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Full Idea
We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies.
Gist of Idea
It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos
Source
Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I)
Book Ref
'The Possible and the Actual', ed/tr. Loux,Michael J. [Cornell 1979], p.152
A Reaction
This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case?
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |