A Deflationary Theory Of Diachronic Identity

• Published in: Australasian journal of philosophy 2012-03, Vol.90 (1), p.19-37
• Main Author: Pruss, Alexander R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Identity; Personal identity; Philosophy; Psychology; Synchronic identity; Theory
• ISSN: 0004-8402; 1471-6828
• DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2011.556131

Substantive theories of diachronic identity have been offered for different kinds of entities. The kind of entity whose diachronic identity has received the most attention in the literature is person, where such theories as the psychological theory, the body theory, the soul theory, and animalism have been defended. At the same time, Wittgenstein's remark that 'to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing at all' suggests that the idea of further analysing identity is mistaken at root. I shall offer a simple, deflationary theory that reduces diachronic identity to quantification, synchronic identity and existence at a spacetime location (or at a time, for non-spatial entities). On logical grounds, the theory is guaranteed to have no counterexamples. Because the theory is guaranteed to have no counterexamples, all the imaginative examples offered as intuitive support for theories of personal identity are going to be either incorrect or compatible with the theory. I shall argue that the deflationary theory is preferable on simplicity grounds to typical substantive theories, and that various problems that are commonly thought to concern diachronic identity are better seen as about something else.