Q&A: Identity Claim
Identity Claim
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi!
Is an identity claim always analytic? If X is identical to Y, does that mean that when I speak about X I am really speaking about Y as well, and vice versa—everything said about this is also said about that? (“Bachelor” and “an unmarried man” are identical concepts; the identity between them is analytic.) Is every identity claim always analytic?
Thank you very much!
Answer
I don’t understand the question. There are identities that are learned from experience (like Frege’s example, “the evening star is the morning star”; see, for example, here: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%91%D7%9F_%D7%95%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%94)
Learning from experience means that it is empirical, but it can still be defined as analytic in the sense that once you know it, the identity follows from the concepts themselves. It’s really just a matter of definition. Kripke defines this as an a posteriori analytic statement (a category that does not exist according to Kant).