BOO KS
0463
our treatment of them," he does so only "because it is the conclusion
which the facts seem to warrant."
The first two essays in this collection explain general semantics by
elaborating the distinction between word-mindedness and fact-minded–
ness, between the rigidity encouraged by language and the flexibility to be
learnt from simply observing the variety of the extensional world; and
since one important sort of flexibility is the ability to listen fairly to other
people, the third essay sensibly tells us that we should always "refrain
from agreement or disagreement with a speaker, ... from praise or
censure of his views, until we are sure what those views are." But in the
next two longer and more ambitious essays, listening fairly becomes
learning "to listen 'nonevaluatively,' which means listening without pas–
sing judgments"; the end in view is now "a benign cycle of mutual
relaxation of tensions," and there is no longer any implication that
after we have understood we are free to judge. This shift in emphasis
is a consequence of Hayakawa's belief that if we are to become self–
actualizing, fully functioning and creative, we must be extensional,
"open to the uniqueness of every object and event" and experiencing
the world
({at l'Ower levels of abstraction"-i.e.
more directly-than most
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