Wolfgang Schwarz

Lowe's Fourth Solution to the Problem of Intrinsic Change

The problem of intrinsic change is often put in misleading terms, like: "how is it possible for a thing to have incompatible intrinsic properties at different times?", or: "how can I be first bent and then straight?" Putting the problem this way invites wrong kinds of answers, like:

• There really is no problem here. Why should things not have incompatible properties, as long as they have them at different times?
• Well, a thing can change its instrinsic properties by consisting of a substratum to which different properties attach at different times.
• How can I be first bent and then straight? Why, by standing up.

When I first read Lowe's proposed solution, I thought what he offers belongs to this class of answers that don't answer the real problem. In fact, his answer looks much like the third one above: How can I be first bent and then straight? By having parts, such as legs and a torso, which can change their spatial arrangement. Sure. But does that answer the problem?

What's the problem? I think the problem is best understood as starting out from the common-sense observation that ordinary things don't just have shapes (so that it would really be puzzling how they can have several incompatible ones) but that they only have shapes at times. They can have incompatible shapes by having them at different times. The problem then is whether this common-sense observation is the end of the story. If yes, there is a minor further problem of how precisely the story should be spelled out: Is it that instantiation is a three-place relation between things, properties and times? Or should we stick with a two-place instantiation relation and say that what things instantiate (simpliciter) are not properties but relations to times? For relational properties, some solution of this kind appears acceptable. The Big Bang for example changed during the 20th century from being not widely discussed to being widely discussed. That's presumably so because being widely discussed is something like a relation things bear to times: The Big Bang bears it to 1960, but not to 1906. Or so. But for intrinsic properties, some believe that the common-sense observation can't be the end of the story. Lewis in particular insists that an intrinsic property just can't be a relation to time -- otherwise it would be relational after all --, nor can it be something that is only instantiated in some time-indexed manner. Perdurantism offers a way to respect this intuition: things change their intrinsic properties by consisting of different temporal parts which really have (via simple two-place instantiatation) these (simple one-place) properties. Extended things have the properties only in a derivative way by having suitable parts.

Saying that I change my shape by standing up doesn't seem to answer the question of whether the common-sense observation is the end of the story. Neither does Lowe's equally common-sensical observation that I change my shape by rearranging my parts. But then why does Lewis, at the end of his "Reply to Lowe", say that Lowe's answer would work if only he could hold that I am nothing over and above my parts? Why would this turn the trivial observation into an account of intrinsic change? And since Lewis himself, unlike Lowe, does believe that I am nothing over and above my parts, why doesn't he accept the solution as a fourth alternative? Perhaps Lewis understands the proposal somehow like this (thanks to Sam for explaining it to me, though he wouldn't use the picture):

The dots in the middle are my particle parts, which exist identically through t1 and t2 and never change their shape. What does change is their spatial arrangement, hence the relation-lines connecting them with the time circles. This picture illustrates how, on an endurantist view, my particles change their spatial arrangement. Grant for simplicity that something like this doesn't violate the perdurantist intuition that spatial arrangement is an intrinsic relation among particles (as Lewis grants in section IV of his paper -- I'm not sure if I would like to follow him on this). Now if I were just the fusion of my particles, I would occur in the picture as well, viz. as the fusion of the dots. This fusion doesn't have a shape (the arrangement of the dots in the picture is an unfortunate artefact; the real arrangement is provided for only by the blue lines). What the fusion does is consist of parts that are arranged in certain ways at certain times. And that's all there is about my shape. Like in the perdurantist solution, strictly speaking I myself am neither bent nor straight. I am bent only in a derivate way by means of having parts that behave in a certain way. Unlike in the perdurantist solution, these parts also aren't bent or straight. Nothing at all instantiates bentness or straightness. There are only instantiations of arrangement-relations.

The general strategy can be put like this: An answer to the problem of intrinsic change is not required for intrinsic properties that can be analysed away. If having shapes can be analysed in terms of having suitably related parts, there is no need to worry about whether things instantiate shapes in two-place or three-place manner, because there is no need for shape-instantiation in the first place. The problem of intrinsic change therefore only affects fundamental intrinsic properties, those that can't be analysed away. But then one could reasonably hope that things never change their fundamental intrinsic properties (for example because all fundamental properties are extrinsic).

This looks like an interesting proposal, even for people like me who believe in temporal parts anyway. I thereby get three different ways of interpreting tensed predication: 1) employing temporal parts and simple instantiation, 2) employing relations to times (or time-indexed instantiation), and 3) analysing the predication away. Consider again the Big Bang. Above I said that being widely discussed is a relation it bears to 1960. Using possibility (3), I could deny that there is any such curious relation. The proper analysis of "the Big Bang is widely discussed in 1960" is neither "the Big Bang-at-1960 is widely discussed" nor "the Big Bang is widely-discussed-at-1960" nor "the Big Bang is-at-1960 widely discussed", but something like "in 1960, many people talked about the Big Bang". This in turn contains a temporal predication, but it no longer mentions being widely discussed. So at the end of the analysis, I won't have to appeal to instantiation of widely discussed at all.

There remains of course a problem with Lowe's original proposal about shapes. The problem, as Lewis notes, is that I am certainly not the fusion of enduring particles. At best I am the fusion of temporal parts of particles, which sort of undermines the proposal as an alternative to the perdurantist answer. But there is an easy fix:

The big dot is me. I am not my particles. But some of the particles constitute me at certain times. I am (derivatively) bent in virtue of being consituted right now by particles which are bently arranged right now. For all I know, this could work, and re-establish Lowe's proposal as a fourth solution to the problem of intrinsic change. Unless I myself just misunderstood the problem.