Theories of Semantics on theWeb - Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web - page 104

re-use them, a problem ignored both by the logical and direct reference positions on
semantics. Given the practical failure of both approaches, one should be suspicious
that something is theoretically wrong as well.
The philosophical root of the problem may be that both Russell and Kripke -
and so both Berners-Lee and Hayes - reject the notion of 'sense.' The Fregean
distinction between 'sense' and 'reference' that provoked both Russell and Kripke's
intellectual projects to build an entire theory of meaning on top of only reference,
where Frege held that the meaning of any term in a language is determined by the
sense of the sentences that use the term, rather than any direct reference of the term
(Frege 1892). It is precisely this notion that sense is 'objective' that allows us to
begin to construct a new position in the next chapter. Yet how does this notion of
sense play out? Dummett provides an insightful hint: “Frege's thesis that sense is
objective is thus implicitly an anticipation of Wittgenstein's doctrine that meaning
is use” (Dummett 1993a). So we must outline a third position, the position of social
semantics that takes the objective notion of 'sense' and Wittgenstein's analysis of
“meaning as use” as its foundation (Wittgenstein 1953). Determining how sense can
be objective - and computational - is the task at hand.