A new perspective on criteria of identity

Abstract

AbstractAre identity criteria grounding principles? The recent debate over this issue seems to indicate a definitively negative answer. Recognising various objections to identity criteria as grounds for identity facts, one may wonder whether the former are capable of playing any salient role in ontology. I argue in this paper that they are, provided that one interprets them not as ontological explanations of identity facts but as ontological specifications thereof. I attempt to elaborate this view in terms of the well-establish distinction between determinables and their determinates, where identity criteria are to play the role of the determinates and the relation of identity is to be their determinable.