A further benefit of a formalisation of class definitions is that this would allow disambiguation of different class definitions that are used by different communities in reference to the same entities.
In this case the term meaning is radically different from that in the case of common nouns, in which the "meaning" is their ability to be used in reference to a class of entities, to denote or designate them.
A general appellative (i.e., a common noun) capable of being used in reference to a whole class of entities can also be used with an individual reference.
Within each system which serves as the source of truth for that particular data element, the discrete unit is an entity, and each entity can have attributes in the form of reference to entities in other systems.
Our discussion of psychological explanation shows what Grice had in mind in his reference to entities that "come on the recommendation of some form of transcendental argument, [and hence] may qualify for the specially favoured status of entia realissima".
In particular, if it turns out that reference to mathematical entities is indeed indispensable to our best theories of the world, how can the nominalist deny the existence of such entities?
The mathematical fictionalist has relied on the compactness theorem to formulate the notion of conservativeness in an acceptable way, that is, without reference to mathematical entities.
Obviously reference to theoretical entities is dependent, as is reference to experiences, which rests on reference to their subjects – for example, Mary's pain in her leg.
The two speak in a cryptic, archaic language, making reference to an entity called Blue, which threatens their sanctuary.
The class UnificationXref defines a reference to an entity in an external resource that has the same biological identity as the referring entity.
Thus, in our hydrogen depletion example, only a reference to the input entity and the new annotation need to be included in the output, without the need to include all of the inherited entity attributes.
