About Identity Through Possible Worlds Author(s): R. L. Purtill Reviewed work(s): Source: Nos, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Feb.

, 1968), pp. 87-89 Published by: Wiley-Blackwell Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214417 . Accessed: 01/10/2012 02:14
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wiley-Blackwell is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Nos.

http://www.jstor.org

About Identity Through Possible Worlds

R. L. PURTLL
WESTERN WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE

In a recent exchange of papers Roderick Chishoim has criticized JaakoHintikka'ssuggestion that an individualin one possible world might be identical with an individual in another possible world, and Hintikka has replied to his criticism.' In this paper I want to point out certain inadequacies both of Chisholm'scriticism and of Hintikka'sreply. Consider the following case, which I argue is parallel to Chisholm'sprocedure: take a man who is plainly not bald, for example, Governor Ronald Reagan. Remove one hair from Governor Reagan'shead and he is still not bald. Remove another, and another .... Now plainly at some stage in this process we decide that GovernorReagan is now bald. It is not at all easy to identify this stage; certainly we cannot give an exact number of hairs removed which would make Reagan bald. Furthermore there are stages where we are not sure what to say, intermediate, "fuzzy" stages. But repetition of a process which initially does not make a difference eventually does make a difference. Now apply this to the stages by means of which Chisholm goes from Adam' in our world to Adamn in possible world Wn, from Noah' in our world. Initially, where Adam"is indistinguishable small changes in the descriptionof Adam' do not cause us to say that we have a new individual. But eventually it is reasonable to say that we have a new individual.It is not at all easy to say when this stage arrives, and there are intermediate stages where we would be in doubt what to say. But it seems clear that we can reasonablysay that Adam2is the same individual as Adam' withRoderick Chishoim, "Identity Through Possible Worlds, Some Questions," and Jaako Hintikka, "Individuals, Possible Worlds and Epistemic Logic," both in THIS JOURNAL, Volume I, Number 1 (March 1967).

87

88

NOUS

out thereby committingourselvesto saying that Adamnis the same individual as Adam'. And just as there is no reason to bring in the notion of some essential hair or hairs which make the difference between a non-bald Reagan and a bald Reagan, so there is no need to bring in the notion of some essentialpropertyor properties whose presence makes Adam2the same as Adam', and Adamnnot the same as Adam'. Perhaps identity might survive many minor changes. However, certain properties could hardly be changed without a major change in character or history or both, and are in this sense essential. If Adam had been a woman his history could hardly have been the same, nor more arguably, his character. Surely sex is "essential" a way in which length of toenails, in or amountof change in one's pocket on a given day, is not. On the other hand, granted that we can talk of possible worlds in which "the same"individual appears with some characteristics altered, Professor Hintikka'sreply to Chisholm does not seem to be adequate. Hintikkasuggests that we use the same criteria to identify individuals in possible worlds which we employ when we re-identify individuals in our actual world. There are several difficulties,which may not be fatal to this project but which seem to make it very much more difficult than Hintikka seems to imagine. For example, suppose that I met a certain individual in London on April 1, 1953. Sometimelater I met a person who seems very similar to the individual I met, and wonder if he is the same individual. But I find that this individual was not in London on April 1, 1953, and thereforeconclude that he cannot possibly be the same individual. Put more generally, one feature of our criteria for re-identificationis a requirement which has sometimes been A called "bodilycontinuity"; is identical with B only if at all times the location of A is the same as the location of B. But this requirement can hardly be carried over without modificationwhen we talk of identifying individuals in possible worlds. For in some possible world there may be an individualwho is in every respect identical with the individual whom I met in London on April 1, 1953 in our actual world, except for the fact that in this possible world he was not in London on April 1, 1953. Surely if we want to call Adam2 the same person as Adam' we would want to call this individual the same person as the individual who in our actual world I met in London on April 1, 1953. Thus again we seem to be brought to the conclusion that it is reasonable to call two individuals in two possible worlds the

ABOUT IDENTITY

THROUGH POSSIBLE WORLDS

89

same if there is very substantial agreement in their history, character, etc. even though in some respects they are not completely identical. But since our normal criteria of re-identification require absolute identity, we can hardly use these normal criteria (at least not without modification) for identifying individuals between possible worlds. Perhaps Hintikka had some modification of our ordinary criteria in mind but if he did he fails to say so. Furthermore it is not at all easy to say just how our usual criteria need to be modified.