PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

ARGUMENTS (1) 251

Of course, it is logically impossible that anyone ever satisfy the conditions
laid down in (B1a) or (B2a). Thus there is strong pressure for a Buddhist
to avoid them. Unless there are composite endurers who are things in
addition to composite nonendurers (and who are persons), there will be no
such thing as reincarnation, recompense, or memories. But it seems that, on
the Buddhist-type account, there cannot be any such thing as composite
endurers save in the insipid sense in which “composite endurers” refers to
one composite nonendurer and then to another and then to another, which
of course is not a sense of there being composite endurers in addition to
there being composite nonendurers.

Consistency^21

While there are various problems in the neighborhood,^22 one looms over
the rest. On the Buddhist-type account of persons, all there is to a
composite endurer at time T is its single composite nonendurer
constituent that exists only at T. All there is to a composite endurer at
time T1 is its single composite nonendurer constituent that exists only
at T1. Reference to a composite endurer that exists at both T and T1 is
only verbally distinct from reference to a composite nonendurer at T
and another composite nonendurer at T1; terms multiply, but entities do
not increase.
Consider this argument:^23

1 If W is all that X is at time T, then X is identical to W at time T.
2 For every composite endurer E that exists at time T, there is a
composite nonendurer E that exists at time T such that E is all
there is of E at T.
3 For every composite endurer E that exists at time T, there is a
composite nonendurer E that exists at time T such that E is
identical to E (from 1 and 2).
4 If composite nonendurer E is identical to E, then E cannot outlast E.
5 For every composite endurer E that exists at time T, E does not exist
other than at T.
6 It is logically impossible that anything that does not exist other than
at time T be a composite endurer.
7 It is logically impossible that there be composite endurers.

Put it this way: let E1 and E2 be composite nonendurers that exist,
respectively, at T1 and T2. Let E be a proposed composite endurer whose
only elements are E1 and E2. Then: