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intension/extension

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thompnickson2

intension/extension

Dear Phellow Phriamers,

Late in this morning’s session, we had a conversation of the baffling concepts of extension and intension, both as they apply in philosophy and in programming.

I had a terrible time articulating my own view, and so ask leave to post an article ((PDF) Intentionality is the mark of the vital)which showed that the distinction is as important to biology as it is to any other field.

Thanks,

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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jon zingale

Re: intension/extension

Nick,

The tension in the discussion was mostly between

two subtly different words: Intentionality as found

in the work of Bretano and intensionality as found

in the work of Church. While Church did invent

the lambda calculus, the precursor to functional

languages, he himself was a logician.

Jon

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jon zingale

Re: intension/extension

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick,

From the Stanford Encyclopedia article:

"Although the meaning of the word ‘intentionality’ in contemporary philosophy is related to the meanings of such words as ‘intension’ (or ‘intensionality’ with an s) and ‘intention,’ nonetheless it ought not to be confused with either of them. On the one hand, in contemporary English, ‘intensional’ and ‘intensionality’ mean ‘non-extensional’ and ‘non-extensionality,’ where both extensionality and intensionality are logical features of words and sentences. For example, ‘creature with a heart’ and ‘creature with a kidney’ have the same extension because they are true of the same individuals: all the creatures with a kidney are creatures with a heart. But the two expressions have different intensions because the word ‘heart’ does not have the same extension, let alone the same meaning, as the word ‘kidney.’ On the other hand, intention and intending are specific states of mind that, unlike beliefs, judgments, hopes, desires or fears, play a distinctive role in the etiology of actions. By contrast, intentionality is a pervasive feature of many different mental states: beliefs, hopes, judgments, intentions, love and hatred all exhibit intentionality. In fact, Brentano held that intentionality is the hallmark of the mental: much of twentieth century philosophy of mind has been shaped by what, in this entry, will be referred to as “Brentano’s third thesis.”"

One point you made in chat that I found interesting is the

possible intersection of the two concepts. You mention that

an individual who bought a ticket for the Titanic did not intend

to buy a ticket for a sinking ship. You suggest a sort of closure

operator which acts over entailments. If we consider a space

of entailments and objects to be defined by these closures,

perhaps intentionality becomes intensionality. The sea-farer's

intent is to buy a ticket for a sinking ship, intensionally.

Jon

thompnickson2

Re: intension/extension

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Jon,

In my world, intenSionality arises within the frame of intenTional utterances (or actions?) in which a state of affairs is framed within an a verb of explicit or implied mentation. Or perhaps, when an action is directed toward a goal. The hall mark of such intenTional utterances (or actions?) is implicative opacity: From absolute certainty that A believes proposition [X] one can infer nothing about the truth of X or even the existence of any of the objects that proposition [X] concerns. Another way of putting this is that statements involving verbs of mentation are assertions about the organization of the behavior of actors, and say nothing about the world beyond that.

What we were trying to do at the end of our conversation on Friday was construct some sort of a mapping from this understanding of the intention/extension distinction, rooted in ethology, and perhaps a bit of philosophy, to yours, rooted in programing, and perhaps also in another bit of philosophy. And I thought we had a moment of sparking between those two worlds when you pointed out that some HUGE present of programming work consists in debugging, which I would consider to be removing from all the possible entailments of a statement (it’s EXtension) all those that are not within the INtention of the programmer.

So, when you write a line of code such as “1. Make me a ham sandwich”, you intend the robot to assemble cheese and bread into something you can eat, NOT to transform you into something edible. And when the robot goes to the cupboard and gets out the butchering knives and smoking and salting tools, you realize that you need to debug the code.

This is what I think you programmers ought to mean by the intension/extension distinction.

What (again – forgive me – in citizen language) do you actually mean.

What is (to you) the intension of that distinction?

NIck

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 11:05 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] intension/extension

Nick,

The tension in the discussion was mostly between

two subtly different words: Intentionality as found

in the work of Bretano and intensionality as found

in the work of Church. While Church did invent

the lambda calculus, the precursor to functional

languages, he himself was a logician.

Jon

thompnickson2

Re: intension/extension

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Yes. I am struggling with your use of the word closure, but I think you have it as I would have it. Philosophers (at a wild guess) seem to identify intensions with the ineffable mental states that (known only to the actor) guide the actors actions, or, even more narrowly, with the entailments of statements including verbs of mentation. I think intensionality is everywhere in the world around us. Every control system embodies intensionality. Your thermostat is an intensional device.

Thanks for hanging in with me on this.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 11:16 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] intension/extension

Nick,

From the Stanford Encyclopedia article:

One point you made in chat that I found interesting is the

possible intersection of the two concepts. You mention that

an individual who bought a ticket for the Titanic did not intend

to buy a ticket for a sinking ship. You suggest a sort of closure

operator which acts over entailments. If we consider a space

of entailments and objects to be defined by these closures,

perhaps intentionality becomes intensionality. The sea-farer's

intent is to buy a ticket for a sinking ship, intensionally.

Jon

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: intension/extension

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I may be completely misunderstanding but is intention what the actor intends while intension us what his action entails? The two may coincide or overlap sometimes?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, May 16, 2020, 12:09 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Jon,

In my world, intenSionality arises within the frame of intenTional utterances (or actions?) in which a state of affairs is framed within an a verb of explicit or implied mentation. Or perhaps, when an action is directed toward a goal. The hall mark of such intenTional utterances (or actions?) is implicative opacity: From absolute certainty that A believes proposition [X] one can infer nothing about the truth of X or even the existence of any of the objects that proposition [X] concerns. Another way of putting this is that statements involving verbs of mentation are assertions about the organization of the behavior of actors, and say nothing about the world beyond that.

What we were trying to do at the end of our conversation on Friday was construct some sort of a mapping from this understanding of the intention/extension distinction, rooted in ethology, and perhaps a bit of philosophy, to yours, rooted in programing, and perhaps also in another bit of philosophy. And I thought we had a moment of sparking between those two worlds when you pointed out that some HUGE present of programming work consists in debugging, which I would consider to be removing from all the possible entailments of a statement (it’s EXtension) all those that are not within the INtention of the programmer.

So, when you write a line of code such as “1. Make me a ham sandwich”, you intend the robot to assemble cheese and bread into something you can eat, NOT to transform you into something edible. And when the robot goes to the cupboard and gets out the butchering knives and smoking and salting tools, you realize that you need to debug the code.

This is what I think you programmers ought to mean by the intension/extension distinction.

What (again – forgive me – in citizen language) do you actually mean.

What is (to you) the intension of that distinction?

NIck

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 11:05 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] intension/extension

Nick,

The tension in the discussion was mostly between
two subtly different words: Intentionality as found
in the work of Bretano and intensionality as found
in the work of Church. While Church did invent
the lambda calculus, the precursor to functional
languages, he himself was a logician.

Jon
-- --- .-. .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/