Identity (Philosophy)

Tractarian First-Order Logic: Identity and the N-Operator

by Kai Wehmeier

joint with Brian Rogers

How to live without identity -- and why

by Kai Wehmeier

This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy; the Australasian Journal of Philosophy is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/.

Identity, we’re told, is the binary relation that every object bears to itself, and to itself only. But how can a... more Identity, we’re told, is the binary relation that every object bears to itself, and to itself only. But how can a relation be binary if it never relates two objects? This puzzled Russell and led Wittgenstein to declare that identity is not a relation between objects. The now standard view is that Wittgenstein’s position is untenable, and that worries regarding the relational status of identity are the result of confusion. I argue that the rejection of identity as a binary relation is perfectly tenable. To this end, I outline and defend a logical framework that is not committed to an objectual identity relation but nevertheless expressively equivalent to first-order logic with identity. After it has thus been shown that there is no indispensability argument for objectual identity, I argue that we have good reasons for doubting the existence of such a relation, and rebut a number of attempts at discrediting these reasons.

Tropes, Bare Demonstratives, and Apparent Statements of Identity

by Friederike Moltmann

To appear in 'Nous'

This paper is about so-called identificational sentences such as 'Tthis is Mary' and gives an analysis of them in... more This paper is about so-called identificational sentences such as 'Tthis is Mary' and gives an analysis of them in terms of reference to tropes. By allowing tropes to have multiple bearers, it also give an account of sentences apparently expressing relatve identity.

Waismann and Early Wittgenstein on Identity

by Camil Cardas

My paper for "The Vienna Circle" course. Supervisor: Mark Addis

Restor(y)ing lives: autobiographical reflection and perspective transformation in adults returning to study

by Jennifer K Miles

Throughout the course of our lives we are at times presented with the opportunity to reflect on our learning, to... more Throughout the course of our lives we are at times presented with the opportunity to reflect on our learning, to consider the experiences, the people and the environments that have contributed to the shaping of our sense of self, and to the expectation we subsequently have of ourselves and our future capacity. Nelson (1994) suggests we have the potential to transform our perspective if we have been enabled to explore the schemas woven into the fabric of our self-identity and to consider the impact this brings to bear on our life and learning. He speaks of the autobiographically reflective process as coming to imagine a future previously unknown.
This small-scale study, in one Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute, examines the process and self-articulated outcomes of five participants in a qualitative, narrative based inquiry, investigating the capacity of autobiographical reflection to promote perspective transformation in adults returning to study within the context of vocational education and training. Drawing predominantly on the work of Brookfield (2005), Mezirow (2000), Freire (1972b), Shor (1992), Cranton (1994), Frankl (1964) and Rogers (1980), it explores the personal and social dimensions of meaning-making, identifying the role of critical reflection in transforming learners’ perspectives as they come to critique the power relationships and hegemonic assumptions that have influenced their construction of self-identity. Utilising a storytelling methodology, the thesis honours the narrative tradition in weaving the process and findings of the study through the stories of the participants as they dance on the edge of their knowing (Berger, 2004).
Through undertaking an autobiographically reflective process that included individual interviews and a focus group, participants were ultimately able to articulate a sense of meaning making that enabled the construction of a foundation on which a new future – a new story - might be built. Recommendations have been made around further investigation of the implications of these limited findings as they relate to the potentially greater social benefits of individual perspective transformation.

Encountering Oneself and the Other: A Case Study of Identity Formation in Second Life

by Maeva Veerapen

Book chapter of Springer's "Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds"

The phenomenon of virtual worlds is changing how humans behave and make sense of the world. Working within the... more The phenomenon of virtual worlds is changing how humans behave and make sense of the world. Working within the paradigm that all human experience is incarnate, this chapter investigates how the processes of inworld identity construction occur within and in relation to the user’s body. Ninoo Nansen, my avatar, is the catalyst for this inquiry. Referring to past ethnographic research in Second LifeTM and drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (The Phenomenology of Perception. In: C. Smith (Trans.). Routledge, London (Original work published in 1945.)) and Sartre’s (1968) theories, I utilise phenomenological analysis to interpret the data. This analysis reveals the intentional structure within which identity is formed in the virtual world, differing from how it emerges in the physical world. I initially analyse how a unified, phenomenal I – from which the world is perceived – is formed from the interaction between the user and avatar during the experience of Second Life. I then consider how the encounter with the Other in Second Life modified the pre-virtual and inworld identities.

