No Identity Without an Entity

Abstract

AbstractPeter Geach's puzzle of intentional identity is to explain how the claim ‘Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob's mare, and Nob wonders whether she (the same witch) killed Cob's sow’ is compatible with there being no such witch. I clarify the puzzle and reduce it to the familiar problem of negative existentials. That problem is a paradox of representations that seem to include denials of commitment (implicitly, here), to carry commitment to what they deny commitment to, and to be true. The best proposed solutions can be understood through this paradox; I evaluate them, and defend a new solution.