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e x t e n s io n / intensio n
qualities of experiences are, at bottom,
qualities states or objects are represented as
possessing (Harman, 1990; Lycan, 1996).
Other opponents of the actobject
model of experience have suggested that
experiences are analyzable adverbially (see
Chisholm, 1966, ch. 6). In experiencing
something red, you are not encountering
a private red object, you are experiencing
redly. You could experience in this way
even if nothing at all in you or in your
vicinity is red.
Although such conceptions of experience
dispense with a special class of sensory
object, it is not clear that they thereby avoid
the mindbody puzzles associated with
traditional actobject theories. It is difficult
to resist the thought that there remains
an ineffable something it is like to experience a tomato visually. This something,
whether a feature of a private object or of an
experiencing, seems invariably to be left
out of objective third-person accounts of
the material world however exhaustive
( Jackson, 1982). In response, materialists
contend there is good reason to suppose
that subjective qualities are, at bottom,
nothing more than unmysterious physical
properties of sentient creatures, the subjective
objective divide reflecting only an unremarkable difference between being in an
experiential state and observing that state.
b i b l i og rap hy
Chisholm, R.M.: Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966).
Harman, G.: The Intrinsic Quality of
Experience, Philosophical Perspectives 4
(1990), 3152.
Jackson, F.C. (1982) Epiphenomenal
Qualia. The Philosophical Quarterly 32,
12736.
Lycan, W.G.: Consciousness and Experience
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
McDowell, J.: Mind and World (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994).
Nagel, T.: What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, The
Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 43550.
Peacocke, C.: Nonconceptual Content:
Kinds, Rationales, and Relations, Mind and
Language 9 (1994), 41930.
254

Price, H.H.: Perception (London: Methuen,

1932).
Sellars, W.: Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Minnesota Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, vol. 1, ed. H. Feigl and
M. Scriven (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1956), 253329.
Smart, J.J.C.: Sensations and Brainprocesses, The Philosophical Review 68
(1959), 14156.
john heil
extension/intension The extension of an
expression is the object or objects to which
the expression applies. For example, the
extension of the noun rose is the collection of all roses, and the extension of the
definite description the number of planets
is the number 9. Some hold that the extension of a (declarative) sentence is its truth
value. The intension of an expression is its
meaning.
The semantic analysis of natural language
calls for a sharp distinction between extension and intension. Many different definite
descriptions may describe the same object
and hence have the same extension.
For example, the number of planets, the
successor of 8, the number of a cats
lives (according to myth), all have as their
extension the number 9; and they all differ,
not only in vocabulary, but in meaning,
in intension. Furthermore, many meaningful
expressions lack extension. For example,
the predicate cat with nine lives (literally
speaking) and the definite description the
largest number have this property. Moreover, the extension of an expression can
vary over time (and with respect to other
parameters) without the expression changing in meaning. The extension of the predicate rose changes as old roses fade and new
ones bloom, but the word does not change
in meaning.
These examples show that there is such a
thing as the extension/intension distinction.
What to make of it is another matter. The
cases of same extension, different intension are compatible with the principle that
expressions with the same intension must
have the same extension; but this principle

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ext ension / i ntensi on

may seem to conflict with the examples of univocal expressions with varying extensions.
The disparity is resolved if the principle
is revised to assert that expressions with
the same intension have the same range
of extensions with respect to extensiondetermining factors such as the passage of
time. Call this version of the principle IDE
(intension determines extension).
Coextensive expressions with different
intensions cannot in general be substituted
for one another within an expression e
while preserving the extension of e (assuming that the extension of a declarative sentence is its truth value). For example, Jones
might believe that 9 is divisible by 3 and yet
not believe that the number of planets
is divisible by 3. Hence, substituting the
number of planets for 9 in the true sentence
(1) Jones believes that 9 is divisible by 3.
results in the false sentence
(2) Jones believes that the number of
planets is divisible by 3.
It is often thought that such failures of
substitutivity constitute a positive test or
argument that the exchanged expressions
do not have the same intension. This
amounts to an appeal to the principle
that cointensive expressions may be freely
substituted for one another in any syntactic
context. The principle is plausible because
it follows from a principle of composition
for intensions:
Composition
The intension of a syntactically complex
expression is a function solely of the
intensions of its syntactic parts.
From IDE it follows that (1) and (2) have
different intensions; and from this and composition it follows that the two terms have
different intensions. The trouble with composition, however, is that a strong case can
be made that no two distinct expressions
are freely interchangeable within belief
contexts. (See Mates, 1950, for the argument.) If so, composition entails that no two
expressions can have the same intension. In
fact, composition has some quite paradoxical
consequences. From composition it follows

