Intension and Decision

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Excerpt from Intension and Decision: A Philosophical StudyIn traditional logic and in most modern theories, a term is regarded as having one and only one intension just as it is regarded as having one and only one extension or designatum. This traditional point of view has obscured the important fact that there are many different kinds of intensions to be discriminated carefully from one another. Traditional theories have failed to make such discrimination in part because they provide no clear condition under which two intensions differ were the same. Each term (of the proper kind) has a unique intension, according to those theories, but precisely how this intension differs from the intension of some other term is not clearly indicated. The intension of 'man' is supposed to differ from the intension of 'animal', but just how we are not told. Also intensions are usually regarded as in some sense sui generis, and hence how they involve (or consist of or are generated out of) other kinds of entities is not considered.It is not the deliberate aim of this book to discriminate as many kinds of intensions as possible. It will turn out, however, in the course of our inquiry that there are as a matter of fact many such kinds with of course some family resemblance. In particular there is the family of objective intensions, which depend only or at least primarily upon logical and semantical features of the language at hand. These are objective in the sense that they in no way involve the person (who uses the language) or a time. As contrasted with these there is the family of subjective intensions of terms, which depend not only upon logical features of the language but also upon the particular user or users of the terms as well as upon the time or times at which they are used. Within each family there are many branches, and indeed we shall find ourselves somewhat surprised at the plethora of kinds of intensions we shall encounter.Also we shall meet with entities which are very like intensions or which can be used to represent or mirror them for some purposes, but which are not in any proper sense intensions themselves. Such entities we shall call quasi-intensions. Here also there will be many types to distinguish, and the quasi -intensions will turn out to be every whit as important and interesting as intensions themselves.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.