Argument
Identity (philosophy)
Overview
relation each thing bears to itself alone
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
1. Wherein Identity consists. ANOTHER occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering ANYTHING AS EXISTING AT ANY DETERMINED TIME AND PLACE, we compare it with ITSELF EXISTING AT ANOTHER TIME, and thereon form the ideas of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY. When we see anything to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
The chapter “CHAPTER XXVII. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY.” is titled for Identity; names Identity several times.
Thus, the controversy concerning identity is not merely a dispute of words. For, when we attribute identity, in an improper sense, to variable or interrupted objects, our mistake is not confined to the expression, but is commonly attended with a fiction, either of something invariable and…
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1
The chapter “OF PERSONAL IDENTITY.” is titled for Identity; names Identity several times.
But though these two ideas of identity, and a succession of related objects be in themselves perfectly distinct, and even contrary, yet it is certain, that in our common way of thinking they are generally confounded with each other. That action of the imagination, by which we consider the uninterrupted and invariable object, and that by which we reflect on the succession of related objects, are almost the same to…
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
The chapter “SECT. VI. OF PERSONAL IDENTITY” is titled for Identity; states what Identity is.
Philosophers who discussed Identity (philosophy)
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Gilles Deleuze
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
- Thomas Nagel
- Peter Geach
- Wilhelm Wundt
- The Order of Things
- David Wiggins
- Nathan Salmón
- John Hawthorne
- Achille Varzi (philosopher)
- F. C. S. Schiller
- Naomi Zack
Related ideas
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Law of identity
- If and only if
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- The Principles of Mathematics
- Mathematics
- Metaphysics
- National identity
- Psychology
- Sense and reference
- Social science
- Ship of Theseus
- Predicate (logic)
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Personal identity
- Variable (mathematics)
- Bertrand Russell
- Philosophy of mathematics
- Cultural identity
- Gottlob Frege
- Identity of indiscernibles
- Possible world
- Don Quixote
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.