Abstractions

Alfred Korzybski’s Observations of
What Makes Us Human? . . . Abstractions

The ability to make distinctions between one thing and another. To be able to separate and extract specific information out of one’s environmental background and leave the rest. To generate a symbol within the mind to represent reality without having to cognize that reality directly each time we want to access it. Abstractions are the “components” or building blocks of thought. They show up as mental images, words, and feelings. Alfred Korzybski said the ability to make higher-level abstractions is one of the most important characteristics that makes us Human, separating us from animals.

Abstractions are the Map, not the Territory.

Labeling

Whenever we use a word we are never on the level of the object but always on the level of the label; to reach the level of the object we must point to it with our finger and be silent……. 

It is important to remember constantly that it is the feeling  of the described processes which matters most.

Harry L. Weinberg:

Abstraction

This object I label pen — what is it really? It is the mass of sensations aroused in me by the goings-on on the atomic level. This sentence is the right answer and it is completely false to fact, because the sentence is verbal and the sensations are not. In response to the question, I should just stick the pen in my mouth, sniff it, look at it, feel it, and not say a word. What my senses ‘tell’ me, that’s what it ‘is.’

Classification

In other words, categorizing and naming an object tend to call attention to similarities between the object and the class to which it is assigned, and to neglect individual differences. And the differences are often more important than the similarities, especially when dealing with people. This tendency is carried to an extreme in prejudiced behavior where the label we applied to a person almost completely replaces looking at him as a unique individual who is not a Catholic or Jew or Negro or anything else we may call him. What is he ‘really?’ Look at him, listen to him, and stop labeling him! Theories about the influence of his race, culture or religion on his character may help you to understand why he acts as you think he does, or it may not, but whatever you say he is, he is not. Your saying is words and most certainly those words, though they help determine how you perceive him, are not the man.

H.R. Maturana

Any Process of Separation

I consider that in a state determined nervous system, the neurophysiological processes that consists in its interacting with some of its own internal states as if these were independent entities corresponds to what we call thinking.

Deterministic

Such internal states of nervous activity, otherwise similar to other states of nervous activity that participate in the specification of behaviour, as in reflex mechanisms, cause conduct by determining specific changes of state in the nervous system. Thinking thus conceived, and reflex mechanisms, are both neurophysiological processes through which behaviour emerges in a deterministic manner; they differ, however, in that in a reflex action we can, in our description,  trace a chain of nervous interactions that begins with a specific state of activity at the sensory surfaces; while in thinking, the chain of nervous interactions that leads to a given conduct (change in the effector surfaces) begins with a distinguishable state of activity of the nervous system itself, whichever way it may have originated. …