Alfred Korzybski
Alfred Korzybski
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybskiwas a Polish-American independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of semantics. He argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and the languages humans have developed, and thus no one can have direct access to reality, given that the most we can know is that which is filtered through the brain's responses to reality...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth3 July 1879
CountryPoland
To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.
Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
These 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted.
Identity is invariably false to facts.
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
The affairs of man are conducted by our own, man-made rules and according to man-made theories. Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.
the analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero
The only usefulness of a map or a language depends on the similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map-languages.
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everythingor to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
Whatever you say about something, it is not.
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'