIDED IN THE COMMENTS SECTION AND THE TOURNAMENT FORUM THREAD.