Assumptions
- Reference: a unique and real entity that an expression represents.
- Sense: a facet of a referent that an expression represents.
- Connotation: the settled emotional content of an expression (especially of a word).
- Denotation: the meaning of an expression (especially of a word) less its connotation.
- Intension: the truth conditions of an expression [1].
- Extension: all entities that fulfill the the intension of an expression [1].
Conflations
My concepts of extension and of denotation seem the same. For example, it seems to me that the expressions pro-choice and pro-abortion[2] have the same extension[1], the same denotation, but different connotations. So denotation and extension seem the same to me.
Similarly, my concepts of extension, denotation, and reference seem nearly the same, except that my concept of reference includes only expressions that represent unique and real referents.
Also similarly, my concepts of sense and of connotation seem nearly the same, except that my concept of sense includes only expressions that represent unique and real referents. (E.g. Bruce Wayne and Batman are two senses of the same referent.)
Questions
- Which, if any, of the aforementioned terms did I incorrectly define?
- What distinguishes denotation from intension?
Notes
[1] Some meaningful expressions may not comprise all components necessary to state anything true or false. (I.e. unsaturated predicates or arguments). Logicians and linguists use variables to represent an absent component, such as in ∃x(Px), where only P has a stated interpretation. In such a case, the intension of the expression ∃x(Px) is that [[∃x(Px)]] is true iff it is true that x exists and that the interpretation of P is true of x.
[2] I acknowledge that, strictly speaking, [[pro-choice]] ≠ [[pro-abortion]]. I disregarded that fact for the sake of the example.
