Defining “Intrinsic”
Intrinsic as cited in princeton.edu webpage, It is “belonging to a thing by its very nature; ‘form was treated as something intrinsic, as the very essence of the thing’ according to John Dewey” . This definition is not so different from our definitions, what we can consider at first glance. However, the term “intrinsic” must be defined more sufficiently. Considering possible cases as Langton & Lewis did:
Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P.
The second definition sounds like a law of thermodynamics. It is logical but not sufficient. For instance, definition of the noun form of rose from “Concise Oxford English Dictionary” can be as follows:
A prickly bush or shrub that typically bears red, pink, yellow, or white fragrant flowers, native to north temperate regions and widely grown as an ornamental.
Now think about the rose bears in our minds. After we read this definition, we call an image in our minds about the rose and then say that “Hmm, this is the definition of the rose.” When one wants to draw a rose, draws the thing that I call the rose. Intrinsic has different values in each individual mind, when we have the input as a sound or as an image as a word, brain outputs that individual value. Neither the definition of a rose nor intrinsic is possible.
This article is about:
- what does intrinsic mean
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