sentences:  ), and that the other stages or parts which compose the persisting object are related to that part by a "temporal counterpart" relation.Though they have often been conflated, eternalism is a theory of what time is like and what times exist, while perdurantism is a theory about persisting objects and their identity conditions over time.Eternalism and perdurantism tend to be discussed together because many philosophers argue for a combination of eternalism and perdurantism.