Summary |
Identity is sameness: the relation that
holds between each thing and itself, and never holds between two things. Most philosophical issues about identity concern the relationship between identity
and other important concepts: time, necessity, personhood, composition
(parthood), indiscernibility, and vagueness. In addition to these issues, some have suggested that identity is not absolute, but relative, so that
we may say two things are the same person or statue, but not the same simpliciter. Finally, there are questions about whether there must always be informative criteria of identity that settle questions about when identity holds or fails to hold. |