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
It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.
Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
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.'
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.