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Aspects and the Alteration of Temporal Simples* * I'm grateful for helpful criticism from Katherine Fazekas; from participants of the "Themes from Baxter II" conference in Ligerz, Switzerland, October 2013, organized by Philipp Blum for EIDOS, the Center for Metaphysics at the University of Geneva; from participants of the "Gargnano Philosophy of Time Conference," Gargnano, Italy, May 2014; and especially from Andrew Parisi and from an anonymous referee.

ABSTRACT

According to David Lewis, alteration is "qualitative difference between temporal parts of something." It follows that moments, since they are simple and lack temporal parts, cannot alter from future to present to past. Here then is another way to put McTaggart's paradox about change in tense. I will appeal to my theory of Aspects to rebut the thought behind this rendition of McTaggart. On my theory, it is possible that qualitatively differing things be numerically identical. I call these differing, numerically identical things "aspects." I will argue that alteration can be a qualitative difference between temporal aspects of something that lacks temporal parts. So a moment can alter in tense. By rejecting Lewis's assumption my theory can solve this version of McTaggart's paradox.

Keywords:
Aspects; Alteration; Time; McTaggart's paradox; numerical identity; Leibniz's law

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