Identity (philosophy)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses of "Identity", see Identity (disambiguation).

In

many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if x and y share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person x at one time and a person y at a later time to be one and the same person?). It is important to distinguish between qualitative identity and numerical identity. For example, consider two children with identical bicycles engaged in a race while their mother is watching. The two children have the same bicycle in one sense (qualitative identity) and the same mother in another sense (numerical identity).[3]
This article is mainly concerned with numerical identity, which is the stricter notion.

The philosophical concept of identity is distinct from the better-known notion of identity in use in

relation, specifically, a relation that x and y stand in if, and only if they are one and the same thing, or identical to each other (i.e. if, and only if x = y). The sociological notion of identity, by contrast, has to do with a person's self-conception, social presentation, and more generally, the aspects of a person that make them unique, or qualitatively different from others (e.g. cultural identity, gender identity, national identity, online identity, and processes of identity formation). Lately, identity has been conceptualized considering humans’ position within the ecological web of life.[4]

Metaphysics of identity

Metaphysicians and philosophers of language and mind ask other questions:

The

predicate
true of x is true of y as well.

Leibniz's ideas have taken root in the

trans-world identity—the notion that there can be the same object in different possible worlds. An alternative to trans-world identity is the counterpart relation in Counterpart theory
. It is a similarity relation that rejects trans-world individuals and instead defends an objects counterpart – the most similar object.

Some philosophers have denied that there is such a relation as identity. Thus

On Sense and Reference," expressed a worry with regard to identity as a relation: "Equality gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy to answer. Is it a relation?" More recently, C. J. F. Williams[7] has suggested that identity should be viewed as a second-order relation, rather than a relation between objects, and Kai Wehmeier[8]
has argued that appealing to a binary relation that every object bears to itself, and to no others, is both logically unnecessary and metaphysically suspect.

Identity statements

Kind-terms, or sortals[9] give a criterion of identity and non-identity among items of their kind.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Identity", First published Wed 15 Dec 2004; substantive revision Sun 1 Oct 2006.
  2. ^ Audi, Robert (1999). "identity". The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
  3. ^ Sandkühler, Hans Jörg (2010). "Ontologie: 4 Aktuelle Debatten und Gesamtentwürfe". Enzyklopädie Philosophie (in German). Meiner. Archived from the original on 11 March 2021. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
  4. S2CID 229580440
    .
  5. JSTOR 20128696
    .
  6. JSTOR 20128487
    .
  7. ^ C.J.F. Williams, What is identity?, Oxford University Press 1989. [page needed]
  8. ^ Kai F. Wehmeier, "How to live without identity—and why," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90:4, 2012, pp. 761–777.
  9. ^ Theodore Sider. "Recent work on identity over time". Philosophical Books 41 (2000): 81–89.

References

External links
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