 On this reading, (31) is hardly negotiable. Yet this is irrelevant in the present context, for (31a) does not amount to an ascription of a modal property and cannot be used in connection with Leibniz's law. (Compare: 8 is necessarily even; the number of planets might have been odd; hence the number of planets is not 8.) On the other hand, consider a de re reading of (31), where the definite description has wide scope: