Vague Identity

Edited by Eric de Araujo (Purdue University, Purdue University)
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  1. Different Samenesses: Essays on Non-Standard Views of Identity.Eric de Araujo - 2021 - Dissertation, The Ohio State University
    Few views are as widely held as the Standard View of Identity. Here I am concerned with minority views that depart from the standard account. First, I attempt to illuminate such views and the debates concerning them by identifying the principles of identity at issue, articulating some of the assumptions underlying the debates, and presenting some of the evidence used against the Standard View of Identity. Second, I enter two of these debates myself. I first defend two Non-Standard Views of (...)
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  2. The Conflict of Rigidity and Precision in Designation.Daniele Bertini - 2020 - Logos and Episteme 11 (1):19-27.
    My paper provides reasons in support of the view that vague identity claims originate from a conflict between rigidity and precision in designation. To put this stricly, let x be the referent of the referential terms P and Q. Then, that the proposition “that any x being both a P and a Q” is vague involves that the semantic intuitions at work in P and Q reveal a conflict between P and Q being simultaneously rigid and precise designators. After having (...)
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  3. Ontic Indeterminacy: Chinese Madhyamaka in the Contemporary Context.Chien-Hsing Ho - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3):419-433.
    A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. Intriguingly, ideas similar to the view are expressed by thinkers from Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhism, which may shed light on the current discussion of worldly indeterminacy. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka thought, together with Jessica Wilson’s account of indeterminacy, I develop an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which centres on two complementary ideas—conclusive indeterminability and provisional determinability. I show that (...)
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  4. Powerful Logic: Prime Matter as Principle of Individuation and Pure Potency.Paul Symington - 2020 - Review of Metaphysics 73 (3):495-529.
    A lean hylomorphism stands as a metaphysical holy grail. An embarrassing feature of traditional hylomorphic ontologies is prime matter. Prime matter is both so basic that it cannot be examined (in principle) and its engagement with the other hylomorphic elements is far from clear. One particular problem posed by prime matter is how it is to be understood both as a principle of individuation for material substances and as pure potency. I present Thomas Aquinas’s way of squeezing some intelligibility out (...)
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  5. Constitution, Vague Objects, and Persistence.Radim Bělohrad - 2019 - Prolegomena: Časopis Za Filozofiju 18 (1):5–26.
    In this paper, I assess the analysis of vagueness of objects in terms of the theory of constitution with respect to the notion of vague identity. Some proponents of the constitution theory see it as an advantage of their account that analysing the spatial and temporal vagueness of objects in terms of the relation of vague constitution avoids commitment to vague identity, which is seen as a controversial notion. I argue that even though the constitution theory may plausibly be applied (...)
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  6. The Unimportance of Being Any Future Person.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):745-750.
    Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.
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  7. Deep Indeterminacy in Physics and Fiction.George Darby, Martin Pickup & Jon Robson - 2017 - In Otávio Bueno, Steven French, George Darby & Dean Rickles (eds.), Thinking About Science, Reflecting on Art: Bringing Aesthetics and Philosophy of Science Together. Routledge.
    Indeterminacy in its various forms has been the focus of a great deal of philosophical attention in recent years. Much of this discussion has focused on the status of vague predicates such as ‘tall’, ‘bald’, and ‘heap’. It is determinately the case that a seven-foot person is tall and that a five-foot person is not tall. However, it seems difficult to pick out any determinate height at which someone becomes tall. How best to account for this phenomenon is, of course, (...)
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  8. A Note on a Remark of Evans.Wolfgang Barz - 2016 - Polish Journal of Philosophy 10 (2):7-15.
    In his seminal paper, ‘Can There Be Vague Objects?’ (1978), Gareth Evans advanced an argument purporting to prove that the idea of indeterminate identity is incoherent. Aware that his argument was incomplete as it stands, Evans added a remark at the end of his paper, in which he explained how the original argument needed to be modified to arrive at an explicit contradiction. This paper aims to develop a modified version of Evans’ original argument, which I argue is more promising (...)
