Quine

Quine's essay, Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis, is an investigation into the nature of identity, and how it is that a particular object can remain consistent in itself despite subjection to the continuous material fluctuation inseparable from temporal existence. Quine has identified the notion of identity as a source of perplexity which has puzzled many philosophers throughout the history of the philosophical sciences, and has attempted to explore its relation to ostension, or the means by which a particular object can be said to possess a certain nature through the provision of multiple exemplary instances of property instantiation. Although philosophers have remained uncertain as to how it is that any one person can retain the same identity throughout time, despite being immersed in the causal process of time, Quine believes that those who wish to accept the notion of a “changeless and therefore immortal soul,” as the foundation upon which identity rests, must also be able to sold the same to be true for other, less humanistic, phenomena.

Quine introduces Heracleitus's assertion that one “cannot bathe in the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you,” as a classical example of philosophical exploration into the nature of identity. In response, Quine offers that one can, in fact, bathe in the same river twice, but will be experiencing the same river in a different river-stage. The ability to bathe in two different river-stages belonging to the same river are enough, from Quine's perspective, to constitute bathing in the same river twice. In justification of this belief, Quine claims that it is only in accordance to the passing of time that one is able to identify a river wherein bathing had previou...

... middle of paper ...

...nguistics allows identification to become increasingly specific, resulting in the conceptualization of a process as a non-temporal object; and through conceptualization our means of identification remains unaffected by the varying stages of physical changes which occur over time.

Although pointing is a generally crude method of object identification, it can be useful in identifying a particular object, not only through time, but space as well. Quine believes that, at the most rudimentary level of ostension, space and time are inseparable, and therefore provide an essential function in object specification as a platform upon which similarities among particulars can be recognized. Identity also provides an unchanging point of reference for the accumulation and arrangement of objects into groups of kindred particulars. Conversely, it might be said that a particular