 Similarly, perhaps, if I say that there is some past time at which Angela Merkel is a baby, and am asked ‘How do you know that it’s the infant Angela Merkel that you are talking about, rather than some other infant?’, an apparently adequate reply is that I am stipulating that the past state of affairs I am talking about is one that concerns Merkel (and not some other individual). It seems that I can adequately answer the parallel question in the modal case by saying that I am stipulating that, when I say that there is some possible world in which Russell is a playwright, the relevant individual in the possible world (if there is one) is Russell (and not some other potential or actual playwright).