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In linguistics, logic, philosophy, and other fields, an intension is
any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or another
symbol.[1] In the case of a word, the word's definition often implies
an intension. For instance, intension of the word 'plant' includes
properties like "being composed of cellulose" and "alive" and
"organism", among others. Comprehension is the collection of all such
intensions.
The meaning of a word can be thought of as the bond between the idea
the word means and the physical form of the word. Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure
the signifier – the "sound image" or the string of letters on a page that one recognizes as the form of a sign the signified – the meaning, the concept or idea that a sign expresses or evokes the referent – the actual thing or set of things a sign refers to. See Dyadic signs and Reference (semantics). Without intension of some sort, a word has no meaning.[citation
needed] For instance, the terms 'rantans' or 'brillig' have no
intension and hence no meaning. Such terms may be suggestive, but a
term can be suggestive without being meaningful. For instance, 'ran
tan' is an archaic onomatopoeia for chaotic noise or din and may
suggest to English speakers a din or meaningless noise, and 'brillig'
though made up by
Lewis Caroll
Contents 1 Statement forms 1.1 Intensional statement form 1.1.1 Examples 1.2 Extensional statement form 1.2.1 Examples 1.3 Significance 2 See also 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links Statement forms[edit] A statement-form is simply a form obtained by putting blanks into a sentence where one or more expressions with extensions occur—for instance, "The quick brown ___ jumped over the lazy ___'s back." An instance of the form is a statement obtained by filling the blanks in. Intensional statement form[edit] An intensional statement-form is a statement-form with at least one instance such that substituting co-extensive expressions into it does not always preserve logical value. An intensional statement is a statement that is an instance of an intensional statement-form. Here co-extensive expressions are expressions with the same extension. That is, a statement-form is intensional if it has, as one of its instances, a statement for which there are two co-extensive expressions (in the relevant language) such that one of them occurs in the statement, and if the other one is put in its place (uniformly, so that it replaces the former expression wherever it occurs in the statement), the result is a (different) statement with a different logical value. An intensional statement, then, is an instance of such a form; it has the same form as a statement in which substitution of co-extensive terms fails to preserve logical value. Examples[edit] Everyone who has read Huckleberry Finn knows that Mark Twain wrote it.
It is possible that
Aristotle
To see that these are intensional, make the following substitutions: (1) "Mark Twain" → "The author of 'Corn-pone Opinions'"; (2) "Aristotle" → "the tutor of Alexander the Great"; (3) can be seen to be intensional given "had a sister" → "had a sibling with two X-chromosomes". It will be noted that the intensional statements above feature expressions like "knows", "possible", and "pleased". Such expressions always, or nearly always, produce intensional statements when added (in some intelligible manner) to an extensional statement, and thus they (or more complex expressions like "It is possible that") are sometimes called intensional operators. A large class of intensional statements, but by no means all, can be spotted from the fact that they contain intensional operators. Extensional statement form[edit] An extensional statement is a non-intensional statement. Substitution of co-extensive expressions into it always preserves logical value. A language is intensional if it contains intensional statements, and extensional otherwise. All natural languages are intensional.[citation needed] The only extensional languages are artificially constructed languages used in mathematical logic or for other special purposes and small fragments of natural languages. Examples[edit] Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn.
Aristotle
Note that if "Samuel Clemens" is put into (1) in place of "Mark Twain", the result is as true as the original statement. It should be clear that no matter what is put for "Mark Twain", so long as it is a singular term picking out the same man, the statement remains true. Likewise, we can put in place of the predicate any other predicate belonging to Mark Twain and only to Mark Twain, without changing the logical value. For (2), likewise, consider the following substitutions: "Aristotle" → "The tutor of Alexander the Great"; "Aristotle" → "The author of the 'Prior Analytics'"; "had a sister" → "had a sibling with two X-chromosomes"; "had a sister" → "had a parent who had a non-male child". Significance[edit] Intensional languages cannot be given an adequate semantics in terms of the extensions of expressions in them, since the extensions themselves do not suffice to determine a logical value. (If they did, then one could not change the logical value by substituting co-extensive expressions.) On the other hand, for the first half of the 20th century the only known systems of formal semantics worked by assigning extensions to expressions and used a Tarski-style truth-definition of statements constructed from the primitive expressions of the language under analysis. Hence, these semantical methods were pathetically inadequate for understanding the semantics of any but a few small artificial languages or mutilated fragments of natural languages. This situation changed in the 1960s with the invention of possible-world or "intensional" semantics, the main form of which is due to Saul Kripke. Though this has enabled improvements in the semantic modelling of natural languages, much work remains to be done. See also[edit] Description logic Extension (predicate logic) Extensionality Intensional definition Intensional logic Set-builder notation Notes[edit] ^ Antony Flew (1979). Dictionary of Philosophy. p. 117. References[edit] Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. Open Court Classics, July 1986. ISBN 0-8126-9023-0 S. E. Palmer, Vision Science: From Photons to Phenomenology, 1999. MIT Press, ISBN 0-2621-6183-4 External links[edit] Chalmers, David, "On Sense and Intension". Rapaport, William J., "Intensionality v. Intentionality". v t e
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Philosophical Investigations Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Bertrand Russell Rudolf Carnap Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology Limited Inc Benjamin Lee Whorf Gustav Bergmann J. L. Austin Noam Chomsky Hans-Georg Gadamer Saul Kripke A. J. Ayer G. E. M. Anscombe Jaakko Hintikka Michael Dummett Donald Davidson Roger Gibson Paul Grice Gilbert Ryle P. F. Strawson Willard Van Orman Quine Hilary Putnam David Lewis John Searle Joxe Azurmendi Scott Soames Stephen Yablo John Hawthorne Stephen Neale Paul Watzlawick Theories Causal theory of reference Contrast theory of meaning Contrastivism Conventionalism Cratylism Deconstruction Descriptivist theory of names Direct reference theory Dramatism Expressivism Linguistic determinism Logical atomism Logical positivism Mediated reference theory Nominalism Non-cognitivism Phallogocentrism Quietism Relevance theory Semantic externalism Semantic holism Structuralism Supposition theory Symbiosism Theological noncognitivism Theory of descriptions Verification theory Concepts Ambiguity Linguistic relativity Meaning Language Truth-bearer Proposition Use–mention distinction Concept Categories Set Class Intension Logical form Metalanguage Mental representation Principle of compositionality Property Sign Sense and reference Speech act Symbol Entity Sentence Statement more... Related articles Analytic philosophy
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