Shoe: An rigid or semi-rigid protective covering for the feet which encloses the toes and does not restrict the motion of the ankles. Similar articles of clothing which are not enclosed are referred to as “sandals”; ones which restrict ankle motion, or which enclose portions of the calf, are called “boots”.
Hope: The emotional response associated with reference to an attainable future world-state thought of as desirable.
Wire: A narrow, elongated strand of metal, or several braided or twisted into a narrow cord. May be sheathed in non-metallic material.
Green: A property of an object or surface characterized by the perception of emitting or reflecting light dominated by frequencies around 550 nm plus or minus around 30 nm. Ambiguity exists toward the edges of this range; borderline cases may be qualified, or may be referred to with more specific color words such as “teal” or “chartreuse”.
Politician: A person professionally involved with the administrative apparatus of a polity, whose position is secured by representative appeal or social engineering rather than seniority, technical merit, the direct application of force, or some other means.
Apple: The mealy, seed-bearing, usually tart edible fruit of several similar small trees (of the genus Malus, classified molecularly or on the basis of botanical features); trees of a species capable of bearing such a fruit; or a flavor characteristic thereof.
Easiest to hardest: wire, green, shoe, apple, hope, politician
Extensional::
Shoe: Wing-tips, tennis shoes, basketball shoes, loafers, high heels, clogs, and medieval turnshoes. Does not include sandals, Doc Martens, hiking boots, or rainboots.
Hope: The emotions experienced by a student on the borderline between an acceptable and a good grade, by an athlete before a decisive game, or by a defendant awaiting a jury’s decision after a well-argued trial. Not, however, the emotions experienced by a student awaiting a grade known to be poor, a worker on completing a difficult project, or a person confiding trust in a friend.
Wire: Includes coated electrical wire, thin stranded cable, barbed wire, and coax cable. Does not include fishing monofilament, fiber-optic cable, or bus-bars.
Green: The emissions of a green traffic light or a helium-neon laser; the reflected light from sunlit grass or emeralds. Does not include the emissions of the Sun, the scattered light from the sky, or the reflected color of gold.
Politician: Nikita Khrushchev; Al Gore; Winston Churchill; Sarah Palin; Cardinal Richelieu. Not Rush Limbaugh, Che Guevara, Bill Gates, or George III of Britain.
Apple: Crabapples; Granny Smith apples; Red Delicious apples. Not rose hips, pears, or unfertilized apple blossoms. In its wider sense: apple trees, apple timber, and the flavor of apple Smoothies and green apple lollipops, but not rose bushes, lime trees, or the flavor of orange juice.
Difficulty, easiest to hardest: shoe, wire, apple, green, politician, hope
Commentary:
Concrete physical concepts are easier to define by both means than social or emotional concepts, but emotions seem to be much harder to define extensionally and social concepts intensionally. I imagine this might have something to do with how I model these concepts: I’m used to thinking of social roles (i.e. “politician”) in terms of the people I think of as occupying them, and so putting definitional bounds around the concept-cluster requires picking out the common factors of an association we don’t think of very often.
By contrast, I think of emotions mainly in terms of subjective experience, and it’s not too difficult for me to bound the factors that trigger them. Coming up with universally recognizable extensional examples is harder; I need to filter out the subjectivity and come up with examples that’d be understandable to almost all readers.
Defining physical concepts is intensionally easier when they’re closely bound to a single physical property (“green”), and harder when there are several criteria with fuzzy edges (“shoe”), or when there are several related senses of the word to consider (“apple”). On the other hand, extensional definitions seem to be better at fuzzy matching between several properties, and worse at making fine distinctions across a single criterion (“green”).
Intensional::
Shoe: An rigid or semi-rigid protective covering for the feet which encloses the toes and does not restrict the motion of the ankles. Similar articles of clothing which are not enclosed are referred to as “sandals”; ones which restrict ankle motion, or which enclose portions of the calf, are called “boots”.
Hope: The emotional response associated with reference to an attainable future world-state thought of as desirable.
Wire: A narrow, elongated strand of metal, or several braided or twisted into a narrow cord. May be sheathed in non-metallic material.
Green: A property of an object or surface characterized by the perception of emitting or reflecting light dominated by frequencies around 550 nm plus or minus around 30 nm. Ambiguity exists toward the edges of this range; borderline cases may be qualified, or may be referred to with more specific color words such as “teal” or “chartreuse”.
Politician: A person professionally involved with the administrative apparatus of a polity, whose position is secured by representative appeal or social engineering rather than seniority, technical merit, the direct application of force, or some other means.
Apple: The mealy, seed-bearing, usually tart edible fruit of several similar small trees (of the genus Malus, classified molecularly or on the basis of botanical features); trees of a species capable of bearing such a fruit; or a flavor characteristic thereof.
Easiest to hardest: wire, green, shoe, apple, hope, politician
Extensional::
Shoe: Wing-tips, tennis shoes, basketball shoes, loafers, high heels, clogs, and medieval turnshoes. Does not include sandals, Doc Martens, hiking boots, or rainboots.
Hope: The emotions experienced by a student on the borderline between an acceptable and a good grade, by an athlete before a decisive game, or by a defendant awaiting a jury’s decision after a well-argued trial. Not, however, the emotions experienced by a student awaiting a grade known to be poor, a worker on completing a difficult project, or a person confiding trust in a friend.
Wire: Includes coated electrical wire, thin stranded cable, barbed wire, and coax cable. Does not include fishing monofilament, fiber-optic cable, or bus-bars.
Green: The emissions of a green traffic light or a helium-neon laser; the reflected light from sunlit grass or emeralds. Does not include the emissions of the Sun, the scattered light from the sky, or the reflected color of gold.
Politician: Nikita Khrushchev; Al Gore; Winston Churchill; Sarah Palin; Cardinal Richelieu. Not Rush Limbaugh, Che Guevara, Bill Gates, or George III of Britain.
Apple: Crabapples; Granny Smith apples; Red Delicious apples. Not rose hips, pears, or unfertilized apple blossoms. In its wider sense: apple trees, apple timber, and the flavor of apple Smoothies and green apple lollipops, but not rose bushes, lime trees, or the flavor of orange juice.
Difficulty, easiest to hardest: shoe, wire, apple, green, politician, hope
Commentary:
Concrete physical concepts are easier to define by both means than social or emotional concepts, but emotions seem to be much harder to define extensionally and social concepts intensionally. I imagine this might have something to do with how I model these concepts: I’m used to thinking of social roles (i.e. “politician”) in terms of the people I think of as occupying them, and so putting definitional bounds around the concept-cluster requires picking out the common factors of an association we don’t think of very often.
By contrast, I think of emotions mainly in terms of subjective experience, and it’s not too difficult for me to bound the factors that trigger them. Coming up with universally recognizable extensional examples is harder; I need to filter out the subjectivity and come up with examples that’d be understandable to almost all readers.
Defining physical concepts is intensionally easier when they’re closely bound to a single physical property (“green”), and harder when there are several criteria with fuzzy edges (“shoe”), or when there are several related senses of the word to consider (“apple”). On the other hand, extensional definitions seem to be better at fuzzy matching between several properties, and worse at making fine distinctions across a single criterion (“green”).