The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Emmanuel Viebahn, Freie Universität Berlin, "Names, pronouns and persistence".
Abstract: We commonly use names and pronouns to pick out persisting entities, such as persons, kangaroos or buildings. What is the temporal extent of the entities picked out? Different theories of persistence answer this question quite differently. Endurantists hold that we pick out wholly present objects, while perdurantists hold that we pick out spacetime worms (worm theory) or instantaneous stages (stage theory). The first aim of this talk is to suggest that none of these answers matches how we use names and pronouns in everyday discourse, as these expressions are temporally flexible: one and the same name or pronoun can be used to pick out entities of different temporal extent, even if the subject of the discussion is held fixed. The second aim of the talk is to point out implications of this result for the debates on the nature of persistence and on the semantics of names.
All interested are welcome to participate in this seminar.
