Here are two more points against your theory. It's a pre-analytic datum—a Moorean fact—that a green apple is numerically one and the same as the red apple it ripens into.

Similarly, when I go from pleasant state to a painful one, I don't experience being a new, painful object connected to a past, pleasant object. I experience enduring through a change from a pleasant state to a painful one. So as before, your theory conflicts with our pre-analytic data. It doesn't even make it to the level of dialectics.

If I see a sharp reply to any of the problems I've mentioned (i. e. the unity or empirical problems), I might jump back in and respond. Have a good weekend.

John West wrote:

I'm not going to roll in the mud with you, Red. I was harsh because I don't want to be one of the people who would let someone walk around with boogers on their face all day without letting them know.

Well you're the one who is been showing his anger and his nerves all this time for no good reason,you're the one who is trying to hurl insults at me, You first started diverting from the discussion talking about me.even accusing me of deploying some odd rhetorical device that I've never even heard of. Truth is you are the only one who went towards "the mud" in the first place so likewise if anyone's got "boogers" on their face here, its must be you John,not me.

This will be my last comment on at least this particular thread because I do realize that I'll have to dig into some published work anyway, It was my mistake to try to find cheap answers..

I am just gonna comment on some of your and other user's remarks here briefly.

John West wrote:

As a truthmaker theorist, I don't think there is a strict, one-one correspondence between language and reality. So, I don't worry about rephrasing everything into tenseless language. If, however, there is fairly one-one correspondence, and tensed language is incompatible with the B-theory, then the B-theory is probably cooked (even your own comments in this thread are chock-full of tensed language).

Wait, these are some odd suggestions you're making here. When have I requested rephrasing everything into tenseless language.?
Neither have I claimed that tensed language is incompatible with the B-theory. Its only the case that somethings are clearly incompatible with it ,don't you think? Why do you think Craig admits that His argument gets undermined under tenseless theory if its such a simple matter? Why do you think many philosophers passionately defend both theories if its just merely verbal disagreement as you suggest ?

What I have suggested instead is that the objective "bringing about" is incompatible with tenseless theory through which you seem to characterize Potency ..(think of how it undermines kala'm Argument, neither universe nor anything else ever truly begins to exist as Craig himself admits, similarly nothing is ever brought about,if you mean it in a similar sense)

John West wrote:

Could you rewrite this sentence more clearly, or explain how it relates to my original point about perceiving causation? (Everything I can conceive of is metaphysically possible; I can conceive of hallucinating the experience of causation in a perdurantist universe where causation doesn't exist; hence, it's possible that I'm hallucinating the experience of causation in a perdurantist universe where causation doesn't exist. Is that your argument? Haha.

Yest thats my reply to your argument and its sufficient to show that your argument is unsound(even if intuitively plausible), you have to actually show what is it about event causation which would preclude my experience of it so far you haven't..
Just like I can have perfect experience of exercising Free will, where there could be none .

John West wrote:

Here are two more points against your theory. It's a pre-analytic datum—a Moorean fact—that a green apple is numerically one and the same as the red apple it ripens into.

Similarly, when I go from pleasant state to a painful one, I don't experience being a new, painful object connected to a past, pleasant object. I experience enduring through a change from a pleasant state to a painful one. So as before, your theory conflicts with our pre-analytic data. It doesn't even make it to the level of dialectics.

Wait, are these even problems? they sound more like some idiocentric declarations. These intuitions can be plausible but they can be very easily mistaken and they have no evidentiary Value, surely its odd to take some intuitionistic prejudice as a guide to metaphysics, A correct theory should accommodate our intuitions and preserve our experience but it doesn't follow that these intuitions are guide to a correct theory.

Any Error theory can be provided for why these endurantist intuitions are mistaken(and they have been by Philosophers) and it could be shown that Perdurantism can infact accommodate these well..
I won't attempt to do that here but Note that I can just as well use these so called problems to show that only some Pre- Relativistic Newtonian view of the world could be correct and the later view "doesn't even make it to the level of dialectics" so Einsteinian physics must be dismissed. such an argument would be an absolute travesty of all these views and no doubt, is .
This should be sufficient to undermine what ever force your arguments were supposed to have. You actually have to show why would those views preclude these perceptual experiences, you've just asserted that they do and called it a day..

John West wrote:

Have a good weekend.

You too, John

Hello Dennis

Earlier you've asked me how I define change, that was an odd question to ask because I had done that multiple times during the discussion,  An object undergoes change if it possesses a property at one time and lack it at another. In other words ..its just being one way at one time and being other way at other.(this is a pretty nice and standard way of characterizing change, before the presentist/A-theorist starts pumping in some odd intuition that some just doesn't have and suggests that there must be something more to it.)

