Here is Part 2 of my amazing and insightful series on General Semantics.
Intensional and Extensional Definition
The other day I went to visit my good friend Catchy. We sat around his dorm room, trading discoveries and philosophies when I further explained General Semantics to him and a hapless girl who probably thinks I'm slightly insane since I couldn't adequately articulate myself.
I used Count Korzybski's example of the pencil to illustrate my case. We call a pencil a pencil because it has qualities that we, over time and through the consensus of others, have agreed to define as a pencil. What is a pencil? It's a long, slender wooden tool with a graphite stem running through the middle which is used to write with. And what is a long, slender tool that is used for writing? A pencil. This is an example of an intensional definition.
An intensional definition is describing a word with other words, leaving out an objective or "concrete" referent. To quote Hayakawa, it is like describing something while closing your eyes. Now, if we took the object in space-time, the pencil in question and gave a list of every pencil that ever existed and does exist in the entire world and compared it against that list, would be an extensional definition. Its like pointing at an object without abstracting it with words.
Now, what relevance has this to anything? A common question with a simple enough answer. The extensional orientation - a way of thinking extensionally - allows us to be as much as in touch with reality as possible, before we abstract and leave out facts, lower-level abstractions and non-verbal experiences. To rely on out-dated maps without exploring the territory that it no longer accurately describes would be folly - wouldn't you agree?
References:
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Institute of General Semantics, 1950, 4th edition
Language in Thought and Action: Fourth Edition, Samuel I. Hayakawa , Harcourt, 1972.
"Goethe's Extensional Orientation" in ETC.; A Review of General Semantics by David F. Maas, July 1, 2004.
Next week: The multi-ordinal orientation
