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Inverse View
It is not the case that On B-theory perdurantism, 'Socrates is snub-nosed' must quantify over temporal parts, yet ordinary speakers intend no such quantification.
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Reasons For
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Reason for
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1.
If ordinary speakers intend no quantification over temporal parts, their mental content diverges from B-theory's semantic claims—suggesting B-theory misdescribes actual language.
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2.
Alternative frameworks (presentism or A-theory) better explain how ordinary speakers can truthfully assert properties of objects without metaphysical temporal parts.
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3.
Semantic theory should match speakers' actual intentional states; if B-perdurantism requires hidden quantification, it violates compositionality constraints on meaning.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Ordinary speakers lack explicit awareness of metaphysical structure underlying their utterances, as shown by naive intuitions about composition and identity.
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2.
B-theory with perdurantism requires temporal parts for predication; speakers' silence on this doesn't negate the objective metaphysical requirement.
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3.
Many successful scientific theories posit unobserved entities speakers never consciously quantify over, yet these remain genuine parts of reality's structure.
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