claim is also grounded. However, if a putative truth is determined by neither the laws
of essence nor the laws of nature in conjunction with past and present facts, then
reject the claim that it is true!^50
In sections 3.5 and 3.6, I assessed whether PEP does better with respect to the
truth-making objection than a variety of competitor A-theories. My judgment is that
it does. If the truth-making objection moves you, seriously consider PEP.
3.7 PEP and Persistence through Time
Objects persist through time, and as they persist, they enjoy different properties at
different times. How should a view like PEP accommodate these facts? Are there
any views about persistence over time that are either inconsistent with or in tension
with PEP?
Letxbe an object that exists att1,t2, andt3.t1andt2are past times, whereast3is
the present moment. Pretend that colors are intrinsic properties, and thatxis red at
t1, blue att2, and green att3. According toperdurantism, objects persist through time
by having temporal parts. On this view,xhas a temporal part that exists at and only
att1, and this temporal part is red, and distinct temporal parts att2andt3that are
blue and green simpliciter.^51
The friend of PEP could endorse perdurantism, but she faces an interesting
question if she does: what is the mode of being enjoyed by entities that have presently
existing and pastly existing parts? Five answers are possible: asui generismode of
being, both present and past existence, present existence, past existence, andfinally a
merely deficient mode of being. Something has a deficient mode of being just in case
no perfectly natural quantifier includes it within its domain. If something has a
deficient mode of being, there is no fundamental sense in which it is real. (The idea of
adeficient mode of being will be further explored in chapter 5.)
We should probably reject the view that such objects have asui generismode of
being, unless in general we are attracted to the view that wholes enjoy a different
mode of being than their parts. The option that such objects enjoy both modes of
being seems non-arbitrary, but it also seems to me that someone attracted to this
option should probably prefer the view discussed in section 3.3 called minimal
Meinongian presentism. Recall that, on minimal Meinongian presentism, every
present object enjoys two modes of being, one of which is also enjoyed by past
objects. The sole significant difference between minimal Meinongian presentism
and PEP was that the fundamental quantifiers recognized by minimal Meinongian
(^50) For each presently existing object, it is probable that it will one day be past. But I take these truths
about probability to be grounded in the nature of the objects in question in conjunction with the actual
laws of nature. 51
See Sider (2001) for a defense of perdurantism.