Wiggins David. Identity and spatio-temporal continuity. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1967, viii + 83 pp.

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Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity by David Wiggins
Review by: John Perry
The Journal of Symbolic Logic,
Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 1970), pp. 447-448
Published by: Association for Symbolic Logic
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REVIEWS 447
ontology through Der Gedanke (XVIII 93), in which he acknowledges the existence of ideal
objects which are not "events" but "beings" (pp. 261-263).
Concerning the author's interpretation of Frege's "semantical turning point," the reviewer
would remark that no substantiation is given for the identification of senses with concepts. No
reference is made either to Frege's statements contradictory to this thesis (see 499, p. 198:
"concept is denotation (Bedeutung) of a predicate"; see also ibid., p. 193n, and the 1906
manuscript quoted by Dummett in The philosophical review, vol. 65 (1956), pp. 229-230) or to
discussions on this point (for example, the one between Marshall and Dummett in the same
journal (vol. 62 (1953), pp. 374-390; vol. 64 (1955), pp. 96-107, 342-361; vol. 65 (1956),
pp. 229-230, 342-361)). Moreover, the reviewer cannot see what place is left, in the author's
view, for senses of proper names (a notion widely acknowledged by Frege).
Furthermore, if the identification of sense with concept is not secured, then both of the author's
interpretations are open to question-that of the Begriffsschrift as dealing with senses, and that
of Frege's semantical innovation as being the addition of denotations and objects to senses.
Nevertheless, the reviewer acknowledges that considering concepts to be senses (without deny-
ing that names, too, have a sense) is theoretically right, although it is a dubious interpretation
of Frege (see Church's XXII 286).
Although the passages concerning formal logic are admittedly a secondary topic, they could
be more clearly and carefully stated, and there are some shortcomings. For example, it is said
that "the universal affirmative judgment, which was the premiss of the syllogisms of the first
figure, stays ... in the last place in Frege's axiomatic theory, because the universal quanti-
fier ... has no primitive character but is deducible from the primitive scheme of implication"
(p. 126), whereas the fourth modus of the first figure (Ferio) has no such premiss, and the
universal quantifier does not seem to be deducible from the scheme here mentioned. Moreover,
some historical views seem to be oversimplified: All logics prior to that of the Begriffsschrift are
considered extensional (p. 77), and Kant's narrow conception of analyticity is said to be
"classical" (p. 179) and "traditional" (p. 181).
The author is not careful to follow Frege's own advice to distinguish "the sign from the thing
signified" (see pages 206, 213, 244-245, 257). For example, Frege's statement on page 18 of
497, "Gegenstand ist alles ... dessen Ausdruck keine leere Stelle mit sich fifhrt" is wrongly
translated as "object is ... an expression. . ." ("oggetto e ... una espressione. . .") instead of
"object is anything ... so that an expression for it. . ." (p. 206, italics added).
Notwithstanding these defects, the work is an interesting piece of research in the field of
Frege's ontology. FRANCESCA RIVETTI
BARBO
DAVID WIGGINS. Identity and spatio-temporal continuity. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1967,
viii + 83 pp.
"This is the same river I bathed in Saturday, but this is different water than what I bathed in
Saturday." Does this mean that there are things (a thing?) identical "under one description
but not under another"? So some philosophers have claimed, and one at least has drawn much
more dramatic consequences. The resolution of the problems and confusions surrounding such
examples lies in an analysis of the role of sortal terms, such as "river," in identifying objects.
The first two parts of Professor Wiggins's book are intended as a contribution to this task. In
the first part, Wiggins gives an adequate if not elegant refutation of Geach's views as expressed
in Reference and generality (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1962). In the second part,
Wiggins presents his own explanation.
Geach holds that sortals, in statements like the one at the beginning of this review, tell us
which relation of identity is being asserted to hold between the relata. On Geach's view, such
"relative identities" as ". . . is the same cow as . . ." and ". . . is the same horse as . . ."
cannot plausibly be regarded as restrictions on some more basic relation of identity, as Frege
seems to have held. Geach has a belief which, were it correct, could be a good reason for
rejecting the Fregean analysis of relative identities, namely that there are true statements, of
which the above is an example, of the form "x is the same F as y, but x is a different G than y, "
where "F" and "G" are sortals, and identity, not merely some sort of resemblance or similarity,
is being in turn asserted and denied of x and y.