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  9. Definite Descriptions and Indeterminate Identity (extended abstract).Derek von Barandy - 2016 - Logiko-Filosofskie Studii 13 (2):111-112.
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  10. Fictional Realism and Indeterminate Identity.Brendan Murday - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Research 40:205-225.
    Fictional realists hold that fictional characters are real entities. However, Anthony Everett [“Against Fictional Realism”, Journal of Philosophy (2005)] notes that some fictions leave it indeterminate whether character A is identical to character B, while other fictions depict A as simultaneously identical and distinct from B. Everett argues that these fictions commit the realist to indeterminate and impossible identity relations among actual entities, and that as such realism is untenable. This paper defends fictional realism: for fictions depicting non-classical identity between (...)
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  11. Weakly Classical Theories of Identity.Joshua Schechter - 2011 - Review of Symbolic Logic 4 (4):607-644.
    There are well-known quasi-formal arguments that identity is a "strict" relation in at least the following three senses: (1) There is a single identity relation and a single distinctness relation; (2) There are no contingent cases of identity or distinctness; and (3) There are no vague or indeterminate cases of identity or distinctness. However, the situation is less clear cut than it at first may appear. There is a natural formal theory of identity that is very close to the standard (...)
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  12. Vague parts and vague identity.Elizabeth Barnes & J. R. G. Williams - 2009 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2):176-187.
    We discuss arguments against the thesis that the world itself can be vague. The first section of the paper distinguishes dialectically effective from ineffective arguments against metaphysical vagueness. The second section constructs an argument against metaphysical vagueness that promises to be of the dialectically effective sort: an argument against objects with vague parts. Firstly, cases of vague parthood commit one to cases of vague identity. But we argue that Evans' famous argument against will not on its own enable one to (...)
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  13. Multiple actualities and ontically vague identity.Robert Williams - 2008 - Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230):134-154.
    Although the Evans argument against vague identity has been much discussed, proposah for blocking it have not so far satisfied general conditions which any solution ought to meet. Moreover, the relation between ontically vague identity and ontic vagueness more generally has not yet been satisfactorily addressed. I advocate a way of resisting the Evans argument which satisfies the conditions. To show how this approach can vindicate particular cases of ontically vague identity, I develop a framework for describing ontic vagueness in (...)
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  14. Vagueness.Varol Akman - 2006 - In A. C. Grayling, Naomi Goulder & Andrew Pyle (eds.), The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy (4 volumes). London: Continuum. pp. 3260-3261.
    Vagueness, 'the quality or condition of being vague' (OED), has kept philosophers busy since ancient times. This article gives a concise account of vagueness.
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  15. Counting and Indeterminate Identity.N. Ángel Pinillos - 2003 - Mind 112 (445):35 - 50.
    Suppose that we repair a wooden ship by replacing its planks one by one with new ones while at the same time reconstructing it using the discarded planks. Some defenders of vague or indeterminate identity claim that: (1) although the reconstructed ship is distinct from the repaired ship, it is indeterminate whether the original ship is the reconstructed ship and indeterminate whether it is the repaired ship, and (2) the indeterminacy is due to the world and not just an imprecision (...)
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  16. That There Might Be Vague Objects (So Far as Concerns Logic).Richard Heck - 1998 - The Monist 81 (1):277-99.
    Gareth Evans has argued that the existence of vague objects is logically precluded: The assumption that it is indeterminate whether some object a is identical to some object b leads to contradiction. I argue in reply that, although this is true—I thus defend Evans's argument, as he presents it—the existence of vague objects is not thereby precluded. An 'Indefinitist' need only hold that it is not logically required that every identity statement must have a determinate truth-value, not that some such (...)
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  17. Is Incommensurability Vagueness?John Broome - 1997 - In Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason. Harvard University Press.
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  18. Many, but almost one.David K. Lewis - 1993 - In Keith Cambell, John Bacon & Lloyd Reinhardt (eds.), Ontology, Causality and Mind: Essays on the Philosophy of D. M. Armstrong. Cambridge University Press. pp. 23-38.
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  19. Is indeterminate identity incoherent?Richard Heck - manuscript
    In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. I argue for two (...)
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