Endurance and Fatalism

Abstract

If persons persist from one time to another they do so, I claim, by perduring, that is by having temporal parts. First I argue that if persons endure, that is persist without having temporal parts, then they have time-dependent properties. Next, I argue that if enduring persons change by having time-dependent properties, then fatalism, or, more accurately, ontological determinism, holds. Hence those of us who consider that ontological determinism is incompatible with our own experience of responsibility have reason to reject the thesis that persons endure. This is significant because endurance might otherwise be thought to cohere better with belief in responsibility than perdurance.