ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the determinacy thesis concerning personal identity. It argues that to make sense of this one must regard the indeterminacy involved as a linguistic matter. The chapter explains the nature of the indeterminacy that is possible for statements of identity about entities other than persons. When one thinks of some of the puzzle cases described in the literature on personal identity, it is tempting to say that to ask whether it is right or wrong to identify the original person with the later candidate for identity with him that the case presents is to ask an empty question. In general, according to the epistemic view, the indeterminacy in the application of a vague term is to be explicated as a certain kind of unknowability. C. S. Lewis’s revision of counterpart theory is a way of putting flesh on the bare bones of the idea that modal predicates can denote different properties in different contexts.
