文档介绍：McTaggart’s paradox and the problem of temporary
intrinsics
William Lane Craig
McTaggart’s Paradox is so well-ploughed a field that one might doubt
whether anything fresh can be said about it. But sometimes new light can
be shed on a problem by stepping back and seeing it within a conceptual
framework which has hitherto gone unnoticed. For example, David
Lewis (1979: 235–40) sought to illuminate the Prisoners’ Dilemma by his
insight that the puzzle is actually an instance of b’s Paradox. In
the same way, I believe that McTaggart’s Paradox is actually a special case
of what Lewis has called the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics – a
conceptual contextualization of the paradox which, to my knowledge,
has gone unnoticed in the philosophical literature. A realization of the
proper conceptual context of the paradox will serve to advance our anal-
ysis of it.
The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics is the problem of identity and
intrinsic change. The question is, how can an object be self-identical at two
different times if it possesses different intrinsic properties at those times?
As Lewis says,
Persisting things change their intrinsic properties. For instance, shape:
when I sit, I have a bent shape, when I stand, I have a straightened
shape. Both shapes are temporary intrinsic properties; I have them
only some of the time. How is such change possible? (1986: 2