Identity and (Legal) Rights of Future Generations, The

by Ori Herstein

77 George Washington Law Review 1173 (2009)

Exploring the peculiar nature of future generations and concluding that types of future people is the most promising... more Exploring the peculiar nature of future generations and concluding that types of future people is the most promising object on which to project our concern for future generations the article poses two main questions: “Can future people have rights?” and, if so, “Do they in fact have any rights?” The article first explains why the non-existence of future people raises doubts whether future generations can have rights. Within the philosophical literature, the leading approach explaining how future people can, nevertheless, have rights argues that they have rights as tokens of types of people. After presenting this account of the rights of future people and couching it in a jurisprudential context, this Article points out a possible deficiency in the approach’s metaphysical underpinnings.

Assuming that future people can have rights the article goes on to explain that there is reason to doubt whether any such rights actually exist, which derive from the doubt whether future people will be harmed by most actions and choices in their prenatal past. According to what has come to be known as the “nonidentity argument,” actions and choices that are necessary parts of the causal chain leading up to the existence of a person cannot harm that person - had the act or choice not occurred that person would have never existed, and one is better off existing than not. Under the two prevalent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, the nonidentity argument seemingly entails that future people have no rights. After exploring how this is the case, the conception of harm underlying the nonidentity argument is analyzed. Two types of interests future people may have in prenatal identity-determinative events (constitutive interests and threshold interests) are explored as possible sources of certain rights future people may have - the nonidentity argument notwithstanding. The article then elaborates and assesses the merits of these approaches.


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Historic Justice and the Non-Identity Problem: The Limitations of the Subsequent-Wrong Solution and Towards a New Solution

by Ori Herstein

Law and Philosophy, Vol. 27, p. 505 (2008)

The "non-identity argument" has been applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice, often... more The "non-identity argument" has been applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice, often generating highly unintuitive conclusions. George Sher has suggested a solution to this problem, explaining the harm to descendants of historically wronged peoples as deriving not from the historic wrongs but from the failure to provide rectification to the previous generation for harm they suffered. That generation was likewise owed rectification for harm they suffered from failure to provide rectification to the generation preceding them. In this chain of injustices each failure to provide rectification to one is the source of wrongful harm to the next. Such chains form a "bridge" between the historic wrong and the harm suffered by living individuals. I call this approach the subsequent-wrong solution (SWS).

I argue that bypassing the non-identity argument in this way is problematic. First, SWS cannot justify rectification in seemingly legitimate historic-justice claims, such as historic wrongs generating delayed harms that skip generations. Second, SWS justifies rectification for the wrong reasons, denying the essence of historic-justice claims: that past wrongs, for which original wrongdoers are responsible, harm descendants of original victims. Finally, SWS does not fully account for group membership's role in historic injustice, unable to distinguish between claims of descendants of historic victims and claims made by others with unrelated interests in the rectification of the previous generation. A supplementary solution is needed, focusing on the role of group harm and group membership. The plausibility of this approach, tying individual harm to group harm, derives from these three limitations of the subsequent-harm solution. I give a rudimentary account of what such a solution would look like.

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Historic Injustice, Group Membership and Harm to Individuals: Defending Claims for Historic Justice From the Non-Identity Problem

by Ori Herstein

Harvard Journal of Racial and Ethnic Justice (formerly Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal,Harvard blackLetter Law Journal)Vol. 25, p. 229, 2009.

Some claim slavery did not harm the descendants of slaves since, without slavery, its descendants would never have... more Some claim slavery did not harm the descendants of slaves since, without slavery, its descendants would never have been born and a life worth living, even one including the subsequent harms of past slavery, is preferable to never having been born at all. This creates a classic puzzle known as the non-identity argument, applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice based on harms to descendants of victims of historic wrongs: since descendants are never harmed by historic wrongs, they have no right to rectification. This conclusion is unintuitive.

This article explains the nature of harm involved in historic injustice, overcoming the hurdle the non-identity argument poses to historic justice claims. Historic injustice and the harms it generates are best understood as group harms. Claims for historic justice can be grounded in harms currently living individuals suffer as a function of the harms their group or community currently suffers as a consequence of historic wrongs. One form of harm, constitutive harm, differs from the aggregative account of harm assumed by the non-identity argument and is immune to it. It is the type of harm people suffer as members of certain historically wronged groups and communities. Therefore, the constitutive harm people suffer in cases of historic injustice may serve as a basis for justifying claims for historic justice.

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الهويّة بين الانفتاح والانغلاق: مقاربة مسيحيّة

by Georges NAHAS

نحّاس، ج. ن. (2010). الهويّة بين الانفتاح والانغلاق: مقاربة مسيحيّة. حوليّات. جامعة البلمند.

