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General semantics

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carchasm (talk | contribs) at 18:10, 22 June 2023 (remove more hagiography and misquotes of critics that make it appear like they support this theory - even if this wasn't considered pseudoscience, the long quotes of praise laid on this theory by its own founder would be WP:UNDUE). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
For semantics in general, see Semantics.
Not to be confused with Generative semantics.

General semantics is a pseudoscientific[1] theory of semantics that alleges that a person can control their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses based on an understanding of how events translate to perceptions. Proponents characterize general semantics as an antidote to certain kinds of delusional thought patterns in which incomplete and possibly warped mental constructs are projected onto the world and treated as reality itself.

History

Introduction

General semantics was first introduced by Alfred Korzybski[2] (1879–1950) in 1933 with the publication of Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. In Science and Sanity, general semantics is presented as both a theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. Korsybski had previously used the terms human engineering and humanology in earlier research, before settling on "General semantics"" [3] Because Korzybski, in Science and Sanity, had articulated his program using "semantic" as a standalone qualifier on hundreds of pages in constructions like "semantic factors," "semantic disturbances," and especially "semantic reactions," to label the general semantics program "semantics" amounted to only a convenient shorthand.[4]

Early attempts at validation

General semantics accumulated only a few early experimental validations. One paper reported dramatic score improvements for college sophomores on standardized intelligence tests after six weeks of training by methods prescribed in Chapter 29 of Science and Sanity.[5] Starting around 1940, university English professor S. I. Hayakawa (1906–1992), speech professor Wendell Johnson, speech professor Irving J. Lee, and others assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula.


Legacy

Although the Institute of General Semantics, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938,[6] continues today, general semantics as a movement has waned considerably since the 1950s, although many of its ideas live on in other movements, such as media literacy,[7] neuro-linguistic programming[8][9] and rational emotive behavior therapy.[10]

Hayakawa died in 1992, and The Society for General Semantics merged into the Institute of General Semantics in 2003. In 2007, Martin Levinson, president of the Institute's Board of Trustees, teamed with Paul D. Johnston, executive director of the Society at the date of the merger, to teach general semantics with a light-hearted Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living.[11]

Other institutions supporting or promoting general semantics in the 21st century include the New York Society for General Semantics,[12] the European Society for General Semantics,[13] the Australian General Semantics Society,[14] and the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences (Baroda, India).[15]


"Identification" and "the silent level"

In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram,[16] the arrows and boxes denote ordered stages in human neuro-evaluative processing that happens in an instant. Although newer knowledge in biology has more sharply defined what the text in these 1946 boxes labels "electro-colloidal",[17] the diagram remains, as Korzybski wrote in his last published paper in 1950, "satisfactory for our purpose of explaining briefly the most general and important points".[18] General semantics postulates that most people "identify," or fail to differentiate the serial stages or "levels" within their own neuro-evaluative processing. "Most people," Korzybski wrote, "identify in value levels I, II, III, and IV and react as if our verbalizations about the first three levels were 'it.' Whatever we may say something 'is' obviously is not the 'something' on the silent levels."[18]

Institute of General Semantics "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, circa 1946[16]


Criticism

Black summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics".[19] In 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic Martin Gardner wrote, "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."[1]


The major premises

  • Non-Aristotelianism: While Aristotle wrote that a true definition gives the essence of the thing (defined in Greek to ti ên einai, literally "the what it was to be"), general semantics denies the existence of such an 'essence'.[20]

Language as a core concern

Autoassociative memory in the memory-prediction model describes neural operations in mammalian brains generally.[21] A special circumstance for humans arises with the introduction of language components, both as fresh stimuli and as stored representations. Language considerations figure prominently in general semantics, and three language and communications specialists who embraced general semantics, university professors and authors Hayakawa, Wendell Johnson and Neil Postman, played major roles in framing general semantics, especially for non-readers of Science and Sanity.

Connections to other disciplines

General semantics has survived most profoundly in the cognitive therapies that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Albert Ellis (1913–2007), who developed rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1991. The Bruges (Belgium) center for solution-focused brief therapy operates under the name Korzybski Institute Training and Research Center.[22] George Kelly, creator of personal construct psychology, was influenced by general semantics.[23] Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been influenced by Korzybski[24] Wendell Johnson wrote "People in Quandaries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment" in 1946, which stands as the first attempt[citation needed] to form a therapy from general semantics.


