Intension

In any of several fields of study that treat the use of signs—for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, semiotics, and philosophy of language—an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or another symbol. In the case of a word, the word's definition often implies an intension. For instance, the intensions of the word plant include properties such as "being composed of cellulose (not always true)", "alive", and "organism", among others. A comprehension is the collection of all such intensions. The meaning of a word can be thought of as the bond between the idea the word means and the physical form of the word. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) contrasts three concepts: the signifier – the "sound image" or the string of letters on a page that one recognizes as the form of a sign the signified – the meaning, the concept or idea that a sign expresses or evokes the referent – the actual thing or set of things a sign refers to. See Dyadic signs and Reference (semantics). Without intension of some sort, a word has no meaning. For instance, the terms rantans or brillig have no intension and hence no meaning. Such terms may be suggestive, but a term can be suggestive without being meaningful. For instance, ran tan is an archaic onomatopoeia for chaotic noise or din and may suggest to English speakers a din or meaningless noise, and brillig though made up by Lewis Carroll may be suggestive of 'brilliant' or 'frigid'. Such terms, it may be argued, are always intensional since they connote the property 'meaningless term', but this is only an apparent paradox and does not constitute a counterexample to the claim that without intension a word has no meaning. Part of its intension is that it has no extension. Intension is analogous to the signified in the Saussurean system, extension to the referent. In philosophical arguments about dualism versus monism, it is noted that thoughts have intensionality and physical objects do not (S. E. Palmer, 1999), but rather have extension in space and time.