- From: Thomas B. Passin <tpassin@home.com>
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 20:33:01 -0400
- To: <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
[pat hayes] > > Explaining how we get to the same referent would be good in an ideal > world, though one might have to make do with something weaker. The > basic point however is that people using ordinary language do seem > to be able to uniquely identify the things they are talking about > well enough to communicate useful facts about them, and one would > expect a good theory of reference to explain how they manage to do it. > Yes they do, and how they do it is amazingly complex. I highly recommend Paul Bloom's book "How Children Learn the Meanings of Words" for an eye-opening look at some of the intricacies of this apparently simple ability we all have. Among other things, it appears that people have more than one "theory of reference", and perhaps several different notions of what a persistent "object" is. Cheers, Tom P
Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2001 20:29:03 UTC