Abstracts of Comments Author(s): Roderick M. Chisholm Source: Nos, Vol. 10, No.

1, Symposium Papers to be Read at the Meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 29-May 1, 1976 (Mar., 1976), pp. 33-34 Published by: Blackwell Publishing Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214472 Accessed: 29/01/2010 09:05
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ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF BODIES

33

paperweight may be reformed into a cube and remain a paperweight, and perhaps an opportunity for some future Cellini. Can we really suppose that paperweight and figurine restrict a common sortal? It could only be lump, and that's no sortal. 'In my jargon, not his; Locke used "body" to mean that quantity of stuff from which a body is made.

ABSTRACT OF COMMENTS

By Roderick M. Chisholm
BROWN UNIVERSITY

One of the morals that Schwayder draws is this: "We should not confuse questions about essence with questions of identity". Yet, if we ask how it is that we do manage to identify or pick out any individual thing, including those things that Schwayder calls "locations", we will find that at least one individual essence is essentially involved in the process. A necessary condition of identification is knowing something that is true only of the thing identified. If I can individuate you, then there is a property H such that: (i) H is an identifying property (only one thing can have it at a time); (ii) you have H; and (iii) I know a proposition which is necessarily such that it is true only if some individual thing has

H.
If I can pick out, individuate, or identify any individual at all, then there is something I can pick out or individuate per se, without relating it uniquely to some other individual. More exactly, if there is an individual x such that a person S individuates x per se, then there is a property H of this sort: (i) only one thing can have H at a time; (ii) x has H; (iii) there is a proposition p which is necessarily such that if it is true then something has H; (iv) p is known by S; and (v) there is no property G such that (a) only one thing can have G at a time, (b) some individual thing other than x has G, and (c) p is necessarily such that if it is true then something has G. Individuation per se might be illustrated either by my present identification of you as being that person or by my present identification of myself as myself, as the one who is identical with me. But these properties can only be individual essences or haecceities.

34

NOUS

G is an individual essence (or haecceity) =Df For every x, x has G if and only if: x is necessarily such that it has G, and it is not possible that there is a y other than x such that y has G. It would be impossible for me to be such that I do not have the property of being me or for anything else to have that property. And similarly for the property of being that person-if indeed I do identify you per se as being that person. But I suggest that, when I individuate you as being that person, I individuate you, not per se, but as a person related in a certain unique way to me-perhaps as the person I am now concentrating on. This is consistent with what Schwayder says about contrast. I cannot identify an individual clearly until I can contrast it with some other individual. But I cannot contrast two individuals without identifying each at least obscurely and without identifying something per se, by reference to its individual essence or haecceity.