هل الهوّية بالضرورة قيمة باطنة او يمكن اعتبارها تحقيًقا للّذات من ٔاجل "اآلخر" ومن خالله؟ هل هي، انطالًقا من... more هل الهوّية بالضرورة قيمة باطنة او يمكن اعتبارها تحقيًقا للّذات من ٔاجل "اآلخر" ومن خالله؟ هل هي، انطالًقا من مقاربة مسيحّية، سبب انغالق ٔاو فرصة انفتاح؟ هدف هذا المقال هو ٕاظهار ٔا ّن االنتماء الّدين ّي، من وجهة نظر مسيحّية مشرقّية، مح ِّ ر ٌر ٓايانيا، ؤا ّن استخدامه لتحديد هوّية انطوائّية هو تشويه لل ّطبيعة البشرّية، ٕالى جانب ٓاونه مناه ًضا
للّتناغم الكون ّي.
خلفّية هذا الكالم هي في الّنظر ٕالى اإلنسان، نقطة التقاء الالمتناهيين، على حّد قول المفّكر الفرنس ّي باسكال، ٓامخلوق اجتماع ّي بامتياز، ٓااهن الكون؛ وهو في آن مرٓاز ٔاي تواصل يكون مصد ًرا للّتناغم ٔاو توّت ًرا يؤ ّسس لل ّصراع. يتطّلب الّتدريب على هذا المفهوم لإلنسان، ولما هو ٕانسان ّي، ٕاعادة نظر جذرّية في الّنماذج الّتربوّية ال ّسائدة، دينّية ٓاانت ٔام اجتماعّية، مع اإلشارة الى االختالف العميق بين مقاربة "عقيدّية" للّتربية الّدينّية ومقاربة مح ِّ ررةٕ
لإلنسان "ٓاكائن ٓانس ّي".

Another Side of Clare Savage’s Identity Crisis: A Queer Theoretical Analysis of Michelle Cliff’s Abeng

by Michael Carosone

Geoffrey Chaucer: Feminist Or Not?

by Michael Carosone

On Ramsey's 'Silly Delusion' regarding Tractatus 5.53ff

by Kai Wehmeier

I supply a semantics and a tableaux calculus for a first-order logic based on Hintikka’s strongly exclusive... more I supply a semantics and a tableaux calculus for a first-order logic based on Hintikka’s strongly exclusive interpretation of the variables, and prove that the calculus is sound and complete with respect to the semantics.

CosmoPoles: Shifting boundaries in the identification with Europe

by Jeroen Moes

My thesis, written for the research master (MSc(Res)) 'Social Cultural Science'

Wittgensteinian Tableaux, Identity, and Co-Denotation

by Kai Wehmeier

Wittgensteinian predicate logic (W-logic) is characterized by the requirement that the objects mentioned within the... more Wittgensteinian predicate logic (W-logic) is characterized by the requirement that the objects mentioned within the scope of a quantifier be excluded from the range of the associated bound variable. I present a sound and complete tableaux calculus for this logic and discuss issues of translatability between Wittgensteinian and standard predicate logic in languages with and without individual constants. A metalinguistic co-denotation predicate, akin to Frege’s triple bar of the Begriffsschrift, is introduced and used to bestow the full expressive power of first-order logic with identity on W-logic in the presence of constants.

Wittgensteinian Predicate Logic

by Kai Wehmeier

We investigate a first-order predicate logic based on Wittgenstein’s suggestion to express identity of object by... more We investigate a first-order predicate logic based on Wittgenstein’s suggestion to express identity of object by identity of sign and difference of objects by difference of signs. Hintikka has shown that predicate logic can indeed be set up in such a way; we show that it can be done nicely. More specifically, we provide a perspicuous cut-free sequent calculus, as well as a Hilbert-type calculus, for Wittgensteinian predicate logic and prove soundness and completeness theorems.

"Toward Detachment": A personal journey toward true self-awareness

by Alan MacKenzie

Submitted as a requirement for completion of a Master in Counselling

This journal highlights the scribbles and bibbles written whilst in the  midst of exploring the path of... more This journal highlights the scribbles and bibbles written whilst in the  midst of exploring the path of self-awareness along which a group of men learnt to become contemplative persons we deep down really are and always longed to be.  It taught us, amongst other things, that a contemplative person is one who has a contemplative vision or philosophy of life.  We learned to live with this awareness of our unawareness as we discovered that the obstacle, contemplatively pondered, becomes the path along which we are transformed. For our awareness of our unawareness drew the group into the felt need to commit ourselves to a path of self-transformation along which we become more habitually aware of and responsive to the inherent holiness of life.  We learnt, most importantly, that the true path of self-transformation can be expressed and explored in three directives, according to Finley (2000): Find our contemplative practice and practice it. Find our contemplative com¬munity and enter it. Find our contemplative teaching and follow it.