- From: pat hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 15:58:27 -0500
- To: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
>Noting your ongoing debate, I wondered if something that Dan said >[1] might be a bridge to useful progress... > >At 17:51 16/07/03 -0500, Dan Connolly wrote: >>Well, it's pretty close... try taking 'identify' to mean >>"denote in many/most useful interpretations". > >and ... > >At 23:34 17/07/03 -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote: >>Example1. >> >>A dog bounds into the room. Tim says, "Here, Fido!" to the dog, and >>says "Pat, meet my dog, Fido" to Pat. Tim plays with th edog. Tim >>asks Pat, "Pat, would please take Fido for a walk?" >>Pat takes the dog for a walk. The name seems to have been >>unambiguously associated with te same dog in both there minds. > >I think the point here is that the name here is associated with >something in each mind similar enough that doing the action of >"taking it for a walk" has the same observable outcome. > >Fido might be interpreted to denote the dog, or to denote a >collection of fleas that live on the dog, but to take "Fido" for a >walk amounts to the same thing. Right, exactly. We don't need to negotiate meanings all the way down to a single denotation valid for all possible interpretations and all possible purposes; only well enough for the purpose at hand ( which might be drawing a conclusion of some kind.) Pat >#g >-- > >[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/0159.html > > >------------------- >Graham Klyne ><GK@NineByNine.org> >PGP: 0FAA 69FF C083 000B A2E9 A131 01B9 1C7A DBCA CB5E -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32501 (850)291 0667 cell phayes@ihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Monday, 21 July 2003 16:58:31 UTC