In fiction

During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction. Notable examples include:

The ideas of general semantics became a sufficiently important part of the shared intellectual toolkit of genre science fiction to merit parody by Damon Knight and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson.

Notes

  1. ^ a b Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover Publications. ch. 23, pp. 280–291.
  2. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. (2011). Korzybski: A Biography. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing. p. 257. ISBN 978-0-9700664-0-4.
  3. ^ Korzybski, Alfred (1974). Time-Binding: The General Theory. Two Papers 1924–1926. Lakeville, CT: Institute of General Semantics. pp. (5), 54.
  4. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography. pp. 343, 439.
  5. ^ Trainor, Joseph C. "Experimental Results of Training in General Semantics upon Intelligence Test Scores". In Papers from the First American Congress for General Semantics, pp. 58–62.
  6. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography, p. 440.
  7. ^ Hoffman, Gregg (April 2004). "Media literacy and general semantics". ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 61 (1): 29–31. JSTOR 42580191. Retrieved 5 August 2022.
  8. ^ Linder-Pelz, S. and Hall, L.M., 2007. The theoretical roots of NLP-based coaching. The Coaching Psychologist, 3(1), pp. 12–17.
  9. ^ Wmediaitkowski, Tomasz. "A review of research findings on neuro-linguistic programming". Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (2011)
  10. ^ Ellis, Albert. "General Semantics and Rational-Emotive Therapy". General Semantics Bulletin, 1993, Number 58. Institute of General Semantics, Englewood, NJ. pp. 12–28.
  11. ^ Levinson, Martin H., Illustrations by Paul D. Johnston (2007). Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-42140-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ "New York Society for General Semantics - Home".
  13. ^ "ESGS Home page".
  14. ^ "The Australian General Semantics Society".
  15. ^ "This site is shifted to new addr".
  16. ^ a b Kendig, M., "Alfred Korzybski's 'An Extensional Analysis of the Process of Abstracting from an Electro-Colloidal Non-Aristotelian Point of View.'" General Semantics Bulletin, Autumn–Winter 1950–51, Numbers Four & Five. Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, CT. pp. 9–10.
  17. ^ Wright, Barbara E., "The Hereditary-Environment Continuum: Holistic Approaches at 'One Point in Time' and in 'All Time'". General Semantics Bulletin, 1986, Number 52. Institute of General Semantics, Englewood, NJ. pp. 43–44. Wright, professor of biology at the University of Montana, wrote, "In the 1930s, when Korzybski wrote about colloids, they represented the frontier of our emerging knowledge about the complex interdependence of cellular structures and biochemical systems.... Today, the word colloid is used very rarely; I could not find it in the indices of several current textbooks of biochemistry. Perhaps this change in usage came about because we now know so much more about individual kinds of colloids; the word became so all-inclusive as to lose its usefulness."
  18. ^ a b Blake, Robert R. and Glenn V. Ramsey, editors (1951). Perception: An Approach to Personality. New York: Ronald Press, pp. 170–205; chapter 7: "The Role of Language in the Perceptual Process" by Alfred Korzybski, p. 172.
  19. ^ Black, Max. Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method. p. 246.
  20. ^ Gorman, Margaret (1962). General Semantics and Contemporary Thomism. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. p. 31.
  21. ^ Hawkins, Jeff. On Intelligence. p. 99.
  22. ^ "Korzybski International".
  23. ^ "George Kelly".
  24. ^ "Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy".
  25. ^ "Van Vogt moves on next to General Semantics, a non-Aristotelian system of logic, which he promulgated in The World of Null-A and The Players of Null-A." Frederick A. Kreuziger, Apocalypse and science fiction: a dialectic of religious and secular soteriologies. Scholars Press, 1982. ISBN 9780891305620 (p.42)
  26. ^ "Heinlein was intensely interested in the work of Alfred Korzybski from 1933, the date of publication of Science and Sanity, Korzybski's masterwork and the foundation document of General Semantics." William H. Patterson and Andrew Thornton, The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein's. Stranger in a Strange Land. Nitrosyncretic Press, 2001. ISBN 0-9679-8742-3 (p.44)
  27. ^ "... Wolfe's incorporation of cybernetics into Limbo, then, was clearly picking up on contemporary anxieties over the apparently unbridled growth of technologies ... One of the figures he refers to positively as introducing a new way of thinking about this issue was Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the General Semantics movement." David Seed, "Deconstructing the Body Politic in Bernard Wolfe's Limbo". Science Fiction Studies July 1997. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
  28. ^ Tim O'Reilly.Frank Herbert. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc., 1981. (pp. 59–60) ISBN 0-8044-2666-X . "Herbert had studied general semantics in San Francisco at about the time he was writing Dune. (At one point, he worked as a ghostwriter for a nationally syndicated column by S. I. Hayakawa, one of the foremost proponents of general semantics.)"
  29. ^ O'Reilly, 1981 (p. 180), "The influence of General Semantics is particularly obvious in Whipping Star"...
  30. ^ Science Fiction, Language, and General Semantics, The New York Society for General Semantics, https://nysgs.org/event-2475332

