berke@ucla-cs.UUCP (01/16/87)
A couple of brief responses to postings: 1) 'Intention' is derived from 'intend' and should not be confused with 'intension'. People intend to do things and so can be said to have intentions. Intensional objects versus extensional objects is a distinction made by Mill and Frege in distinguishing connotations or senses of names from denotations, the (sometimes concrete) objects named by names. I believe that Carnap introduced the terms 'intensional' and 'extensional' to correspond to the distinction between properties and the sets to which the properties apply. It has to do with the identity criteria for properties, usually represented by singulary propositional functions. If you feel that, or require in your formal theory, that two functions are identical if they are true of (have the same value for) the same objects, then you are taking functions "in extension." If you feel that two functions can still be different even though they are true of the same objects, you are taking functions "in intension." That is to say that "intensional objects" have stronger identity criteria (there are more of them) than "extensional objects." There seem to be levels of degrees of intensionality, depending on the strength of your identity criteria. The spelling similarity (s/t) and identical pronunciation don't necessarily imply a confusion of the concepts expressed by the different words 'intention' and 'intension', though, given the state of semantics these days, we may want to make an explicit connection between them. That would require showing how desires give rise to conepts, or vice versa. 2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the" unconcious. (Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that enclosed words are used in a technical sense.)
rjf@ukc.ac.uk (R.J.Faichney) (01/18/87)
In article <3784@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Berke) writes: >[..] >2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the" >unconcious. > >(Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than >it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to >denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that >enclosed words are used in a technical sense.) Can 'introspection' be 'out'? Surely you are "thinking" of 'extraspection'. More seriously: I don't follow the reasoning which implies that the existence of the unconscious invalidates introspection. Having glanced at the history of psychology, I was under the impression that it was the rise of behaviour- ism - and associated attempts to make psychology wholly objective and respectable - which had caused the (temporary) eclipse of the introspective method. -- Robin Faichney ("My employers don't know anything about this.") UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!rjf Post: RJ Faichney, Computing Laboratory, JANET: rjf@uk.ac.ukc The University, Canterbury, Phone: 0227 66822 Ext 7681 Kent. CT2 7NF
rapaport@sunybcs.UUCP (William J. Rapaport) (01/19/87)
But also please note that 'intentionality' is ambiguous:
Intentionality is the feature that Brentano cited as the mark of the
mental, viz., the fact that mental acts (thinking, believing, etc.) are
always "directed" to an object, whether or not that object exists or is
true.
Intentionality also refers to the feature of certain physical acts that
we do them intentionally, i.e., we mean to do them rather than doing
them by accident.
Obviously, there are etymological connections here.
Note, too, that it is often claimed that intentionality in the Brentano
sense is strongly related to intensionality.
William J. Rapaport
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
(716) 636-3193, 3180
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