In Defense of Ambiguity by Patrick J. Hayes and Harry A. Halpin.
Abstract:
URIs, a universal identification scheme, are different from human names insofar as they can provide the ability to reliably access the thing identified. URIs also can function to reference a non-accessible thing in a similar manner to how names function in natural language. There are two distinctly different relationships between names and things: access and reference. To confuse the two relations leads to underlying problems with Web architecture. Reference is by nature ambiguous in any language. So any attempts by Web architecture to make reference completely unambiguous will fail on the Web. Despite popular belief otherwise, making further ontological distinctions often leads to more ambiguity, not less. Contrary to appeals to Kripke for some sort of eternal and unique identification, reference on the Web uses descriptions and therefore there is no unambiguous resolution of reference. On the Web, what is needed is not just a simple redirection, but a uniform and logically consistent manner of associating descriptions with URIs that can be done in a number of practical ways that should be made consistent.
Highly readable critique with passages such as:
There are two distinct relationships between names and things: reference and access. The architecture of the Web determines access, but has no direct influence on reference. Identifiers like URIs can be considered types of names. It is important to distinguish these two possible different relationships between a name and a thing.
1. accesses, meaning that the name provides a causal pathway to the thing, perhaps mediated by the Web.
2. refers to, meaning that the name is being used to mention the thing.
Current practice in Web Architecture uses “identifies” to mean both or either of these, apparently in the belief that they are synonyms. They are not, and to think of them as being the same is to be profoundly confused. For example, when uttering the name “Eiffel Tower” one does not in anyway get magically transported to the Eiffel Tower. One can talk about it, have beliefs, plan a trip there, and otherwise have intentions about the Eiffel Tower, but the name has no causal path to the Eiffel Tower itself. In contrast, the URI http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/ offers us access to a group of Web pages via an HTTP-compliant agent. A great deal of the muddle Web architecture finds itself in can be directly traced to this confusion between access and reference.
The solution proffered by Hayes and Halpin:
Regardless of the details, the use of any technology in Web architecture to distinguish between access and reference, including our proposed ex:refersTo and ex:describedBy, does nothing more than allow the author of a URI to explain how they would like the URI to be used.
For those interested in previous recognitions of this distinction, see <resourceRef> and <subjectIndicatorRef> in XTM 1.0.