On Intensional Interpretations of Scientific Theories

Abstract

The picture theory from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus provides a
correspondence principle for the semantics of a formal language that in contrast to
Tarski’s extensional interpretation scheme, can be represented by maps from the
domain to the language. It makes possible intensional interpretations of the
predicates of the language of discourse for a domain consisting of physical objects
or systems. The aim of this paper is to outline the basis for such an interpretation
and explain how it can be extended to a language of discourse for the properties of
the physical systems.