Identity (philosophy) - Wikipedia Identity (philosophy) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Relation each thing bears to itself alone For other uses, see identity (disambiguation). In philosophy, identity, from Latin: identitas ("sameness"), is the relation each thing bears only to itself.[1][2] The notion of identity gives rise to 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?). The philosophical concept of identity is distinct from the better-known notion of identity in use in psychology and the social sciences. The philosophical concept concerns a 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). Contents 1 Metaphysics of identity 2 Identity statements 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links Metaphysics of identity[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Metaphysicians and philosophers of language and mind ask other questions: What does it mean for an object to be the same as itself? If x and y are identical (are the same thing), must they always be identical? Are they necessarily identical? What does it mean for an object to be the same, if it changes over time? (Is applet the same as applet+1?) If an object's parts are entirely replaced over time, as in the Ship of Theseus example, in what way is it the same? The law of identity originates from classical antiquity. The modern formulation of identity is that of Gottfried Leibniz, who held that x is the same as y if and only if every predicate true of x is true of y as well. Leibniz's ideas have taken root in the philosophy of mathematics, where they have influenced the development of the predicate calculus as Leibniz's law. Mathematicians sometimes distinguish identity from equality. More mundanely, an identity in mathematics may be an equation that holds true for all values of a variable. Hegel argued that things are inherently self-contradictory[citation needed] and that the notion of something being self-identical only made sense if it were not also not-identical or different from itself and did not also imply the latter. In Hegel's words, "Identity is the identity of identity and non-identity." More recent metaphysicians have discussed 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 Ludwig Wittgenstein writes (Tractatus 5.5301): "That identity is not a relation between objects is obvious." At 5.5303 he elaborates: "Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing." Bertrand Russell had earlier voiced a worry that seems to be motivating Wittgenstein's point (The Principles of Mathematics §64): "[I]dentity, an objector may urge, cannot be anything at all: two terms plainly are not identical, and one term cannot be, for what is it identical with?" Even before Russell, Gottlob Frege, at the beginning of "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[3] has suggested that identity should be viewed as a second-order relation, rather than a relation between objects, and Kai Wehmeier[4] 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[edit] Kind-terms, or sortals[5] give a criterion of identity and non-identity among items of their kind. See also[edit] Counterpart theory Difference (philosophy) Four-dimensionalism/perdurantism Teleportation paradox Notes[edit] ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Identity, First published Wed 15 Dec 2004; substantive revision Sun 1 Oct 2006. ^ The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, CUP: 1995 ^ C.J.F. Williams, What is identity?, Oxford University Press 1989. ^ Kai F. Wehmeier, "How to live without identity—and why," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90:4, 2012, pp. 761–777. ^ Theodore Sider, "Recent work on identity over time" Philosophical Books 41 (2000): 81–89 References[edit] Gallois, A. 1998: Occasions of identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-823744-8 Google books Parfit, D. 1984: Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-824908-X Google books Robinson, D. 1985: Can amoebae divide without multiplying? Australasian journal of philosophy, 63(3): 299–319. doi:10.1080/00048408512341901 Sidelle, A. 2000: [Review of Gallois (1998)]. Philosophical review, 109(3): 469–471. JSTOR Sider, T. 2001: [Review of Gallois (1998)]. British journal for the philosophy science, 52(2): 401–405. doi:10.1093/bjps/52.2.401 External links[edit] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Identity, First published Wed 15 Dec 2004; substantive revision Sun 1 Oct 2006. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Identity over time. First published Fri 18 March 2005. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Personal identity. First published Tue 20 Aug 2002; substantive revision Tue 20 Feb 2007. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Relative identity. First published Mon 22 April 2002. Fernando Andacht, Mariela Michel, A Semiotic Reflection on Selfinterpretation and Identity. v t e Metaphysics Metaphysicians Parmenides Plato Aristotle Plotinus Duns Scotus Thomas Aquinas Francisco Suárez Nicolas Malebranche René Descartes John Locke David Hume Thomas Reid Immanuel Kant Isaac Newton Arthur Schopenhauer Baruch Spinoza Georg W. F. Hegel George Berkeley Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Christian Wolff Bernard Bolzano Hermann Lotze Henri Bergson Friedrich Nietzsche Charles Sanders Peirce Joseph Maréchal Ludwig Wittgenstein Martin Heidegger Alfred N. Whitehead Bertrand Russell G. E. Moore Jean-Paul Sartre Gilbert Ryle Hilary Putnam P. F. Strawson R. G. Collingwood Rudolf Carnap Saul Kripke W. V. O. Quine G. E. M. 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