Persons do not possess temporal parts.

This is a repost of the first part of the argument that was somehow deleted earlier that has been edited a bit to remove all references to the "too many thinkers" objection. ========== Thankyou very much to Vi_Veri for being very lenient. Con has essentially one point to make with regards to a consideration in favor of the doctrine of temporal parts and it centers around special relativity. I'll tackle it in this round and have a little bit to say about spatial analogies with regards to temporal parts along the way: I agree that a endurantist is - or should be - committed to presentism. What I disagree with is Con's claim that presentism and STR are incompatible. Con's argument boiled down is, basically there is no such thing as "absolute time" as presentists assume (per STR) and since the "present" can only be relatively distinguished there is no reason for the special metaphysical privileging of the present moment which in case spells trouble for the endurantist who holds to presentism. I imagine that Con would take to this statement well: If one takes the science of STR seriously (and they should) and presentism truly conflicts with STR then so much the worse for presentism. I aim to show how they are not incompatible and science, STR, gives us no reason to favor a theory of time that is compatible with perdurantism than over a theory of time that is compatible with endurantism. I think all that a presentist has to do here in order to defend the compatibility of STR and presentism is reject the standard interpretation of the theory and accept a Neo-Lorentizian interpretation of STR. [1] The N-L interpretation of STR is empirically indistinguishable from the standard interpretation of STR but it does have an absolute frame of reference for time and space in which we can point to an objectively distinguished "present moment". The problem with the argument from STR to a specific theory of time is that scientific theories are always underdetermined. [2] It's not at all clear that just the scientific theory itself decides which theory of time one should hold to - one has to incorporate the philosophical considerations in for that theory of time are well. So if one holds that there are independent reasons for believing in presentism and holds to the N-L interpretation of STR there is no issue of incompatibility and Con's argument loses considerable force. 2 brief notes are warranted here, though: 1) Even if STR and presentism are incompatible that doesn't seem to be that big of a blow or much of a deciding factor in determining whether or not endurantism or perdurantism is true. For example, if one is committed to taking the finding of science seriously, the General and Special theories of relativity are anticipated to be replaced by theories of quantum gravity [3] and it is not at all clear that presentism and QG are incompatible. There doesn't seem to be much force in relying on an argument, even if it did work, that is likely based on a, as presently understood, false scientific theory. 2) The spatial analogies seem disanalogous when you think about them. The analogies are supposed to rely on the deliverances of Einstein where to quote Con "This brilliant scientist proved to the world that time and space are essentially the same thing (this has been experimentally verified)" and since time is like space (per that assumption) we can divide time into temporal parts just like we can divide space into spatial parts. There are problems with this, however. If time and space are essentially the same thing. If they are then how is that space 3 dimensions while time does not? Time seems to "pass" but space doesn't; time seems to to have an order whereas space doesn't. If these are essentially the same things then how is it that they can have disanalogous features? Something that is essentially the same things as another can't be disanalgous with the other thing it is being compared to. ========== Sources ========== [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu... [3] http://plato.stanford.edu...