Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!berke
From: berke@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: inten(s/t)ion, introspection
Message-ID: <3784@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Fri, 16-Jan-87 14:44:42 EST
Article-I.D.: curly.3784
Posted: Fri Jan 16 14:44:42 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Jan-87 06:36:52 EST
Sender: root@ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Berke)
Distribution: comp.ai
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 37

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.)