Dear Alex, (01)
That question is either trivial or profound. (02)
AT
> I am not sure I understand why an 'identification' of an individual
> thing is considered separately from a 'classification' of an individual
> thing. Personally I see the 'identification' requirement as a necessity
> to find out (define) a class of individual things which has only one
> member - that particular individual thing. (03)
The trivial answer is that many logics make a sharp distinction between
individuals and types (or the classes or predicates associated with the
types). (04)
If you have a logic that makes that distinction, then you identify an
individual by finding some symbol (such as a character string) that was
assigned as the name of that individual. But you classify an individual
by determining the names of types or classes of which it is a member. (05)
But if you analyze the psychological, linguistic, and philosophical
issues, you'll find that there is no sharp distinction. What people
and other animals usually perceive are images of the types, and the
particular individual is inferred from the patterns of types and
the context (more patterns). (06)
There are no sharp boundaries between images of distinct individuals,
images of the "same" individual at different occurrences, and images
of distinct, but similar individuals. All those distinctions must be
learned, and mistakes are common. (07)
In short, the distinction between identification and classification
is a useful convention. Natural languages distinguish them, but NLs
are very flexible. They allow common nouns to be used as names
(Baker, Butler, Cook, Smith), and they allow proper names to be used
as common nouns (Xerox), verbs (Xerox), or adjectives (Xerox copy). (08)
John (09)
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