- From: Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
- Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:26:26 +0100
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Steven Pemberton <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>, "Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)" <skw@hp.com>, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>, RDFa <public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf@w3.org>, "www-tag@w3.org WG" <www-tag@w3.org>, Ed Summers <ehs@pobox.com>
Pat Hayes wrote: > > On Oct 6, 2008, at 6:12 AM, Steven Pemberton wrote: > >> >>> How does not giving the concept a name solve Dan's problem? >> >> The aim of a name is to uniquely identify something. As far as I am >> concerned, as long as I have a method of uniquely identifying >> something, I'm happy. >> > > What would make me very happy would be for someone (perhaps yourself?) > to tell me what is meant by 'identify'. Take a concrete example: > suppose I have a name, told to me by someone, and to keep things > general lets suppose that this name is /not/ a URI. Now take two > cases. In the first, this name is simply a character string. In the > second, it also identifies something, in your sense of 'identifies'. > What is different about these two cases? What can I do, using the > name, in the second case that I cannot do in the first? And how does > anything I can do with the name relate to whatever it is that the name > identifies? I found the best, albeit long, answer to this question is in Gareth Evan's "Varieties of Reference." While it's a long treatment, basically he says that to identify something one must be able to have a concept of it, i.e. the Generality Constraint, so one can make statements about it. Also, one mus be able to re-identify it, on another occasion, in a different context. So, if one is given a string as an identifier that doesn't identify anything (or a range of things) like "gavagai", you will not be able use that string in any sensible way to make statements about the world to communicate to others who do not share the same presumptions that you do. I might not know what a "gavagai" is, and so be unable to either agree or disagree with your statements, or any inferences you make from them. However, if I have the concept of "rabbit", and can in the general case guess that your "gavagai" matches my concept of rabbit, I can agree, give you more information about "rabbits/gavagais", and so on. Re URIs, if we're dealing with http://www.gavagai.example.com instead of just "gavagai", then if I don't know what http://www.gavagai.example.com is, then I can access that URI and hopefully get a picture of what I call a "rabbit", then maybe I can guess what you call a "http://www.gavagai.example.com" is what I call a rabbit. Hope that helps - and thanks for the thought-provoking question! -harry > Thanks for any help you can give. > > Pat Hayes > >> ------------------------------------------------------------ > IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 > 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office > Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax > FL 32502 (850)291 0667 mobile > phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes > > > >
Received on Monday, 6 October 2008 16:27:02 UTC