that if expressions u and v of the same syntactic type are such that (u) but not (v),
then u and v do not have the same intension.
(Here, is any sentential context not involving quotation.) But it seems likely that for
no predicate F did George IV believe that
not all Fs are F. (Church (1988) credits
George IV with a healthy respect for the
first law of identity (that x = x, for all objects
x); and we may assume the same of the
principle that all Fs are F, for every F.) It now
follows that if George IV believed that not all
Fs are Gs, then F and G have different
intensions. Thus, merely by having certain
beliefs, George IV could control the semantical
facts about a public language. (This argument
is an ironic analogue of one developed in
Church (1992)). It appears that composition
is too strong (see Putnam, 1954).
If we postulate the converse of IDE that
expressions with the same range of extensions
have the same intension then we have the
point of view of possible worlds semantics,
or more generally of index semantics. The
intension of, say, a common noun such as
rose is identified with the function which
associates with each sequence of extensiondetermining factors <p, t, w . . . > (place p,
time t, possible world w . . . ) the extension
of rose with respect to such parameters.
This functional analysis of intension can
be extended to expressions of complex and
higher type. For example, the relative adjective small cannot be treated as a predicate
of individuals. The sentence Dumbo is a
small elephant does not mean that Dumbo
is an elephant and Dumbo is small; for if
so, we could deduce that Dumbo is a small
animal from the fact that Dumbo is a small
elephant: small combines with a noun
phrase (elephant) to produce another noun
phrase (small elephant). Accordingly,
the intension of small is a function from
common noun intensions (functions from
indices to sets) to common noun intensions.
This theory has had a considerable impact
on research in theoretical linguistics (see
Chierchia and McConnell-Genet, 1990).
But it is open to many objections, not least
of which is that it makes logical equivalence the criterion of sameness of intension, though perhaps the most important of
255

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e x t e n s io nalism
which is that it has failed to date to accommodate certain counterexamples to IDE
(see Putnam, 1975).
b i b l i og rap hy
Carnap, R.: Meaning and Necessity (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press,
1947).
Chierchia, G. and McConnell-Genet, S.:
Meaning and Grammar. An Introduction
to Semantics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990).
Church, A.: A Remark Concerning Quines
Paradox About Modality, in Propositions
and Attitudes, ed. N. Salmon and S. Soames
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
58 66.
Frege, G.: On Sense and Reference, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of
Gottlob Frege, ed. and trans. P. Geach and
M. Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 56
78.
Mates, B.: Synonymity, University of
California Publications in Philosophy 25
(1950), 20126; repr. in Semantics and
the Philosophy of Language, ed. L. Linsky
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1952), 11136.
Putnam, H.: The Meaning of Meaning, in
his Philosophical Papers II: Mind, Language,
and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 21571.
Putnam, H.: Synonymity and the Analysis
of Belief Sentences, Analysis 14 (1954),
11422; repr. in Propositions and Attitudes,
ed. N. Salmon and S. Soames (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988), 14958.
harry deutsch

extensionalism A theory is said to be

extensional if coextensive expressions of the
theory are interchangeable in any syntactic
context C while preserving the extension of
C. Extensionalism is the doctrine that only
(though certainly not all) extensional theories are legitimate in the sense of constituting serious science. Extensionalism is most
closely associated with the views of Quine
who goes so far as to claim that formulability
256

within the framework of extensional predicate calculus is pretty nearly a necessary

condition of intelligibility (Quine, 1990).
Quine attacks the very notion of meaning
(intension), arguing that on close examination this commonplace concept is of no
scientific explanatory value; it is a myth, a
will o the wisp. Quine argues first (but my
ordering here of Quines doctrines is largely
arbitrary) that the concept of meaning as the
intensional correlate of individual words and
sentences is an obscure notion, subject to
no extensional criterion of individuation on
and definable only in terms of other, equally
obscure, intensional notions (Quine, 1970).
Second, he argues that the traditional analytic/synthetic distinction cannot be maintained. There is no principled distinction
between statements true by definition or
linguistic convention and those true in
virtue of extralinguistic fact (Quine, 1951).
Third, he observes that incompatible empirical hypotheses may each be fully compatible with the data, and hence insofar
as individual hypotheses have empirical
meaning, incompatible hypotheses may
have the same empirical meaning. Quine
infers from this that empirical significance
is diffused over the entirety of theory. Only
observation sentences have, individually,
in isolation from theory, any empirical significance (Quine, 1970). Fourth, he argues
that quantified modal logic does not possess
an adequate interpretation; at best it entails the onerous doctrine of Aristotelian
essentialism (Quine, 1966 and elsewhere;
see essence and essentialism). Finally, he
argues that reference is inscrutable and
translation indeterminate (Quine, 1960
and elsewhere).
The first point is based on a fact of
elementary model theory: an isomorphism
of one domain onto another leaves the
truth values of sentences undisturbed; and
it seems to follow that it simply does not
matter, up to isomorphism, what our terms
refer to. The thesis about translation is the
claim that a theory of translation, that is, a
theory about what expressions of the home
language translate what expressions of the
foreign language, may be underdetermined
by all relevant linguistic data. But, unlike