448 REIEUWS
Wiggins first points out that this analysis conflicts with Leibniz's Law. This is obvious once
Geach's view is spelled out as above; the substitution apparently licensed by the first conjunct
of a statement of the mentioned form results, when made in the second conjunct, in something
of the form "x is a different G than x," which seems unacceptable.
Having shown the dire consequences of Geach's view, Wiggins destroys the most obvious
motivation for it. He considers a number of examples that might be thought to be properly
described by statements of the above-mentioned form; none survives close scrutiny. In the
example with which the review begins, the second conjunct is not plausibly regarded as a
denial of identity, but only of a certain kind of resemblance.
In the second part of his book, Wiggins attempts, in his words, to give the "rationale of the
'same what' question." He first claims to have shown (pp. 27, 28) that it is a "tautology" that
if a is identical with b, then there is some sortal predicate "F" such that a is the same F as b.
His argument (p. 27) seems to depend on a not very subtle equivocation on "what a is"; he
reasons that if a exists then something is a, and so there is an answer to the question "what
is a?" But since "a sortal predicate is by definition no more than the sort of predicate which
answers this question, there must automatically exist a sortal predicate f which a satisfies....
Validity aside, the argument illuminates nothing. The subsequent discussion of the relation be-
tween phase sortals (e.g. "young man," "puppy") and ordinary sortals is more interesting. But
the section ends with an attempt to explain " the rationale of the 'same what ' question " in terms
of a truth-condition Wiggins advances for the identity of material objects. Interesting as some of
the things said in connection with this attempt are, it illustrates the reasons for the unsatis-
factoriness of Wiggins's attempt to explain sortals: (1) The problem of the role of sortal terms
is not a problem for just material object sortals. Such general terms as "color," "shape,"'
"number," etc. also combine with "same" to express relative identities of the kind under
investigation. Thus an explanation of the role of these terms cannot be tied to the requirements
of a special category. (2) Sortals play their role in many kinds of statements, not just identity
statements; indeed, we begin to get clear about their role when we see that (say) "river" plays
the same role in "This river is the same as the river I bathed in Saturday" and "This is the
same river I bathed in Saturday." The role of the sortal is not to identify the kind of identity
asserted, but to help identify the objects referred to; they play this role not just in identity
statements, but in all statements.
An analysis of the role of sortals is suggested by Frege's remarks on identity in Die Grundlagen
der Arithmetik (495) and by Quine in Identity, ostension, and hypostasis (XIX 134). The sortal
helps identify the referents of a statement by giving the relation that holds between occurrences
(parts, instances, stages, phases, etc.) of the appropriate sort when they are occurrences of a
single object of the indicated kind; specifying this relation, and designating an occurrence,
identifies the referent. When an occurrence is identified, but no sortal provided, indefiniteness
occurs because an occurrence can be an occurrence of different objects of different kinds.
Wiggins's work would be helpful and interesting to someone constructing an account of sortals
and identity based on these ideas, but it does not represent a first full step towards that
goal.
There are many interesting comments in the book on the philosophy of mind and other topics
outside the scope of this review. JOHN PERRY
G. B. KEENE. The relational syllogism. A systematic approach to relational logic. Univer-
sity of Exeter, Exeter 1969, iv + 35 pp.
This slim monograph purports to do for the teaching of general quantification theory what
the author claims that "Aristotle's syllogistic" has done for the teaching of traditional logic,
viz. to provide a concise system (the system RS of relational syllogisms) which illustrates all
the essential concepts and techniques of proofs of validity and non-validity.
One obtains RS by importing dyadic predicate letters into traditional syllogistic (hereafter
TS). In sections 1-5, RS is generated and developed in deliberate imitation of TS. Corresponding
to the four categorical statement forms of TS are these sixteen general relational (GR) state-
ment forms: A, 'Every F bears R to every G'; E, 'No F bears R to every G'; I, 'Some F bears
R to every G'; 0, 'Some F does not bear R to every G'; Ar, 'Every F bears R to some G or