display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 15968 | Identity is simple - absolutely everything is self-identical, and nothing is identical to another thing [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is ever identical to anything except itself. There is never any problem about what makes something identical to itself; nothing can ever fail to be. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I have great problems with expressing this concept as a thing being 'identical to itself'. I will always say that it 'has an identity'. But then it is problematical, because what constitutes an identity? When do dispersing clouds lose it? |
| 15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
| 15969 | Two things can never be identical, so there is no problem [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is never any problem about what makes two things identical; two things can never be identical. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This expresses Lewis's preference for usage of the word 'identity', rather than a simple solution. It pays no attention to type-identity, which is an obvious phenomenon. In some sense, it is just obvious that two electrons are 'identical'. |