Identity, Reference, and Meaning on the Web
Harry Halpin · 2006
Problems of reference, identity, and meaning are becoming increasingly endemic on the Web. We focus rst on the con-vergence between Web architecture and classical problems in philosophy, leading to the advent of \\philosophical engineer-ing. " We survey how the Semantic Web initiative in partic-ular provoked an \\identity crisis " for the Web due to its use of URIs for both \\things " and web pages and the W3C's proposed solution. The problem of reference is inspected in relation to both the direct object theory of reference of Russell and the causal theory of reference of Kripke, and the proposed standards of new URN spaces and Published Subjects. Then we progress onto the problem of meaning in light of the Fregean slogan of the priority of truth over ref-erence and the notion of logical interpretation. The popular