  Secondly, the above argument from permutations can be considered from a radically different perspective. In the classical case the situations with one particle in each box are given a weight of ‘2’ in the counting of possible arrangements. In the case of quantum statistics this situation is given a weight of ‘1’. With this weighting, there are two possible statistics, as we noted: Bose-Einstein, corresponding to a symmetric state function for the assembly of particles and Fermi-Dirac, corresponding to an anti-symmetric state function. Given the Indistinguishability Postulate, it can be shown that symmetric state functions will always remain symmetric and anti-symmetric always anti-symmetric. Thus, if the initial condition is imposed that the state of the system is either symmetric or anti-symmetric, then only one of the two possibilities – Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac – is ever available to the system, and this explains why the weighting assigned to ‘one particle in each state’ is half the classical value. This gives us an alternative way of understanding the difference between classical and quantum statistics, not in terms of the lack of individuality of the objects, but rather in terms of which states are accessible to them (French 1989). In other words, the implication of the different ‘counting’ in quantum statistics can be understood as not that the objects are non-individuals in some sense, but that there are different sets of states available to them, compared to the classical case. On this view, the objects can still be regarded as individuals, with the issue remaining as to how that individuality is to be cashed out.