The John Paul II Catholic
University of Lublin
Abstract.
In the article I compare two
theories of existence in time: Simons’s conception of continuants and
occurrents and Ingarden’s ontology of temporally determined objects (i.e.
objects enduring in time, processes and events). They can be regarded as
different positions in the controversy over substantialism. The main
problem of this controversy can be expressed by the question: what is
the primary way of being in time—endurance or perdurance? Ingarden and
Simons admit that there exist objects characterized by both ways of
being but for Simons, unlike for Ingarden, perdurants are the basic
objects which the world is composed of. My aim is not to assess both
ontologies but to use the comparison of them as the basis of a
reconstruction of the principal problems contained in the controversy
over substantialism.
