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UIS faculty member is co-editor of new book

December 12, 2006

SPRINGFIELD -- Roxanne Kurtz, faculty member in the Philosophy program at the University of Illinois at Springfield, is co-editor of Persistence: Contemporary Readings, a new book recently published by the MIT Press.

One of the most perplexing philosophical problems is the consistency of change: How can a thing have incompatible properties and yet remain the same thing? How does an object persist through change? For example, how does a book, closed in the morning, persist through being opened for an afternoon's reading? How does the book persist through the incompatible states of being both open and shut?

Persistence is intended to inform and reframe debate on this concept by presenting views ranging from classic to contemporary in three broad approaches: perdurantism (change over time is analogous to change over space); exdurantism (identity over time is analogous to identity across possible worlds); and endurantism (ordinary objects persist by enduring). Arguments are included for and against each approach.

Before coming to UIS, Kurtz was a teaching fellow at Harvard University and an instructor in Philosophy/Political Science/Women's Studies at MIT. Her previous publications include the article "Meanness, Generosity, and Rawlsian Distributive Justice," which was published in the Journal of Philosophical Research in 2004. At UIS, her teaching focuses on political philosophy, social philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics.

More information about the book is available at www.amazon.com/Persistence-Contemporary-Readings-Bradford-Books/dp/0262582686/ref=ed_oe_p/002-5668790-8529654, or contact Kurtz at 206-8218.