Continuants: Their Activity, Their Being, and Their Identity
David Wiggins
Abstract
The Introduction briefly traces the author’s thoughts about identity from 1967 to 2001 and explains how Chapter I continues his sortalist approach to familiar questions—the relation of the zygote to the human being, the ship of Theseus, and Shoemaker’s Brown-Brownson case. It explains the author’s Fregean usage of the words ‘concept’ and ‘conception’. Section 5 distinguishes philosophical realism from metaphysical realism. Philosophical realism is compatible with ontological pluralism and conceptual realism, as the author seeks to defend in Sections 6–7. Section 8 clarifies the author’s unders ... More
The Introduction briefly traces the author’s thoughts about identity from 1967 to 2001 and explains how Chapter I continues his sortalist approach to familiar questions—the relation of the zygote to the human being, the ship of Theseus, and Shoemaker’s Brown-Brownson case. It explains the author’s Fregean usage of the words ‘concept’ and ‘conception’. Section 5 distinguishes philosophical realism from metaphysical realism. Philosophical realism is compatible with ontological pluralism and conceptual realism, as the author seeks to defend in Sections 6–7. Section 8 clarifies the author’s understanding of what it takes to single something out. Section 9 distinguishes between metaphysical questions of identity which are the author’s concern, and questions relating to a person’s ‘finding himself’ or their coming at last to recognize their true allegiances or loyalties. Such questions of ‘identity’ do not relate to the logico-metaphysical concepts of identity discussed in this volume.
Keywords:
Identity,
persistence,
sortalism,
ontology,
realism,
pluralism,
concept,
property,
conception
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198716624 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716624.001.0001 |
