Persistence
Smith is reading an open book that was shut this morning. At least it certainly seems like the same book he placed closed on his nightstand and opened to read this evening. But, then again, nothing can be both shut and not shut, Smith's book being included among those things that cannot violate G.W. Leibniz's law. So, no matter that common sense dictates that Smith's shut book did not blink out of existence to be instantaneously replaced by an open book, perhaps it is a different book after all.
Very roughly, that is the start of the problem of persistence—an initial worry about how an object can persist through a change in its properties. It is a problem that may seem easily dismissed until we identify its source in some of our basic metaphysical commitments and recognize the costs that accompany any way of addressing it. The understanding of the problem of persistence expressed below was developed alongside and informed by Sally Haslanger's work (Haslanger 2003).
The Initial Worry
We can sharpen the initial worry about books and other ordinary objects that persist through change by noting that it emerges from the conjunction of three core metaphysical theses.
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