Further reading

  • Dare to Inquire: Sanity and Survival for the 21st Century and Beyond. by Bruce I. Kodish [Wikidata], (2003). Robert Anton Wilson wrote: "This seems to me a revolutionary book on how to transcend prejudices, evade the currently fashionable lunacies, open yourself to new perceptions, new empathy and even new ideas, free your living total brain from the limits of your dogmatic verbal 'mind', and generally wake up and smell the bodies of dead children and other innocents piling up everywhere. In a time of rising rage and terror, we need this as badly as a city with plague needs vaccines and antibiotics. If I had the money I'd send a copy to every delegate at the UN."
  • Trance-Formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, (1981). One of the important principles—also widely used in political propaganda—discussed in this book is that trance induction uses a language of pure process and lets the listener fill in all the specific content from their own personal experience. E.g. the hypnotist might say "imagine you are sitting in a very comfortable chair in a room painted your favorite color" but not "imagine you are sitting in a very comfortable chair in a room painted red, your favorite color" because then the listener might think "wait a second, red is not my favorite color".
  • The work of the scholar of political communication Murray Edelman (1919–2001), starting with his seminal book The Symbolic Uses of Politics (1964), continuing with Politics as symbolic action: mass arousal and quiescience (1971), Political Language: Words that succeed and policies that fail (1977), Constructing the Political Spectacle (1988) and ending with his last book The Politics of Misinformation (2001) can be viewed as an exploration of the deliberate manipulation and obfuscation of the map-territory distinction for political purposes.
  • Logic and contemporary rhetoric: the use of reason in everyday life by Howard Kahane (d. 2001). (Wadsworth: First edition 1971, sixth edition 1992, tenth edition 2005 with Nancy Cavender.) Highly readable guide to the rhetoric of clear thinking, frequently updated with examples of the opposite drawn from contemporary U.S. media sources.
  • Doing Physics : how physicists take hold of the world by Martin H. Krieger, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. A "cultural phenomenology of doing physics". The General Semantics connection is the relation to Korzybski's original motivation of trying to identify key features of the successes of mathematics and the physical sciences that could be extended into everyday thinking and social organization.
  • Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, (1980).
  • Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, (1997).
  • The Art of Asking Questions by Stanley L. Payne, (1951) This book is a short handbook-style discussion of how the honest pollster should ask questions to find out what people actually think without leading them, but the same information could be used to slant a poll to get a predetermined answer. Payne notes that the effect of asking a question in different ways or in different contexts can be much larger than the effect of sampling bias, which is the error estimate usually given for a poll. E.g. (from the book) if you ask people "should government go into debt?" the majority will answer "No", but if you ask "Corporations have the right to issue bonds. Should governments also have the right to issue bonds?" the majority will answer "Yes".
  • Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics, by Harry L. Weinberg
  • Language in Thought and Action, by Professor S.I. Hayakawa (later a U.S. Senator), populizing the tenets of General Semantics
  • The art of awareness; a textbook on general semantics by J. Samuel Bois [Wikidata], Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown Co., 1966, 1973, 1978; Gary David [Wikidata], 1996.
  • Crazy talk, stupid talk: how we defeat ourselves by the way we talk and what to do about it by Neil Postman, Delacorte Press, 1976. All of Postman's books are informed by his study of General Semantics (Postman was editor of ETC. from 1976 to 1986) but this book is his most explicit and detailed commentary on the use and misuse of language as a tool for thought.
  • Developing sanity in human affairs edited by Susan Presby Kodish and Robert P. Holston, Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut, copyright 1998, Hofstra University. A collection of papers on the subject of general semantics.
  • Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Third Edition. by Bruce I. Kodish and Susan Presby Kodish. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing, 2011.
  • General Semantics in Psychotherapy: Selected Writings on Methods Aiding Therapy, edited by Isabel Caro and Charlotte Schuchardt Read, Institute of General Semantics, 2002.
  • Language habits in human affairs; an introduction to General Semantics by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Brothers, 1941. Still in print from the Institute of General Semantics. On a similar level to Hayakawa.
