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The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle that states that there cannot be separate objects or entities that have all their properties in common. That is, entities x and y are identical if every predicate possessed by x is also possessed by y and vice versa. It states that no two distinct things can be exactly alike, but this is intended as a metaphysical principle rather than one of natural science. A related principle is the indiscernibility of identicals, discussed below.
A form of the principle is attributed to the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. While some think that Leibniz's version of the principle is meant to be only the indiscernibility of identicals, others have interpreted it as the conjunction of the identity of indiscernibles and the indiscernibility of identicals. Because of its association with Leibniz, the indiscernibility of identicals is sometimes known as Leibniz's law. It is considered to be one of his great metaphysical principles, the other being the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
Some philosophers have decided, however, that it is important to exclude certain predicates from the principle in order to avoid either triviality or contradiction. An example is the predicate that denotes whether an object is equal to x. As a consequence, there are a few different versions of the principle in the philosophical literature, of varying logical strength—and some of them are termed "the strong principle" or "the weak principle" by particular authors, in order to distinguish between them.
Willard Van Orman Quine thought that the failure of substitution in intensional contexts shows that modal logic is an impossible project. Saul Kripke holds that this failure may be the result of the use of the disquotational principle implicit in these proofs, and not a failure of substitutivity as such.