A Note on Temporal Parts

Author(s): H. W. Noonan
Source: Analysis, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Jun., 1985), pp. 151-152
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee
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A NOTE ON TEMPORAL PARTS

By H. W. NOONAN
HOLD that if enduring objects
I reasonable
to say that (some of)

have temporal parts then it is

the temporal parts of an enduring object of sort S are themselves objects of sort S. If persons have
temporal parts it is reasonable to say that some of these are themselves persons, if tables have temporal parts it is reasonable to say
that some of these are themselves tables, and so on.
But I find that this view encounters resistance, not only (and
from the opponents of the
perhaps somewhat inconsistently)
temporal part metaphysic, but also from its proponents. In what
follows, I defend it.
Sometimes, I find, it is suggested that maintaining that temporal
parts of persons are themselves persons is on a par with maintaining
that their spatial parts are themselves persons. But this is not so.
Of course my left foot is not a person: it is the wrong shape, size
and structure and has none of the relevant psychological properties
(in fact, it has no psychological properties). But the same overwhelming case cannot be brought against the suggestion that
Noonan-in-1984 is a person. For it is common ground among
proponents of the temporal part metaphysic that (as David Lewis
puts it, Philosophical Papers, Vol. I, Oxford University Press, 1983,
p. 76):
A person-stage is a physical object just as a person is. (If persons had a
ghostly part as well, so would person-stages.) It does many of the same
things that a person does: it talks and walks and thinks, it has beliefs and
desires, it has a size and shape and location. It even has a temporal duration ... It begins to exist abruptly, and it abruptly ceases to exist soon
after. Hence a stage cannot do everything that a person can do, for it cannot do those things a person can do over a longish interval.

(Not all person-stages will satisfy Lewis's description. Some will be

too short-lived. It is only of those that do that I claim that they can
be reasonably described as persons.)
It might be said that person-stages cannot be persons just because
they are parts of persons. But the principle this argument appeals
to, namely that the parts of something falling under a certain sortal
concept cannot themselves fall under that sortal concept, is dubious
when applied to spatial parts (think of Wiggins' example of the
Pope's three crowns which are one crown), so it can hardly merit
the status of an unargued assumption in the case of temporal parts.
It might be said that nevertheless person-stages cannot be persons,
since they do not last long enough. But we do not make it a requirement on something's being a person that it have a certain temporal
size (duration) and of course many people die at birth or soon after.
Again, it might be said that person-stages cannot be persons
because of the manner in which they begin to exist and cease to
151

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152

ANALYSIS

exist. But let us imagine, varying a suggestion of Wittgenstein's, that

something happens which we are tempted to describe as a person's
coming suddenly into existence, going about his business, and then
ceasing to exist as abruptly as he began. Would it really be straightforwardly wrong to give such a description, or would the sensible
thing not just be to say, with Wittgenstein, 'say what you like so
long as you are clear about the facts'? (Certainly Lewis' could not
say that this description was straightforwardly wrong, see his Philosophical Papers, Vol. I, p. 76: 'it is possible that a person stage might
exist. Suppose it were to appear out of thin air, and vanish again.
Never mind if it is a stage of any person (though in fact I think it is).')
Now the facts about person-stages (I am assuming, since I am
taking a temporal part metaphysic for granted) are those outlined in
the passage from Lewis. And my suggestion is just that given these
facts it is not straightforwardly wrong to describe person-stages as
persons - we have no nice strict set of necessary and sufficient
conditions for personhood that disqualifies them (indeed, on one
well known definition, John Locke's, it is strictly correct that they
are persons). Whether it is reasonable for the temporal part metaphysician so to describe them must therefore turn on other considerations. In particular, I believe, it must turn on whether by
doing so he puts himself in a better position to answer his opponents.
Now elsewhere I have argued that this is so (Objects and Identity,
Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), and so I do accept that it is reasonable to
describe temporal parts of persons as themselves persons (and
temporal parts of tables as themselves tables, and so on).
Of course, if this view is not to be easily refutable it must come
as part of a package. In particular, in order to make sense of such
statements as Lewis's '... a stage cannot do everything a person can
do' we need a distinction between restricted and unrestricted
quantification and we must maintain that 'some S is so and so'
(for sortal S) is not simply equivalent to 'something is an S and is
so and so'. But not only is this view a respectable one, it is also an
essential ingredient in Lewis's counterpart theory translation
scheme (see his 'Counterparts of Persons and their Bodies', Philosophical Papers, Vol. I) and, I believe, an essential ingredient in
any defensible temporal part metaphysic (for the argument for this
see my 'The Closest Continuer Theory of Identity', forthcoming in
Inquiry).
Another view we must accept if we are not to be open to easy
refutation in maintaining that the temporal parts of persons are
themselves persons is that counting is not always in accordance
with identity simpliciter (otherwise we would have to accept that
there are many more people than we think that there are). But this
view too should be congenial to a temporal part metaphysician, and
again is explicitly accepted by Lewis.
The University of Birmingham,
? H. W. NOONAN1985
P.O. Box 363, Birmingham B15 2TT

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