 as said of young Oscar and old Oscar. Here there is no temptation to suppose that the relation A and B are the same dog is not an identity relation. One may invoke a theory — a theory of temporal parts, for example — that construes the relation as a certain kind of similarity, but that is theory, not pretheoretical intuition. It is no objection to the relativist’s theory, which holds in part that ‘\(A\) and \(B\) are the same dog’ expresses a relation of primitive identity, that there is an alternative theory according to which it expresses a similarity relation obtaining between two temporal parts of the same object. Furthermore, in the case of (2), \(A\) and \(B\) refer, again intuitively, to the same things in both conjuncts.