Constitution is Identity

Constitutional Mythologies

“…I shall not consider this possibility here. For an entry into the relevant debate see, for example, Johnston (1992) and Noonan (1993). It should be clear that the sort of "identity" at stake in that debate is very different from the "identity" at issue here.…”

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods

“…So we could treat the resemblance of properties/potatoes as context dependent, such that when we use certain subject terms to refer to the entities (' Crimson ', ' Scarlet ', ' Cyan ') a sentence featuring the predicate is to be evaluated one way whereas when the subject terms are different ('Potato a ', 'Potato c ', 'Potato b ') the sentence is evaluated differently even though the subject terms refer to the same entities (as Crimson = a , Scarlet = c , and Cyan = b ). In such cases we say the predicate is 'Abelardian' (Noonan 1991(Noonan , 1993. Conciliation has been achieved.…”

Moderate Monism, Sortal Concepts, and Relative Identity

“…One way of arguing this is to consider the extensions of a compositionally vague general term on the assumption that vagueness has its source in language, not the world (see Noonan 1993, drawing on Hughes 1986). But a simpler way to argue the point is to start with the thought that we employ a particular set of artefact concepts, but could have employed a slightly different set.…”