Presentism and the intrinsicness of past tensed properties

Many presentists think that objects have past-tensed properties. Thus an object that is now straight but was bent has the property of having been bent. (Some such presentists use these properties to ground facts about the past.)

But assuming for simplicity that being bent is an intrinsic property, we can argue that having been bent is an intrinsic property as well. Here’s why. If being bent doesn’t describe an object in relation to the existence, non-existence or features of any other object (assuming being bent is intrinsic), neither does having been bent. Nor is having been bent “temporally impure”—it does not describe the object in terms of anything happening at other times, since nothing can happen at other times on presentism. It does not describe the object in relation its past or future temporal slices or past or future events involving the object, since on presentism there are no past or future objects, and there are no past or future events.

But if having been bent is an intrinsic property of an object, it seems that, by a plausible patchwork principle or by intuitions about the omnipotence of God, an object could come into existence just for one instant and yet have been bent at that instant. Which is absurd.

Occupation is just a relation

That's my new slogan.  It's aimed at philosophical views on which there is something ontologically special about occupying a location in space or spacetime.  But surely to occupy a location in spacetime is just to stand in some sort of a relation (to a location or to other objects).

Consider for instance claims like the following that many mereologists like:

• If R is any region all the points of which are occupied by x, and R* is any sub-region, then there is a part of x that occupies all and only the points in R*.

(We can also talk without invoking points, but points will be convenient.)  Consider now some parallels for other relations:

• If R is a set of propositions all the members of which are believed by x (think of belief as epistemic occupation!), and R* is any subset, then there is a part of x that believes all and only the propositions in R*.
• If R is a set of people all members of which x is a friend to, and R* is any subset, then there is a part of x such that that part is a friend to all and only the people in R*.

These are absurd, though we may non-literally talk that way.  "The part of Josh that is friends with Trent likes epistemology."

Or consider some claim that nothing can be in two places at once.  Make the claim precise, for instance in the following way:

• It is not possible that there is an object x and disjoint regions R and R* such that every part of x occupies some point (perhaps different points for different parts) in R and every part of x occupies some point (ditto) in R*.

But why think that the occupation relation satisfies this kind of an axiom?  

Here's a broad sweeping thought: Otherwise Humean philosophers who believe in all sorts of very general rearrangement principles for fundamental relations do not extend the same courtesy to the occupation relation.  

Ironically, while I am not happy with general recombination principles (that say that any recombination of possible objects makes for a possible scenario), I am happy to allow for wild and crazy rearrangements of the occupation relation--objects being in more than one place at a time, objects occupying spatiotemporally disconnected regions, etc.  If I thought there were such things as parts, I might even be open to such options as composite objects occupying locations that none of their proper parts occupy, parts occupying locations that the whole does not occupy, etc.