What if there is no persistence? What if the world is a sequence of momentary flashes: each instant a complete fact unto itself, each one followed by another that is not it, each connected to the next by nothing but resemblance and causal succession? The Yogācāra Buddhists call this *kṣaṇabhaṅga*, momentary destruction. The contemporary analytic version is stage theory, or four-dimensionalism with temporal counterparts. Different traditions, different vocabularies, one structural proposal: persistence is illusory, and what we call a continuing thing is a series of distinct stages bound only by relations of similarity and causal continuity.

The move is radical and the consequences are drastic. If it succeeds, the structural account of [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>) collapses at Φ, the persistence condition. Without persistence, there is nothing across which Change can occur. Without persistence, the bidirectional identity of change-permission and T ∧ S ∧ Φ has no third leg to stand on. The classical theist, sensing the opening, sometimes adopts a momentarist line: God's relation to the world is a sequence of momentary creative acts, each instant freshly produced, with no need for persistence running through them. Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) supplies the metaphysical scaffolding. Sider supplies the contemporary analytic version. The objection deserves a careful answer.

The Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhism develops *kṣaṇabhaṅga* most rigorously: every existent (*bhāva*) is a *kṣaṇa* (momentary instant), arising and ceasing in the same instant, replaced by a successor that is causally continuous but numerically distinct. Vasubandhu (4th–5th c.) and Dharmakīrti (7th c.) elaborate the doctrine; the *ālaya-vijñāna* (storehouse consciousness) and the *bhāva-santāna* (continuum of being) provide the explanatory work that ordinary persistence would otherwise do. Nāgārjuna's *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* presses the analysis further: nothing has *svabhāva* (intrinsic nature), and *śūnyatā* (emptiness) is the proper analysis of every apparent persistent.

In analytic philosophy, the structurally similar position is stage theory: Sider (*Four-Dimensionalism* -(Sider, Theodore, 2001)) develops the most rigorous version, on which ordinary objects are momentary stages bound by genidentity (Lewin's term, taken up by Carnap and Reichenbach, for cross-time identity-by-causal-continuity rather than strict numerical identity) or counterpart relations. Hawley (*How Things Persist* -(Hawley, Katherine, 2001)) defends a closely related view. Lewis (*On the Plurality of Worlds* -(Lewis, David, 1986); *Philosophical Papers* II -(Lewis, David, 1986)) supplies the perdurantist framework. Quine's stage-theoretic readings of ordinary objects in *Word and Object* (-(Quine, W. V. O., 1960)) and Russell's logical-construction program are ancestral. Heller (*The Ontology of Physical Objects* -(Heller, Mark, 1990)) and Hudson (*A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person* -(Hudson, Hud, 2001)) develop the position in different directions.

The target of the present reply is the structural claim: that the world is a sequence of momentary stages bound by external relations only, with no persistence operating across them. The philosophical opponents of stage theory, endurantists like van Inwagen (*Material Beings* -(Van Inwagen, Peter, 1990)), Wiggins (*Sameness and Substance* -(Wiggins, David, 1980)), Lowe (*The Possibility of Metaphysics* -(Lowe, E. J., 1998)), who hold that ordinary objects are wholly present at each moment of their existence rather than composed of momentary stages, have written extensively against perdurance. The present reply is narrower than their full case: it locates the structural commitment that any momentarism must make to be the position it claims to be, and shows that the commitment instantiates the structural roles the position is defined as denying.

Three forms of the move develop the position at three depths: the strict-momentarism form, the causal-continuity form, and the counterpart-theoretic form. The reply argues that each fails for the same structural reason at increasing levels of refinement.

*First.* Strict momentarism (the cleanest form of the doctrine) claims that each instant is a complete fact unto itself, with no relations to any other instant. Each *kṣaṇa* arises and ceases in the same instant, and what we call succession is a cognitive imposition on what is in fact a sequence of unrelated complete facts.

Strict momentarism cannot describe its own claim. To say that there are many *kṣaṇa*s, in succession, is to relate them, and the relation of succession is exactly what is being denied. The position requires either that the *kṣaṇa*s be related or ordered, in which case a cross-stage structural fact is admitted, or that they be wholly unrelated, in which case the theory cannot recover succession. Wholly unrelated plurality does not literally collapse to one fact, but it cannot constitute a sequence without an ordering relation. The strict-momentarist version of the doctrine collapses on its own description: either the position is false because succession obtains, or the position is empty because nothing in it can be a succession of anything.

*Second.* The causal-continuity form weakens the claim: each moment is distinct, but moments are bound by causal relations. The *bhāva-santāna* (the continuum of being) is a causal stream, not a persistence condition; the appearance of a continuing self or object is the cognitive trace of the causal continuity, not the deliverance of an underlying substance.

A causal relation between distinct *kṣaṇa*s requires a structural fact connecting them. That supplies directed dependence and cross-stage bearing, but it does not by itself establish numerical identity or persistence of one bearer. The momentarist may accept causal continuity while denying strict persistence; the structural account must therefore distinguish the thin Φ-role from an endurantist persistence type. *Bhāva-santāna* names what Φ names: the structural condition that makes A's effect on B a real relation rather than a coincidence of pattern. If the doctrine is read as eliminating Φ, then the causal continuity it appeals to has nothing to run on and no force; if the doctrine is read as preserving Φ under a different name, then it has not eliminated persistence, only relabeled it. The Yogācāra commentators are aware of this tension; the elaborate apparatus of *ālaya-vijñāna* (storehouse consciousness as the carrier of karmic seeds across instants) is precisely the structural persistence the strict doctrine forswears, smuggled back in to do the explanatory work the strict doctrine cannot do without. The relabeling is honest about the explanatory need; what it does not show is that the structural role has been eliminated.

