Causal endurantism : a new account of identity through time

This thesis proposes a new account of identity through time. The position, I will call 'causal endurantism', successfully overcomes some well-known objections to two established accounts of persistence. As is well known endurantism faces the problem of temporary intrinsics and the problem of changes in parts, and one form of perdurantism, based on spatiotemporal/qualitative continuity, cannot survive immaculate replacements and rotating disc arguments. Contrary to popular opinion, causal perdurantism also cannot avoid rotating disc arguments because it cannot fix states of motion for homogeneous objects without invoking facts of identity, and thereby becoming circular. The new account proposed in this thesis overcomes all of these problems and shows us that a hybrid account of identity is tenable. As a mixed account causal endurantism is, in some respects, like both endurantism and perdurantism, in that although the distinct successive stages of an object are connected by patterns of causal relations, these stages are not directly causally related but are joint effects of a common cause. That cause is that which endures ‚ÄövÑvÆ a dispositional property, or internal tendency towards continual change.