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lviii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION |
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tions'. Thus a 'definition' by intension is given in terms of aristotelian 'properties'. For instance, we may verbally 'define' 'man' as a 'feather-less biped', 'rational animal', and what not, which really makes no difference, because no listing of 'properties' could possibly cover 'all' the characteristics of Smith, Smith2, etc., and their inter-relations.
By extension 'man' is 'defined' by exhibiting a class of individuals made up of Smith, Smith2, etc.
On the surface this difference may appear unimportant; not so in living life applications. The deeper problems of neurological mechanisms enter here. If we orient ourselves predominantly by intension or verbal definitions, our orientations depend mostly on the cortical region. If we orient ourselves by extension or facts, this type of orientation by necessity follows the natural order of evaluation, and involves thalamic factors, introducing automatically cortically delayed reactions. In other words, orientations by intension tend to train our nervous systems in a split between the functions of the cortical and thalamic regions; orientations by extension involve the integration of cortico-thalamic functions.
Orientations by extension induce an automatic delay of reactions, which automatically stimulates the cortical region and regulates and protects the reactions of the usually over-stimulated thalamic region.
What was said here is elementary from the point of view of neurology. The difficulty is that this little bit of neurological knowledge is not applied in practice. Neurologists, psychiatrists, etc., have treated these problems in an 'abstract', 'academic', detached way only, somehow, entirely unaware that living human reactions depend on the working of the human nervous system, from which dependence there is no escape. No wonder 'philosophers', 'logicians', mathematicians, etc., disregard the working of their nervous systems if even neurologists and psychiatrists still orient themselves by verbal fictions in the 'abstract'.
If we investigate, it seems appalling how little of the vast knowledge we have is actually applied. Even the ancient Persians showed their understanding of the difference between learning and applying in their proverb: 'He who learns and learns and yet does not what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows'. In this new modern non-aristotelian system we have not only to 'knovf elementary facts of modern science, including neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic researches, but also to apply them. In fact, the whole passage from the aristotelian to non-aristotelian systems depends on this change of attitude from intension to extension, from macroscopic to sub-microscopic orientations, from 'objective' to process orientations, from subject-predicate to relational evaluations, etc. This is a laborious process and months of self- |
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