An intention, in philosophy of mind, is that at which consciousness is directed- e.g. I am staring at the last piece of cake. My intention is to eat it. This is 'pre-linguistic' or if it directed at something which is linguistic, it is 'pre-semantic'.
An intension, on the other hand, is linguistic and pertains to the internal content of a concept or the name of any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or other symbol. An intension may have a well defined 'extension'- i.e. there is a set all of whose members have that property or quality. Sadly, epistemic intensions or one's which are impredicative (i.e. self referential in some way) can't have well defined extensions.
Fifteen years ago, I posted the following-
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Intentionality can't be intensional- discuss.
The Will is beyond or before Words, just as the urge to fuck up my computer is prior and posterior to the apprehension of the tools that make it inviting to tinker to that end.
Tool usage can be parsed intensionally- generating an I-language, so to speak- and there are good didactic or organisational reasons for such behaviour to evolve- however, Meaning is not in that use if individuals can have self generated intentionality and language is ultimately about individual interchange.
What this means is that tool usage can have an objective function which is optimisable and therefore has category theoretical 'naturality' (non arbitrariness) and (consequently) 'unicity' obtains and well-defined, set theoretical, 'extensions' correspond to 'intensions' (nouns or predicates) such that, for any particular purpose, there are good enough 'univalent foundations' or 'observational equivalence or pragmatic Schelling focal solutions to coordination and even some dis-coordination games.
Here 'intensionality' can, potentially, have unicity, naturality, categoricity, etc- perhaps, at the 'end of mathematical time' or else for some rough and ready practical purpose.
What of 'intentionality'? Sadly, it is impredicative, ambiguous, plastic, supervenient or multiply realisable, rather than fundamental, deterministic, 'atomic', or 'first order'.
Can intentionality be intensional?
Chisholm (1967) and others have claimed that
intentional phenomena are intensional,
Surely, all 'phenomena' are 'intentional'? After all, there is some consciousness or mind to which is shown (phainein) some real or virtual or wholly phantasmagoric thing. To deny this is to say there is some 'appearance'- i.e. mental representation or phenomenon- which ceases to be a phenomenon so as to become 'noumenon' (a thing in itself) or univalent Gnosis or something yet more rich and strange.
But this means saying 'intentional phenomena are intensional' is intended as a tautology but is actually ex falso quodlibet by reason of the 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy. But this was known in the fourth fucking Century BC!
i.e., that the objects of thought (intentional objects) have intensional properties,
only in the sense that I own Buckingham Palace because I name myself the Queen of Eng-fucking-land.
or that the items that are non-substitutible (for example)
We know no such objects. Moreover, if there were even one thing known to be non-substitutible with respect to ANY general 'intention' or purpose (i.e. one which corresponds to a 'general equilibrium') then we would have an Archimedian point for an a priori 'impossibility proof'. As a matter of fact, we think we do- e.g. impossibility of a macroscopic 'perpetual motion machine'- but we also know we may be wrong.
are intensional,
like leprechauns which sodomize unicorns even though they themselves are those same unicorns
or that mental acts such as believing form intensional contexts.
for gay leprechauns.
My point is that saying something is an intention or an intension is arbitrary, ipse dixit, and associable with any predicate whatsoever.
My browser's Generative AI disagrees. It asserts- no doubt, unintentionally- that
The statement "Intentionality can't be intensional" is not entirely accurate.
Because no proposition is. Even a tautology is false- e.g. Vivek is Vivek because at the moment Vivek is drunk off his head and typing shite onto his blog coz he is listening to Farid Ayaz & Company's 'shikva-javab'.
While intentionality (the property of mental states being directed at something)
is merely a manner of speaking. There is no 'fungible' property here. There is merely an ipse dixit assertion or act of predication.
and intensionality (a semantic property related to truth preservation under coreferential substitution)
in an artificial but not natural language. But this is just another way of saying that machines are algorithmic- unless they aren't because 'fuzzy logic' or 'stochastic parrots' are more productive. It does not establish any fucking 'property'. Where such a thing exists, it can be sold or otherwise alienated. Where it doesn't, there is merely a deceptive or paranoid 'manner of speaking'.
are distinct concepts,
No. They are indistinct or Tarskian primitive. Nobody knows how they relate to each other. The thing is subjective- e.g. how is 'x is pretty' related to 'x is beautiful' ?
they are not completely independent.
They are stupid and useless. But nothing depends or is dependent on the stupidity and ignorance of those who talk such shite.
Intentional states can, and often do, involve intensional contexts,
by the ipse dixit stipulation of useless and stupid shitheads
meaning that the way we describe those states can be influenced by the specific terms we use, even if they refer to the same thing.
Only if there is some strategic point to this- or else we are talking about school girls who, meanly, deny that I am cool because they don't get that Epistemological Modality proves I iz actually Beyonce. Also, Rihanna is my bestest friend forever and forever and she often sleeps over and braids my hair. BTW, we both agree, boys are yucky.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Intentionality:
This refers to the "aboutness" or "directedness" of mental states.
Of which none have certain knowledge. On the other hand, it is certainly true that when Bill Clinton was sticking his dick into an intern's mouth, his 'intentionality' was wholly directed towards cooking Hilary's breakfast.
For example, a belief is intentional because it is directed at a particular proposition.
Nonsense! First there is a belief. Then there is a proposition regarding it- e.g. Clinton's belief that saying 'I did not have sex with that woman' meant 'I did too jizz copiously upon her. She's fucking gorgeous. And so young!'
Intensionality:
This is a semantic property of language.
No. It's just a word in language. You can call it a property because you can call anything a property.
An intensional context is one where substituting a term with a coreferential term (a term that refers to the same thing) can change the truth value of the sentence.
This is also true if there is no substitution. Circumstances change and the 'extension' changes. If an 'intension' is epistemic, truth value changes as the knowledge base changes. If there is an element of impredicativity in the intension- e.g. the 'barber paradox' where the barber is defined as "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves"- there can be no such barber unless the barber can swap identities with a guy he shaves such that he shaves his original body while in the customer's body.
The Relationship:
While mental states are intentional (directed at something), the way we describe those states can involve intensional contexts. For example, the sentence "John believes that the morning star is the evening star" is
ambiguous. John may believe that the Marxist newspaper 'the Morning Star' turns into the planet Venus as night draws in because the fucking Capitalists have arranged matters thus.
intensional because substituting "the morning star" with "the evening star" (which refer to the same planet, Venus) doesn't change the truth value, but the sentence still uses different descriptions of the same object, which can be seen as intensional.
in the same way that everything can be seen as my neighbour's cat.
In summary:
Intentionality is a property of mental states themselves,
No. It is something attributed to mental states. But anything at all can be attributed to anything at all.
while intensionality is a property of language used to describe those states.
No. It is merely a word. Anyway, everything is the property of His Feline Majesty, Emperor Miaow- Lord of the Multiverse.
While they are distinct, they are not independent.
All things are the dependents of Emperor Miaow.
Intentional states can involve intensional contexts, and the way we describe those states can be influenced by
how drunk we are
the particular terms we use, even if they refer to the same thing.
or even if they refer to nothing at all.
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