Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Identity and Individuation

  • Do We Love the Person or Only Her Attributes?

    Substack latest. Gleanings from a passage from Pascal. This supplements and deepens the recent discussion of subjective and objective views of death.

  • The Relative Unreality of Social Transactions

    An excerpt from  a journal entry dated 21 July 1985 followed by a comment. There is often little or no personal reality in human relationships. They are often nothing more than formulaic transactions. When I saw C.T.K. on Friday I told him, sincerely, that he looked good, healthy. He felt obliged to return the compliment…

  • On whether an individual is identical to its existence

    This just over the transom: Good day Dr. Vallicella,   I was reading your book on existence, and on page 71, there is this argument for the real distinction between an individual's essence and its existence:   "[I]f in a essence and existence are identical, then a's essence entails a's existence. But that is to say that a is a necessary…

  • Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

    Substack latest.

  • Why I Reject Individual Concepts

    This entry was first posted on 24 July 2011. Time for a repost with minor modifications. I find that I still reject individual concepts. Surprise! ……………………………. Consider the sentences 'Caissa is a cat' and 'Every cat is an animal.'  Edward the Nominalist made two  claims in an earlier comment thread that stuck in my Fregean craw: 1)…

  • Our Knowledge of Sameness (2021 Version)

    How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  The strangeness of the ordinary. Sameness is a structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. There is synchronic and diachronic sameness. I will be discussing the latter. How do I know that the tree I now see…

  • A Most Remarkable Prophecy

    The Question Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed…

  • Existence, Unity, Possibility, and Actuality: Are There Merely Possible Individuals?

    Steven Nemes by e-mail: Here’s a question for you about existence, perhaps one you could discuss on the blog. In your book, you argue that existence is ontological unity. I think that’s right. But a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such. What then distinguishes merely possible existence from actual…

  • A Most Remarkable Prophecy

    The Question Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed…

  • The Puzzle of Dion and Theon

    This puzzle, similar to Peter Geach's Tibbles the Cat in content, is unlike it in vintage. Its origin is attributed by Philo of Alexandria (30 B.C. – 45 A. D.) to Chrysippus the Stoic (c. 280 B.C. – c. 206 B. C.) What follows is my take on the puzzle. I draw heavily upon Michael…

  • Who am I? Personal Identity versus Identity Politics

    Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps? I wrote: . . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part…

  • Royce Revisited: Individuality and Immortality

    This is a draft of a paper from years ago (early aughts) that it looks like I may never finish. But it is relevant to present concerns. So here it is. …………………………………………………… ROYCE REVISITED: INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY     “What is it that makes any real being an individual?” Near the beginning of his 1899 Ingersoll lecture,…

  • Use, Mention, and Identity

    Ed plausibly maintains that the following argument is invalid: Hesperus is so-called because it appears in the eveningHesperus = Phosphorus————–Phosphorus is so-called because it appears in the evening. But then he asks: if the above is invalid why isn't the following argument also invalid? 'Hesperus’ designates HesperusHesperus = Phosphorus————-‘Hesperus’ designates Phosphorus. I say both arguments…

  • Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

    The following ruminations belong among the metaphysical foundations of debates about tribalism, racism, and the differences between my brand of conservatism and the neo-reactionary variety.  For example, I say things like, "We should  aspire to treat individuals as individuals rather than reduce them to tokens of types or members of groups or instances of attributes." …

  • Predication as Identity: Another Round

    The Opponent is a patient man: Trying again. (1) Sam is poor at t1 iff Sam is identical with some poor person at t1(2) Sam is poor at t1 iff Sam is self-identical at t1 (1) is self-evidently true. For it cannot be true that Sam is poor, but not identical with some poor person.…