The important decision is now made to use physiological criteria of meaning, i.e., to test statements about meanings by observations of what is known or assumed to be happening in the nervous system of a biological organism . This choice of procedure gives a distinctive slant to Korzybski's investigations, for he is, in his own words, mainly interested in "the neurological attitude toward `meaning' ." It follows that one of the most important and basic notions of general semantics will be that of the nervous response made by an organism to a stimulus consisting of symbols. (227)

~ From Philosopher Max Black's 1949 critique, "Korzybski's General Semantics," in his book Language and Philosophy: Studies In Method has an important place in this literature (223-246).

Max Black (24 February 1909 – 27 August 1988) Max Black (24 February 1909 – 27 August 1988) was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading influential figure in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege's published philosophical writing is a classic text.