*Third.* The counterpart-theoretic form goes deepest: stages are momentary, but the genidentity relation (or the counterpart relation, or the appropriate cross-time similarity-plus-causation relation) ties them into the unified entities ordinary discourse names. The claim that this stage is the same person as that earlier stage is true under genidentity even though strict numerical identity does not obtain. Sider develops the position with full rigor; the technical apparatus is sophisticated and the resulting metaphysics is internally coherent.

The genidentity or counterpart relation is one proposed surrogate for persistence, not strict persistence under another vocabulary. For genidentity to obtain between this stage and that earlier stage, there must be a structural fact (not internal to either stage, since each is momentary, but extending across them) that makes the relation hold. Whatever fact it is, it is a structural fact spanning instants, and that *is* what Φ *consists in*. Sider's own stage theory is more precisely distinguished from perdurance: stages are not temporal parts of a four-dimensional whole but the primary objects, with persistence analyzed as a counterpart relation among numerically distinct stages (*Four-Dimensionalism* -(Sider, Theodore, 2001), [§4.3](<4.3 Physics and Mind.md>)). On stage theory, the persistence structure is the counterpart-genidentity relation itself, which may realize the thin Φ-role as cross-stage continuity. Stage theory nevertheless denies that the later stage is numerically the same entity as the earlier stage; the relation supports survival-talk without restoring strict identity. On perdurance, the persistence structure is the four-dimensional whole of which stages are temporal parts. Both posit a structural fact spanning instants; they differ on whether that fact is a relation among stages or a whole of which they are parts. The question of which is more fundamental is not settled here and need not be: either description preserves Φ. The reply is not that perdurance or stage theory is incoherent (neither is) but that neither is a refutation of Φ: each *is* Φ in a different decomposition. The endurantist holds that a thing wholly present at each moment persists; the perdurantist holds that a thing has temporal parts at each moment and the four-dimensional whole persists. Both posit a structural fact spanning instants. Where they differ is on the metaphysics of the parts, not on whether persistence (in the structural sense [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>) names) obtains.

A kindred move is the bundle theory variant: the world is a bundle of tropes or property-instances, with no underlying substance. Each instant is a co-presence of tropes; the apparent persistence of an object is the resemblance and causal connection between successive bundles. The reply is structurally identical: either the bundles are unrelated (no succession, no persistence, no anything) or related (the relations are the structural facts [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>) names). The bundle theorist who gives accounts of cross-time identity at all gives an account of structural persistence under another name.

Another kindred is the radical Heraclitean: nothing persists; everything is in flux; the river is never the same river twice. The reply is the same. To say that the river is in flux is to say that something stands in the relation of being-the-changing-pattern across the flux: the bed, the volume, the channel, or the whole spatiotemporal manifold of the river-event. Without structural persistence of some kind, 'flux' has no subject and the claim has no content. Heraclitus needs more structure than his slogan announces, and the more careful presocratic readings (Kahn, *The Art and Thought of Heraclitus* -(Kahn, Charles H., 1979)) acknowledge as much.

*What converges.* Three forms and none lets the structural elimination stand. Strict momentarism collapses on its own description: succession is the relation it denies. Causal-continuity smuggles Φ back in under the name *bhāva-santāna* or its analogs; the explanatory need is met only by reintroducing exactly what the strict doctrine forswears. The counterpart-theoretic form is internally coherent but is not a refutation of Φ; it is Φ in a different decomposition, with the counterpart-genidentity relation (or, on perdurance, the four-dimensional whole) as the persistence analog. The endurantist and the perdurantist agree on the structural fact; they disagree on its metaphysics of parts. The question of which description is more fundamental (the four-dimensional whole, the momentary stages in counterpart relations, or the wholly-present enduring object) is a question within the structural framework and answerable within it. It does not bear on whether Φ obtains. Sider's stage theory is a fundamentality proposal within a structurally committed metaphysics: it specifies how the persistence structure is best analyzed, not whether it exists. The meta-position held here is that fundamentality questions of this kind are downstream of the instantiation question: once Φ is established as a necessary structural condition, further questions about its realization (by temporal parts, by counterpart relations, or by simple endurance) remain open to metaphysical investigation without threatening the structural conclusion.

Sibling counter-constructions: emergent-time positions, on which time itself is derivative rather than fundamental, are [§4.2.3](<4.2.3 Emergent Time.md>). The Shoemaker objection, on which time can obtain without change, is [§4.2.2](<4.2.2 Shoemaker's Time Without Change.md>). The temporary-intrinsics objection, on which apparent change is the difference of intrinsic properties at different times rather than change of a single intrinsic, is [§4.2.7](<4.2.7 The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics.md>).

The deepest form of the momentarist insight is one the structural account preserves rather than denies: there is something importantly correct about the observation that nothing in the world is fixed, that every object is in some sense an event, that what we call a thing is the persistent pattern of its becoming. The structural account names that pattern Φ (the persistence condition) and locates it as one of three structural roles whose joint instantiation is what change consists in. The momentarist who pushes the insight to the elimination of Φ has gone too far: persistence is not a substance behind the pattern but *is* the pattern itself, the structural fact that there is a pattern at all rather than a sequence of unrelated fragments.


---

← [4.2.7 The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics](<4.2.7 The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics.md>) | [4.2.9 Existential Inertia](<4.2.9 Existential Inertia.md>) →
