Philosophy of the Performing Arts

40 performance and the classical paradigm
ET2 , the “initiated type” with which it is associated) will exist eternally if at
all. So we have not shown multiple works, as norm-types, to be creatable, if
ET2 is the correct account of the existence conditions for types.
Performable works as “continuants”
The standard “type” theorist, as we have seen, asks us to surrender our intuitions
about the creatability of performable works in the interests of accounting for
their repeatability. What other than a type, after all, could be repeatable in
the way that performable works are repeatable? “Continuants,” some philoso-
phers reply. Since the notion of a continuant is not one with which most of us
are familiar, we need to ask two questions: First, what are continuants? And,
second, how do they manage to be both creatable and repeatable? While dif-
ferent “continuant” theories of performable works have been proposed, I shall
focus here on one developed by Guy Rohrbaugh (2003).^27
Rohrbaugh invites us to consider the nature of words.^28 Words, we may
recall, were our initial example of types. But words change and evolve over
time, and could have evolved differently, whereas types are supposed to be
fixed and unchanging. Furthermore, words enter into and go out of the lan-
guages in which they have their places. These properties of words, Rohrbaugh
claims, are characteristic of continuants, which are essentially historical
individuals that depend for their existence on those concrete entities that are
their embodiments. He identifies three properties that differentiate continu-
ants from types. The first is “modal flexibility.” Something is modally flexible
if it could have differed in its “intrinsic” non-relational properties. Houses
are modally flexible, for example, in that a particular house could have had
more or fewer rooms than it actually has, or could have been constructed
of different material than it actually was. The second property is “temporal
flexibility.” Something is temporally flexible if its “intrinsic” non-relational
properties are changeable over time. Houses are temporally flexible in that
something remains the same house even if it is internally remodeled, or has
its roof replaced. The final property is “temporality.” Something possesses
this property if it comes into and goes out of existence. Individual buildings
are obviously temporal, being erected and demolished at particular times.
Continuants have these three properties because of the relationship in
which they stand to their embodiments. An embodiment of a continuant
is a spatio-temporally locatable object or event, and the continuant itself
is a “higher level” object that depends for its existence upon its embodi-
ments. Take again our example of the house. A particular house comes
into existence only when someone produces a particular ordered arrange-
ment of physical matter. This is its first embodiment. It continues to exist as
long as it has an embodiment of this kind suitably causally related to earlier