John Stickles

John Stickles

Department of Philosophy
Doctoral researcher

Contact details

Address
ERI Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

PhD title: The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time on a Perdurance Model
Supervisor: Nikk Effingham
PhD Philosophy

Research

My research focuses on answering the “Special Composition Question” for perdurance theory regarding the composition of temporal parts. Essentially, if reality is “sliced” into temporal parts, then what, if anything, is so special about certain composed objects that extend through time? If perdurance theory is correct, should we consider ourselves to be a single object that perdures through spacetime but not consider a “gerrymandered” grouping of temporal parts--say a dinosaur’s temporal parts mashed up with your Uncle Fred’s temporal parts--as an object that perdures through time? This question gets into the philosophy of time and space, mereology, ontology, and, at the core of the conversation, the persistence of identity.