Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: What does intentionality have that AI doesn't.....
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.145847.28793@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <13503@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> <17153@venera.isi.edu> <GREENBA.91Mar14160439@gambia.crd.ge.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1991 14:58:47 GMT

In article <GREENBA.91Mar14160439@gambia.crd.ge.com> greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) writes:
>I suggest that the term "intension" or "intention" is hopelessly
>ambiguous and should be replaced by other terms according to what
>is intended:
>
>In (1), intention is possessed by a person.
>In (2), intension is possessed by a term.
>In (3), intension is possessed by a sentence.
>In (4), intension is possessed by mental state.
>
You've got this dead right (except that you haven't included the technical
meaning of intenTion) and there's no ambiguity at all. The reason three things
have are associated with intenSion is that ther's a long standing debate over
whether the word or the sentence is the 'unit' of meaning and that mental
states (many of them, anyway) are widely taken to be propositional attitidues.
If so they're relations to propositions, propositions have meaning, and 
meaning just might be the intenSion of the proposition. 

-- 
Christopher D. Green
Psychology Department                             e-mail:
University of Toronto                   christo@psych.toronto.edu
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1                cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca 
