PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY SERIES EDITORS John McDowell, Philip Pettit and Crispin Wright For Truth in Semantics Anthony Appiah Abstract Particulars Keith Campbell Tractarian Semantics Finding Sense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Peter Carruthers Truth and Objectivity Brian Ellis The Dynamics of Belief: A Normative Logic Peter Forrest Abstract Objects Bob Hale Fact and Meaning Jane Heal Conditionals Frank Jackson Sense and Certainty The Dissolution of Scepticism Marie McGinn Reality and Representation David Papineau Facts and the Function of Truth Huw Price Moral Dilemmas Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Identity and DiscriminationIDENTITY AND DISCRIMINATION Timothy Williamson Basil BlackwellCopyright © ‘Timothy Williamson 1990 First published 1990 Basil Blackwell Ltd 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 IJF, UK Basil Blackwell, Inc. 3 Cambridge Center Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA All rights reserved. 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ISBN 0-631~16117-1 ‘Typeset in Baskerville on 11/13 pt by Setrite Typesetters Ltd Printed in Great Britain by Billing & Sons Ltd, WorcesterContents Preface Introduction 1 Concepts of Indiscriminability 1.1 Indiscriminability and Cognition 1.2. Formal Features of Indiscriminability 1.3. The Intentionality of Indiscriminability 1.4 Direct and Indirect Discrimination 1.5 Further Reflections 2 Logics of Indiscriminability 2.1 Logical Apparatus 2.2 The Non-Transitivity of Indiscriminability Paradoxes of Indiscriminability 4 Concepts of Phenomenal Character 4.1 Presentations of Characters 4.2 Presentation-Sensitivity 4.3. The Identity of Characters 5 Logics of Phenomenal Character 5.1 Maximal M-Relations 5.2 Ignorance and Indeterminacy 5.3 Matching the Same Experiences 6 Paradoxes of Phenomenal Character 6.1 The Paradox of Observational Predicates 6.2 The Paradox of Phenomenal Predicates 6.3. The Failure of Observationality 6.4 Sorites Arguments and Necessary Ignorancevi Contents 7 Generalizations 7.1. Maximal M-Relations as Minimal Revisions 7.2. Examples 7.3 Necessary Conditions for Personal Identity 7.4 Sufficient Conditions 7.5 Close Relations 8 Modal and Temporal! Paradoxes 8.1 A Modal Paradox 8.2 Two Temporal Paradoxes 8.3 Comparisons 9 Criteria of Identity 9.1 Forms 9.2 Functions Appendix Maximal M-Relations and the Axiom of Choice Notes References Index 109 109 114 116 121 123 126 126 135 142 144 144 148 154 158 165 170To my mother; for my fatherPreface This book is not longer than it is. The reader may feel that no apology is needed, but should recall the price of comparative brevity: neglect of alternative views, compromises in formal rigour. In particular, I have assumed without argument that the last thing to give up is a principle of classical logic; even its opponents should agree that no case against it is complete without an under- standing of what can be done within its limits; this book aims to contribute to that understanding. Logicians will note that quotation marks have been omitted where ambiguity docs not threaten. Material from my ‘Criteria of Identity and the Axiom of Choice’, The Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986), pp. 380—94, appears, completely rewritten, in chapters 5 and 7 and the appendix; I thank the editors of The Journal of Philosophy for permission to print it here. I have been greatly helped by responses to oral presentations of ideas in this book. Early versions of chapter 8 were given as talks at Brandeis University and Williams College in 1987 (I thank Peter Lipton in particular). Chapter 9 stems from a paper read to a conference on Identity at Dubrovnik in 1987; David Charles replied. Much of chapters 1 and 6 evolved in a class I gave at Oxford University in Michaelmas 1988. It developed further when I made parts of chapters 1, 2 and 4 the basis of two talks at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1989. I should also like to thank Graeme Forbes, Eli Hirsch, Michael Morris, Stig Alstrup Rasmussen, Nathan Salmon and Crispin Wright for writ- ten comments on various parts of the material. Robin Gandy, Dan Isaacson, Bill Newton-Smith and Andrew Pigdon may have for- gotten older debts. A first draft was completed at Trinity College, Dublin, and efficiently typed by Anne Burke. Later drafts have been written at University College, Oxford, of which I am not the first Fellow to have written a book about identity; I take the workPreface ix of my colleague David Wiggins to justify certain assumptions which I have tacitly made. The contrasting influences of the work of Michael Dummett and Saul Kripke are active in many parts of the book. Most important