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The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality

Steven French and Décio Krause: Identity in physics: A historical, philosophical, and formal analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, 440 pp, £68.00 HB

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Notes

  1. For me, Bitbol (2007) drove the last nail into the coffin of my earlier view; see also French and Krause (192–193, 355–373).

  2. Quine’s and Simon Saunders’ points about relations are similar. If an asymmetric relational predicate, or a symmetric irreflexive one, is instantiated at all then there are at least two things. Saunders’ term “weakly discernible” does not seem apt: we have here a way to show that logically, things can be distinct without being discernible, by an argument that does not appeal to PII but to its innocuous converse. Hence I do not consider the PII saved or satisfied even in the case of fermions by reflections on ‘weak discernability’, contrary to Muller and Saunders (2008), despite the impressively nuanced distinctions they make.

  3. In correspondence with de Volker; I am relying here on Jauernig (2004), and am additionally in her debt for correspondence and for partial drafts of her book in progress, from all of which I have greatly benefitted.

  4. We wish to thank Marisa Dalla Chiara and John Stachel for very helpful comments on a draft version. Laura Crosilla’s research supported by EPSRC grant EP/G029520/1.

  5. Muller and Seevinck (2009) have tried to extend this result to bosons but this is contentious; see Ladyman and Bigaj (2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    Don Howard

  2. Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

    Bas C. van Fraassen

  3. Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, USA

    Otávio Bueno

  4. Department of Philosophy, University of Florence, Via Bolognese 52, 50139, Florence, Italy

    Elena Castellani

  5. Department of Pure Mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Laura Crosilla

  6. Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Steven French

  7. Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Santa Catarina, 88040-900 Campus Trindade, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil

    Décio Krause

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  1. Don Howard
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  2. Bas C. van Fraassen
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  4. Elena Castellani
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  5. Laura Crosilla
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  7. Décio Krause
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Correspondence to Don Howard.

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Howard, D., van Fraassen, B.C., Bueno, O. et al. The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality. Metascience 20, 225–251 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-010-9463-7

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