Cross-Format Integration of Auditory Number Words and Visual-Arabic Digits: An ERP Study

Converting visual-Arabic digits to auditory number words and vice versa is seemingly effortless for adults. However, it is still unclear whether this process takes place automatically and whether accessing the underlying magnitude representation is necessary during this process. In two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, adults were presented with identical (e.g., “one” and 1) or non-identical (e.g., “one” and 9) number pairs, either unimodally (two visual-Arabic digits) or cross-format (an auditory number word and a visual-Arabic digit). In Experiment 1 (N=17), active task demands required numerical judgments, whereas this was not the case in Experiment 2 (N=19). We found pronounced early ERP markers of numerical identity unimodally in both experiments. In the cross-format conditions, however, we only observed late neural correlates of identity and only if the task required semantic number processing (Experiment 1). These findings suggest that unimodal pairs of digits are automatically integrated, whereas cross-format integration of numerical information occurs more slowly and involves semantic access.

A note on psychological continuity theories of identity and neurointerventions

An important concern sometimes voiced in the neuroethical literature is that swift and radical changes to the parts of a person’s mental life essential for sustaining his/her numerical identity can result in the person ceasing to exist—in other words, that these changes may disrupt psychological continuity. Taking neurointerventions used for rehabilitative purposes as a point of departure, this short paper argues that the same radical alterations of criminal offenders’ psychological features which under certain conditions would result in a disruption of numerical identity (and, thus, the killing of the offender) can be achieved without these having any effect on numerical identity. Thus, someone interested in making radical alterations to offenders’ psychology can avoid the charge that this would kill the offenders, while still achieving a radical transformation of them. The paper suggests that this possibility makes the question of what kinds of qualitive alterations to offenders’ identity are morally permissible (more?) pressing, but then briefly highlights some challenges for arguments against making radical qualitative identity alterations to offenders.

On the Concepts of Identity and Similarity in the Context of Biomedical Record Linkage

Record linkage refers to a range of methods for merging and consolidating data in a manner such that duplicates are detected and false links are avoided. It is crucial for such a task to discern between similarity and identity of entities. This paper explores the implications of the ontological concepts of identity for record linkage (RL) on biomedical data sets. In order to draw substantial conclusions, we use the differentiation between numerical identity, qualitative identity and relational identity. We will discuss the problems of using similarity measures for record pairs and quality identity for ascertaining the real status of these pairs. We conclude that relational identity should be operationalized for RL.

The Proper Treatment of Identity in Dialetheic Metaphysics

According to one prominent strand of mainstream logic and metaphysics, identity is indistinguishability. Priest has recently argued that this permits counterexamples to the transitivity and substitutivity of identity within dialetheic metaphysics, even in paradigmatically extensional contexts. This paper investigates two alternative regimentations of indistinguishability. Although classically equivalent to the standard regimentation, on which Priest focuses, these alternatives are strictly stronger than it in dialetheic settings. Both regimentations are transitive, and one satisfies substitutivity. It is argued that both regimentations provide better candidates to occupy the core theoretical role of numerical identity than does the standard regimentation.

The Son of God and Trinitarian Identity Statements

Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue that there is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need.

The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza’s Logic of the Attributes

Puzzlingly, Spinoza appears to reject two principles that are central to our understanding of numerical identity: the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity. For each principle, this chapter does three things. First, it explains where and how Spinoza appears to reject it. Second, it examines and argues against two proposals for resolving the puzzle that results from the apparent rejection: one proposal that appeals to Michael Della Rocca’s conception of “intensional properties” and one that denies, as Colin Marshall does, that Spinoza really means numerical identity by his phrase “one and the same” (“una, eademque”). Third, it offers and defends an original proposal for resolving the puzzle that appeals to two Spinozistic doctrines that it calls “Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes” and the “Adequate-Idea Conception of Truth.”

Personal identity

While many areas of philosophy are concerned with issues of personal identity, the investigation most usually referred to as ‘the problem of personal identity’ within analytic philosophy centers on the question of what makes individuals at different times the same person. This is a complex and difficult question because we change a great deal over the course of our lives. A woman of 50, for instance, is made up of largely different matter from her ten-year-old self, and looks quite different. Her beliefs, desires, and values have probably changed a great deal; she has a host of memories and relationships that her ten-year-old self did not have, and she fills quite different social roles. Despite all of this we might unequivocally judge that the woman before us is the same person as the ten-year-old. Philosophers of personal identity seek to describe what it is that constitutes the identity of the fifty-year-old and the ten-year-old (if they are indeed identical). As it is usually conceived, the question of personal identity is a metaphysical question and not an epistemological question. Rather than asking how we know when someone at one time is identical to someone at another time, it asks what it is that actually makes it the case that they are the same. This question is also a question of numerical identity rather than qualitative or psychological identity; it is about the relation that makes something the self-same entity over time rather than about what makes entities indistinguishably similar to one another (see Identity). This last distinction is important to make because in everyday speech talk of personal identity is often connected to questions about what someone truly believes or desires, or what is fundamentally important to them, and not about what makes them a single entity. Everyday talk of identity is thus connected to judgments about similarity of character or personality. Historically, there have been three main approaches to addressing the metaphysical question about the numerical identity of persons over time. One defines identity in terms of the continuation of a single immaterial substance or soul; one in terms of psychological continuity; and one in terms of bodily or biological continuity, although there have been several other approaches offered as well. All of these accounts have had their adherents, and all have their difficulties. The bulk of philosophical discussion of personal identity during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has focused on the relative merits of psychological and biological approaches. For most of this period psychological accounts were dominant. These views, inspired by John Locke, hold that a person at time t2 is the same as a person at earlier time t1 just in case there is an overlapping chain of psychological connections (memories, beliefs, desires, etc.) between the person at t2 and the person at t1. They have a great deal of intuitive appeal, capturing the widely held sense that if biological and psychological continuity were to diverge, the person would go where the psychological life goes, but they have also been subject to some important objections. Many of these are related to the fact that psychological continuity does not have the same logical form as identity. For instance, a person existing now could in principle be psychologically continuous with two people in the future, but cannot be identical to both of them since they are not identical to each other. Toward the end of the twentieth century, biological accounts of identity re-emerged with new vigour, mounting a serious challenge to the dominance of psychological accounts. Defenders of the biological approach say that we are, most fundamentally, human animals who persist as long as a single human organism does. The biological approach allows that psychological continuity may be of tremendous importance to us, and that we may identify with our psychological states, but insists this continuity is no part of what determines our literal persistence as single entities. Biological theorists point out that if we think of persons as entities distinct from human animals we will be left with a number of awkward questions about the relation between persons and animals, making psychological continuity theories deeply implausible. In response, defenders of the psychological approach have argued that biological accounts suffer from many of the same deficits with which they charge psychological theories. A metaphysical view in which persons are constituted by human animals has also been offered to show a way in which a psychological account of identity can avoid the difficulties with explaining the relation of persons to human animals uncovered by animalists. As the debate between animalists and psychological theorists has continued, a variety of other views have been put forward, including narrative accounts of identity and minimalist accounts which place identity in the continuation of bare sentience. Over time a number of interesting general questions.