 Some philosophers and some non-philosophers suspect that debate about whether things have temporal parts is empty, that there is no genuine issue at stake here. One idea is that we can’t know for sure whether things have temporal parts: all the theories on offer have good and bad aspects and we’ll never find an undisputed champion. If this is true, it doesn’t undermine the debate unless consensus and certainty are our only goals. A second idea is that metaphysical enquiry is pointless, since irrelevant to daily life. This claim needs support from accounts of relevance, and of the connection between irrelevance and pointlessness. A third idea is that metaphysical enquiry is doomed to fail because there are no absolute metaphysical truths. This claim needs support from accounts of truth, language and reality. All of these topics are too grand for this article. A fourth idea is the much more focused claim that, while certain metaphysical disputes are legitimate, the debate about temporal parts is empty: this doubt may be reinforced by the difficulty of giving a neutral account of what temporal parts are supposed to be, or by scepticism about the so-called ‘problem of change’, as discussed in the next section.