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Extensions and Intensions

readthesequences.com · 1,251 words · saved by 1 readers

But what is a thing? And what’s a property? Soon the two are lost in a maze of words defined in other words, the problem that Steven Harnad once described as trying to learn Chinese from a Chinese/Chinese dictionary. Alternatively, if you asked me “What is red?” I could point to a stop sign, then to someone wearing a red shirt, and a traffic light that happens to be red, and blood from where I accidentally cut myself, and a red business card, and then I could call up a color wheel on my computer and move the cursor to the red area. This would probably be sufficient, though if you know what the word “No” means, the truly strict would insist that I point to the sky and say “No.” I think I stole this example from S. I. Hayakawa—though I’m really not sure, because I heard this way back in the indistinct blur of my childhood. (When I was twelve, my father accidentally deleted all my computer files. I have no memory of anything before that.) But that’s how I remember first learning about the

Extensions and Intensions Source Markdown · Talk Home About Search Contents Extensions and Intensions ❦ “What is red?” “Red is a color.” “What’s a color?” “A color is a property of a thing.” But what is a thing? And what’s a property? Soon the two are lost in a maze of words defined in other words, the problem that Steven Harnad once described as trying to learn Chinese from a Chinese/Chinese dictionary. Alternatively, if you asked me “What is red?” I could point to a stop sign, then to someone wearing a red shirt, and a traffic light that happens to be red, and blood from where I accidentally

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