(no subject)
I started reading Ted Sider's Four-Dimensionalism this afternoon, and I really like this passage, which is good both in and out of context, I think:
Even if you could somehow touch all of a person's spatial parts at once, you would still fail to touch all the person, for not all the person is then to be touched. To touch all of a person you must hold him in an interpenetrating total embrace from his birth until his death; only thus would you have access to all his past and future temporal parts.
Ted Sider is just a pleasant read in general. I've more or less put aside the raging epistemology binge in an effort to sane myself back up before classes start. I've been sitting around reading about time and ontology and smiling to myself, because I'm a dork like that.
Even if you could somehow touch all of a person's spatial parts at once, you would still fail to touch all the person, for not all the person is then to be touched. To touch all of a person you must hold him in an interpenetrating total embrace from his birth until his death; only thus would you have access to all his past and future temporal parts.
Ted Sider is just a pleasant read in general. I've more or less put aside the raging epistemology binge in an effort to sane myself back up before classes start. I've been sitting around reading about time and ontology and smiling to myself, because I'm a dork like that.