Is indeterminate identity incoherent?

Abstract

In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. I argue for two counter-claims. First, the formal argument fails to establish its conclusion, for essentially the same reason Evans's and Salmon's arguments fail to establish their conclusions. Second, the phenomena in which Pinillos is interested, which concern the cardinalities of sets of vague objects, manifest the existence of what Kit Fine called `penumbral connections', phenomena that the logics Pinillos considers are already known not to handle well.

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Richard Kimberly Heck
Brown University

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References found in this work

Vagueness, truth and logic.Kit Fine - 1975 - Synthese 30 (3-4):265-300.
Can there be vague objects?Gareth Evans - 1978 - Analysis 38 (4):208.
Reference and Essence.Nathan U. Salmon - 1981 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 173 (3):363-364.

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