Four On The Floor: Non-Aristotelian Comments On The Passing Scene

"How about the term 'dog'? The number of individuals with which anyone is directly acquainted is, by necessity, limited, and usually is small. Let us imagine someone had dealt only with good-natured 'dogs', and had never been bitten by any of them. Next he sees some animal; he says, 'This is a dog'; his associations (relations) do not suggest a bite; he approaches the animal and begins to play with him, and is bitten. Was the statement 'this is a dog' a safe statement? Obviously not. He approached the animal with semantic explanations and evaluations of his verbal definition, but was bitten by the non-verbal, unspeakable objective level, which has different characteristics...."

[Alfred Korzybski]