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Notes on Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

This is a brief sketch of the form which the analysis of the concept of identity would take under the impact of the most recent phase of Scientific Empiricism. The frame of reference is thus that of Carnap's Introduction to Semantics. Most characteristic of this approach is that it reaches its main clarifications by distinguishing between the various connotations of the traditional terms along the three lines of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The notion of truth, for instance, must be split into syntactical truth or analyticality, semantical truth, and pragmatical truth. Only the last has something to do with belief and verification. In a somewhat similar manner identity splits, upon closer examination, into three radically different meanings, but it will be seen that the third one has nothing to do with either pure or applied pragmatics. Some of the points I am trying to make have been dealt with, in an interesting manner, in a recent paper by Quine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1943 , pp. 163 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

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References

1 “Notes on Existence and Identity.” Journal of Philosophy, 40, 1943, 113–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Calculational symbols are either constants, such as ‘and’, ‘not’, and ‘=‘, or variables and operators. Leibnitz-Russell's identity of indiscernibles is a defined nondescriptive relation, not a calculations symbol.Google Scholar

3 To pragmatics belong, in Quine's article, only some of the remarks about not purely designative occurrences. Concerning this point see also my discussion in Philosophy of Science, 9, 1942, 372–374, and the reference there to Russell's recent treatment of ‘A believes that p’.Google Scholar

4 If the calculus does not contain a syntactical identity, the Leibnitz-Russell relation can be used to express (4). This is one of the main features of the theory of identity and description as developed in the Principia Mathematica.Google Scholar