Following the “law of identity” or the error idem per idem?

Abstract

The author submits a reflection on Wittgenstein’s critique of the “law of identity” and on Wajszczuk’s idea of conjunction entailing the necessity of broadening the contents of what has momentarily been said. The author insists on the deviant nature (deviant from the point of view of the natural-linguistic code) of the famous example Boys are boys. and on its purely perlocutionary effect as its only possible effect. All of this is opposed to the would-be catalogue of codified “meanings”, as those imagined, e.g., by Wierzbicka. A number of related phenomena are also discussed.