From: L. Michael Hall
2018 Neurons #52
December 3, 2018
Executive Thinking and Korzybski (#1)
See the attachment J
ALFRED KORZYBSKI
AND CRITICAL THINKING
I learned something the other day. I learned that Alfred Korzybski wrote
specifically and a lot about critical thinking in his classic work, Science
and Sanity (1933). If you had asked me just a few weeks ago if that was the
case, I would said, "My best guess is that he did not." But that would have
been wrong. Dead wrong.
"It is well known that higher intelligence is characterized by a critical
attitude. By training with the Structural Differential until the memory of
the characteristics left out and the non-identity becomes a permanent
semantic acquisition with us, this critical attitude is also developed. No
one who feels habitually these 'characteristics left out'- 'this is not
this'- will ever take a word or a statement for granted. He will enquire,
investigate; will always ask 'what do you mean,' a question which
automatically leads to further investigation..." (Science and Sanity, p.
485)
The Structural Differential is the primary tool of General Semantics and
constitutes the best pattern that they had for distinguishing the orders of
abstraction, dis-identifying things that need to be distinguished, and
getting "the feeling" of non-identity into one's neurology. The practice of
pointing to different orders of abstracting and saying, "This X is not this
Y" embodies "the map is not the territory" principle so that one is left
curiously wondering and exploring, "What do you mean when you say...?"
Now how about that for a wonderful `description of critical thinking? If
critical thinking is the ability to think with clarity and precision, if it
is the capacity to reflect on your thinking and to question it, then there
are several blocks or interferences that we have to address. Namely,
identification, infantile thinking, cognitive fallacies, and confusing
levels.
In General Semantics, Identification is the big one. People "identify," or
equate their ideas with reality, words with territory, and one thing with
another thing. In the world "identity`' is invariable false-to-facts.
That's because in the actual world everything is different at every moment
in time. So, "Whatever you say about it, it is not." (p. 226). "If we
identify, we do not differentiate." Thinking one thing is the same as
another thing creates a semantic disturbance in your neurology. To overcome
this requires "training in consciousness of abstracting." `
"By eliminating the semantic blocking, as in identification, we release the
creative capacities of the individual." (p. 485)
Infantile thinking in Korzybski's writings is mostly what we today call
cognitive distortions-
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director
Neuro-Semantics
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, CO. 81520 USA
1 970-523-7877
Dr. Hall's email:
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Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday. For a free
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