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—

something he wrote extensively about. He described over-generalizations (“evaluations in extremes, either good, ‘wonderful,’ or bad, ‘terrible’”) either-or thinking (“no middle ground”), wishful thinking, etc. (pp. 518-519). The person who fails to grow up and grow out of the childish thinking patterns will find himself or herself blocked from adult thinking. He will find himself dominated by an infantile value system and unable to handle the reality of adult life.

Then there are the cognitive fallacies. Korzybski mentioned the post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore, because of this) (p. 403), the vicious circle fallacy (p. 430), begging the question fallacy which assumes the very conclusion asserted (p. 446), etc.

For Korzybski critical thinking is “the critical semantic capacity for proper evaluation.” (p. 516). So the capacity to distinguish different orders or levels of abstracting lies at the heart of proper evaluation. This is based on the fact that the world is comprised of “a series of interrelated ordered events” (p. 57). Given that, a structurally appropriate map will record and code those series of order events.

The other big critical thinking skill that Korzybski highlighted was the shift from intensional to extensional orientation and languaging.

Intension: In an intensional orientation you start with words. You start with your dictionary definition of words and then you seek to relate, navigate, cope, and understand the world and others in terms of those words. It is a top down approach and one sure to mislead and even deceive. Extension: In an extensional orientation, you start with the facts that you discover in the world. It is a bottom-up approach. You use a language that fits that structure. The extensional orientation, you stay grounded in reality and you build up your understanding from the territory to the map.

The problem with intension is that you start from your map and then try to get the world to fit into it. Actually, as Korzybski repeatedly noted, this describes a delusional way to operate. If you start from how the world is structured, you start with the elements, components, and details that you find there (the facts) and then you construct a map that fits the structure of reality.

Korzybski saw this as the way the human nervous system is designed, first the facts as processed by the lower brain regions (“lower nerve centres”), then moving up the levels in order to “the higher nerve centres.” The order or syntax is important, the structure of levels or layers is important, and the movement from lower to higher is important. It is important for both sanity and the development of sound knowledge (science), hence the title of his book, Science and Sanity. There’s more, a lot more — so until the next Neurons.