  • The language of wisdom and folly; background readings in semantics edited by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Row, 1949. Was in print (ca. 2000) from the International Society of General Semantics—now merged with the Institute of General Semantics. A selection of essays and short excerpts from different authors on linguistic themes emphasized by General Semantics—without reference to Korzybski, except for an essay by him.
  • "Language Revision by Deletion of Absolutisms," by Allen Walker Read. Paper presented at the ninth annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Bloomington, IN, 13 October 1984. Published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics. V42n1, Spring 1985, pp. 7–12.
  • Living With Change, Wendell Johnson, Harper Collins, 1972.
  • Mathsemantics: making numbers talk sense by Edward MacNeal, HarperCollins, 1994. Penguin paperback 1995. Explicit General Semantics combined with numeracy education (along the lines of John Allen Paulos's books) and simple statistical and mathematical modelling, influenced by MacNeal's work as an airline transportation consultant. Discusses the fallacy of Single Instance thinking in statistical situations.
  • Operational philosophy: integrating knowledge and action by Anatol Rapoport, New York: Wiley (1953, 1965).
  • People in Quandaries: the semantics of personal adjustment by Wendell Johnson, 1946—still in print from the Institute of General Semantics. Insightful book about the application of General Semantics to psychotherapy; was an acknowledged influence on Richard Bandler and John Grinder in their formulation of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
  • Semantics by Anatol Rapoport, Crowell, 1975. Includes both general semantics along the lines of Hayakawa, Lee, and Postman and more technical (mathematical and philosophical) material. A valuable survey. Rapoport's autobiography Certainties and Doubts : A Philosophy of Life (Black Rose Books, 2000) gives some of the history of the General Semantics movement as he saw it.
  • Your Most Enchanted Listener by Wendell Johnson, Harper, 1956. Your most enchanted listener is yourself, of course. Similar material as in People in Quandaries but considerably briefer.
  • The World of Null-A, a science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt, which envisions a world run by General Semanticists
  • Gulf, a science fiction novella by Robert A. Heinlein (published in Assignment in Eternity), in which a secret society trained in General Semantics and the techniques of Samuel Renshaw act to protect humanity
  • Bramwell, R. D. (1981). The semantics of multiculturalism: a new element in curriculum. Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1981), pp. 92–101.
  • Clarke, R. A. (1948). General semantics in art education. The School Review, Vol. 56, No. 10 (Dec., 1948), pp. 600–605.
  • Chisholm, F. P. (1943). Some misconceptions about general semantics. College English, Vol. 4, No. 7 (Apr., 1943), p. 412–416.
  • Glicksberg, C. I. (1946) General semantics and the science of man. Scientific Monthly, Vol. 62, No. 5 (May, 1946), pp. 440–446.
  • Hallie, P. P. (1952). A criticism of general semantics. College English, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Oct., 1952), pp. 17–23.
  • Hasselris, P. (1991). From Pearl Harbor to Watergate to Kuwait: "Language in Thought and Action". The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 28–35.
  • Hayakawa, S. I. (1939). General semantics and propaganda. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 3 No. 2 (Apr., 1939), pp. 197–208.
  • Kenyon, R. E. (1988). The Impossibility of Non-identity Languages. General Semantics Bulletin, No. 55, (1990), pp. 43–52.
  • Kenyon, R. E. (1993). E-prime: The Spirit and the Letter. Etc.: A Review of General Semantics. Vol. 49 No. 2, (Summer 1992). pp. 185–188
  • Krohn, F. B. (1985). A general semantics approach to teaching business ethics. Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 22, Issue 3 (Summer, 1985), pp 59–66.
  • Maymi, P. (1956). General concepts or laws in translation. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1956), pp. 13–21.
  • O'Brien, P. M. (1972). The sesame land of general semantics. The English Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Feb., 1972), pp. 281–301.
  • Rapaport, W. J. (1995). Understanding understanding: syntactic semantics and computational cognition. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 9, AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology (1995), pp. 49–88.
  • Thorndike, E. L. (1946). The psychology of semantics. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 613–632.
  • Whitworth, R. (1991). A book for all occasions: activities for teaching general semantics. The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 50–54.
  • Youngren, W. H. (1968). General semantics and the science of meaning. College English, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Jan., 1968), pp. 253–285.
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