When we orient ourselves by verbal definitions, when we prefer preserving our maps (even maps without territory) to checking them out against 'facts', when we fail to become aware of our assumptions and inferences and to test them out when possible, when we identify different levels of abstraction, we behave intensionally.
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In many ways our neuro-evaluational, neuro-linguistic environments encourage an intensional orientation. Verbal facility in the conventional wisdom of the dominant group - what biologist C.H. Waddington called COWDUNG for short - may get confused with intelligence.
Which leads elegantly to George Bernhard Shaw:
The only man who behaves sensibly is my taylor; he takes my measure anew each time he sees me, whilst all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect them to fit me.
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