of all, my wife Elisabetta gave me encouragement when it was most needed.Introduction Intelligent life requires the ability to discriminate, but not with unlimited precision. A way of discriminating is usually ineffective below a certain threshold. When two things differ by just more than the threshold they can be discriminated, but an intermediate thing may differ from both by less than the threshold, and there- fore be discriminable from neither. Discriminability is a rough guide to distinctness; discriminable things are always distinct, distinct things are often but not always discriminable. By the same token, indiscriminability is a rough guide to identity: in longer words, an approximate criterion. If indiscriminability is a shadow of identity, the shape of the latter is distorted but recog- nizable in the shape of the former. The logic of identity generates a logic of approximate criteria of identity, in some ways similar and in some different (identity is reflexive, symmetric and tran- sitive; indiscriminability is reflexive, symmetric and non-transitive). It is the theme of this book. In particular, techniques are devel- oped for working approximate criteria of identity into exact ones. Chapter | analyses discrimination between things as activation of the knowledge that they are distinct, and indiscriminability as the impossibility of activating such knowledge. The analysis per- mits an explanation of the reflexivity, symmetry and non-transitivity of indiscriminability in terms of the reflexivity, symmetry and transitivity of identity. However, that is to treat indiscriminability as a relation, and there is a sense in which it is not one, because it is as intentional as any other cognitive phenomenon: things may be discriminable when presented in one way and not when pres- ented in another. The intentional and non-intentional senses are compared. Chapter 2 is more technical; it uses an epistemic in- terpretation of modal logic to formalize the two senses, and to make precise connections between their formal properties and more general claims about the logic of knowledge. Chapter 3 uses2 Introduction this apparatus to formulate conditions in which an observational predicate applies to both or neither of two indiscriminable things, thereby giving rise to a sorites (slippery slope) paradox. Can indiscriminability ever be an exact criterion of identity? The phenomenal character of an experience is supposed to be wholly given to its subject; if such characters exist, they are subjective qualities in the sense that they form a kind for which identity and indiscriminability coincide. According to a well-known argument there are no subjective qualities, for a non-transitive relation of indiscriminability cannot coincide with the transitive relation of identity. Chapter 4 defends phenomenal characters against that argument, by showing it to run foul of the intentionality of indis- criminability already discussed. Discrimination between phenom- enal characters depends on which experiences present them. A positive condition is derived on the relation in which two experi- ences stand when they have the same phenomenal character. Chapter 5 shows that the condition is satisfied, but by more than one relation. The question is raised whether the concept of same- ness in phenomenal ,character is indeterminate between those relations, or refers to just one of them even if we must be ignorant of which. The account of phenomenal character is contrasted with the view that experiences are the same in phenomenal character just in case they match the same experiences. Chapter 6 uses the plurality of candidate relations of sameness in phenomenal charac- ter to explore and defeat sorites paradoxes like those of chapter 3 as threats to phenomenal character. Generalizations to other sorites paradoxes are discussed; as before, they can be understood in terms of either indeterminacy or ignorance. A necessary and sufficient criterion of identity is an equivalence relation: it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. The treatment of phenomenal character can be seen as a matter of finding equiv- alence relations which best approximate a given necessary cri- terion that is insufficient because non-transitive; various equally good approximations are candidate necessary and sufficient criteria. Chapter 7 generalizes the technique to other cases, including the identity of species and persons, and makes the appropriate concept of approximation precise. A comparison is made with the problem of finding equivalence relations which best approximate a given sufficient condition that is unnecessary because non-transitive. Chapter 8 applies the same technique to sorites paradoxes about