Philo 1 Sir Jerwin Agpaoa

On Intensions, Extensions and Philo Geniuses

Our class was able to hold Philo Henyo (the Philo 1 version of Pinoy Henyo) two weeks
ago. I have always loved watching the latter when I had the chance, and Philo Henyo is no
exception. However, when I saw the words to be guessed, I felt quite uneasy because I know that
it would be hard to guess them (e.g. nunal) because they are (1) hard to put into one category
(due to ambiguity or vagueness) and (2) their set of properties are not exactly described, thus the
use of the magic word pwede. However, it is not pwede to just say pwede because there is a
larger chance of not getting the correct word.
Like any other game, needless to say, the goal of the players of Pinoy Henyo (or in this
case Philo Henyo) is to win. Of course, one wins the game when the guesser successfully names
the word which is on his or her forehead. And we all know that this guessing is not some act of
random word spewing. It is a product of complex brain processes, more importantly the process
of sorting out knowledge via some sort of top-down and bottom-up processing.
So basically, what I am saying here is more than anything else (although I am not
discounting the fact that playing Pinoy Henyo needs psychological soundness and other things),
the taga-hula and even the taga-sagot must have a definite concept of the word in their heads. In
order to have a definite grasp of a concept, one needs to know how to state properties or traits of
the concept which differentiates it from the plethora of other concepts; as well as the examplars
of a category or concept. Thus, intensional and extensional knowledge of a concept is central
when one guesses a word in a guessing game.
Next, it is believed that one first grounds on the intensional definition and after that, he or
she focuses on the extensional when trying to get a word in a Pinoy Henyo game. Since it will be
hard to illustrate without examples, and I always want to make things simpler, so I will give an
example. For instance, the word to be guessed is hikaw. One always starts categorizing by
sorting a word into an exclusive classification (Tao? Hayop?) rather than spew random words
(you can spend 10,000 hours and not get the word). After this, one tries to state a set of
characteristics (or specific characteristic), e.g. Sinusuot ng tao?. Only when there is a category
one decides to say words like Shorts? Kwintas? and many others. This is not to say that
intensional definition is not important, because extensional definition is more accessibleand
requires lesser time to be elicited. In short, both are important.
Lastly, I want to say that Pinoy Henyo is a complex game. Our very own Philo Henyo
already showed different instances of complexities in categorization, and so I will give anecdotal
examples that happened to me during Pinoy Henyo games I had the chance of playing. For
instance, last semester, during our free cut in a major, my groupmates and I played a Pinoy
Henyo game. I was the one who was assigned to guess the word Antique. Although it only took
me about 10 seconds to narrow the category down to a province in Region VI, I wasnt able to
win simply because the word is not included in my extensional definition of the concept. I
enumerated every province in the region but sadly, Antique was not included (I still feel quite
bad about it even now).
Similarly, I was also asked to guess the word Alitaptap. Again, although I managed to
narrow down the category to an insect (and subsequently say firefly), still I was not able to win
because I did not know the Tagalog term (all this time I thought gamu-gamo is the Filipino term
for firefly T_T).
In contrast, when I was assigned to be the taga-sagot, I was burdened on how to
categorize the word Lapu-lapu, since it is the name of a hero, a fish and even food. To
minimize confusion, I opted to answer hindi when my group mate named the category animal
and just said oo for the sake of winning.
What I am trying to say here is that again, knowledge of extensions and intensions are
important in a guessing game. Also, this type of guessing game is very much complex, that
experts in this can indeed be called geniuses-- philo geniuses even.