¥This claim
may seem to fly in the face of common sense, so I will defend it. My point here is basically a re-statement of QuineÕs thesis of
the radical indeterminancy of translation, but applied to communication. However, I
inferred it from many observations in actual ontological practice.
¥What does
it mean to say that a name refers to a thing? There is nothing physical, no architectural infrastructure, which could possibly
support such a claim: no ÔpathwayÕ from the name to its
referent. And yet it seems clear that language does use names successfully to refer.
¥We say that
a name refers when a use of the name is sufficient to
communicate a thought or a proposition about the referent, during an act
of communication. The actual mental processes which constitute Ômental
identificationÕ in human communication are mysterious. The best formal account we
have, which also applies to the Semantic Web, says that this is a process of
inference.
¥The same
considerations apply whether the agents involved are humans speaking English or Webbots drawing conclusions in OWL.
¥
¥