Dennis wrote:

When we're talking of potency, we're talking about the capacity for something to be brought about. Given that causation is an asymmetric relation, on eternalism, if the thing we're looking at is contingent, it needs to be brought about or its essence needs to be conjoined with existence. IOW, causing a contingent thing to exist is to bring it about. John's Bradleyan argument demonstrates just that.

Nothing is ever brought about in eternalism( or at least I don't understand if this term is being used in some other sense), I tend to think of it as the "term begins to exist" in the context of Kala'm Argument .which Craig admits, is completely parasitic on tensed view of time and become totally untenable on tenseless view ..so if you mean capacity for something to be "brought about" in this sense it seem mistaken on B-theory ..

And that isn't the only way to characterize contingent existence(and it seems totally parasitic on tense too) ...The way most see it is that something is contingent if it exists in only some possible worlds and necessary if it exists in all possible world ..so on B-theory the world can be contingent in this way.

Dennis wrote:

Suppose you want to resist this talk, you would want to substitute this explanan with another which accounts for the fact of contingent existence. If it doesn't, this is a theoretical minus and undesirable.

I am not sure what you mean here but it seems to me that nothing about what my brain is thinking right now has anything to do with it being "brought about" by earlier parts.
it merely means that there are some regularities we can observe but nothing about ontological dependence obtains here. I've repeated and tried to show many times that under perdurantism all change is reduced to themselves unchanging parts which don't do anything.

Dennis wrote:

I do think that your main problem is with the theory of perdurance, and that's why you cannot understand potency

Yea, I agree ..or maybe someones not doing a good job explaining.

Dennis wrote:

You are arguing for at least:

(1) Perdurance,
(2) B-Theory,
(3) Counterfactual theory of causation,
(4) Event ontology,
(5) Possible worlds serving as truthmakers for "John caused the vase to break." (This one really puzzles me, how do possible worlds serve as truthmakers for that?)

(1) Perdurance: Yes, it seems the best way for B-theorist/Eternalist to accommodate change in their view.
(2) B-Theory: Yes
(3) Counterfactual theory of causation:Yes, Either this or the Humean view.
(4) Event Ontology: ummm. I am not sure it should be called event <i>ontology</i> or not , I think you're free to label anything you like as "Substance" ..I only think that under certain temporal parts view, Substance don't do anything.
(5) Possible worlds serving as truthmakers for "John caused the vase to break." (This one really puzzles me, how do possible worlds serve as truthmakers for that?)

About that, I don't want to go at any length on that because I want this to be my last comment here, just wanna be done with it as soon as possible, neither do I believe anything I'll say will be sufficient to remove the queerness of the scenario but I am just gonna say that Lewis himself said in his book that.. If possible worlds help with counterfactuals, they will help with causation

So I'll just conclude with an argument from authority..

Hope you All have a nice weekend, Peace.
 

Calhoun wrote:

I do realize that I'll have to dig into some published work anyway, It was my mistake to try to find cheap answers.

Happy to hear it, Red. In the spirit of the season, below are some replies and recommendations.

Wait, are these even problems? they sound more like some idiocentric declarations.

The point is that the existence of alterational change is in the same class of facts as that I have a head on my shoulders (Moorean facts),* and perdurantism denies it.* 

A lot of metaphysicians consider Moorean facts the bottom line facts from which we ought to start building theories (e. g. Armstrong, Fine, Vallicella), and are likely to dismiss the ones that ignore them as failures.

I can just as well use these so called problems to show that only some Pre- Relativistic Newtonian view of the world could be correct and the later view "doesn't even make it to the level of dialectics" so Einsteinian physics must be dismissed.

The principles and concepts that underlie Relativity also imply the existence of enduring objects, e. g. a worldline is a sum of events, all of which involve a single material body.

(Your mistake is probably that you're assuming an ontology can't have both temporal parts and enduring objects: events have temporal parts, particles and people don't.)

*In other words, it's more certain than any argument that can be raised against it. It's not just "some idiocentric declaration".
*This is a straightforward fact about perdurantism (see, for example, Kurtz's Introduction to Persistence).

Calhoun wrote:

But also it just hit me that Vallicella above, is conflating Epistemic possibility with Metaphysical possibility .. so my point about those two arguments still stand.

Vallicella's not conflating epistemic and metaphysical possibility. In fact, I'm pretty sure he thinks that all conceivability can entail is epistemic possibility.

(Vallicella does occasionally make mistakes, but he's a careful philosophical craftsman. You're not going to catch him on a schoolboy blunder like that.)