Dear John,
Something being intensional does not mean it cannot be extensional also. Take for example the paperweight on my desk. I found it as a nice round stone on the beach, and I intentionally decided it would make a good paper weight. Are you saying it therefore ceases to be an extensional object because it is intentionally created as a paperweight?
As far as possible worlds is concerned you should also look at multiverses (Hugh Everett). This is becoming quite a respectable theory in physics that the different possibilities really happen from a quantum level upwards. So they do not necessarily exist just in someone’s imagination.
Regards
Matthew West
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From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 19 July 2011 11:17
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most classifications are fuzzy)
Dear Matthew,
The point I'm trying to make is that possible worlds don't exist. They are imaginary. The way you imagine them is to create some hypothesis, theory, axioms, or specifications that generate them.
The so-called extensional methods are superfluous. Whatever hypothesis you formed to generate the possible worlds contains all the information necessary to derive whatever conclusion you could get by analyzing the set of worlds.
In short, the starting hypothesis is intensional. The possible worlds are useless baggage. They might give you some pleasure in your imagination. They might even be useful as illustrations. But the method of forming the initial specification for the worlds is intensional.
John