 The epistemological assumption appears to imply that the point of our having a criterion of transworld identity for George Eliot would be that we could then employ the criterion in order to ascertain which individual in a possible world is Eliot; if, on the other hand, we do not possess such a criterion, we shall be unable to pick her out or identify her in other possible worlds (Plantinga 1973; 1974, Ch. 6; Kripke 1980, 42–53; cf. Loux 1979, Introduction; Kaplan 1967/1979). However, this suggestion, as stated, is vulnerable to the charge that it is the product of confusion. For how could we use a criterion of identity in the way envisaged? We must dismiss as fanciful the idea that if we had a criterion of transworld identity for George Eliot, we could use it to tell, by empirical inspection of the properties of individuals in other possible worlds (perhaps using a powerful telescope (Kripke 1980, 44) or ‘Jules Verne-o-scope’ (Kaplan 1967/1979, 93; Plantinga 1974, 94)), which, if any, of those individuals is Eliot. For no one (including an extreme realist like Lewis) thinks that our epistemological access to other possible worlds is of this kind. (According to Lewis, other possible worlds are causally isolated from our own, and hence beyond the reach of our telescopes or any other perceptual devices.) But once we face up to the fact that a criterion of transworld identity (if we had one) could have no such empirical use, the argument based on the epistemological assumption appears to collapse. It is tempting to suggest that the argument is the product of the (perhaps surreptitious) influence of a misleading picture of our epistemological access to other possible worlds. As Kripke writes (using President Nixon as his example):