The Logical Contingency of Identity

European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 14 (2):5-10 (2018)
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Abstract

I show that intuitive and logical considerations do not justify introducing Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in more than a limited form, as applying to atomic formulas. Once this is accepted, it follows that Leibniz’s Law generalises to all formulas of the first-order Predicate Calculus but not to modal formulas. Among other things, identity turns out to be logically contingent.

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Hanoch Ben-Yami
Central European University

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