On Stages, Worms, and Relativity

Abstract

AbstractFour–dimensionalism, or perdurantism, the view that temporally extended objects persist through time by having (spatio-)temporal parts or stages, includes two varieties, the worm theory and the stage theory. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four–dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of space–time and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. The stage theorist, however, claims, not that perduring objects have stages, but that the fundamental entities of the perdurantist ontologyarestages. I argue that considerations of special relativity favor the worm theory over the stage theory.