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General semantics

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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

Institute of General Semantics "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, circa 1946.[2] The arrows and boxes denote ordered stages in human neuro-evaluative processing that are said to happens in an instant. Although newer knowledge in biology has more sharply defined what the text in these 1946 boxes labels "electro-colloidal",[3] 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".[4] [2]

Introduction

General semantics was first introduced by Alfred Korzybski[5] (1879–1950) in 1933 with the publication of Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Starting around 1940, university English professor S. I. Hayakawa (1906–1992), speech professor Wendell Johnson, speech professor Irving J. Lee, and others futher assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula.

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. 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."[4] 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'.[6] Korsybski had previously used the terms human engineering and humanology in earlier research, before settling on "General semantics"" [7] 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.[8]

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.[9]

Criticism and decline

Although the Institute of General Semantics, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938,[10] continues today, general semantics as a movement has waned considerably since the 1950s.

General semantics is generally assumed to have been adequately criticized, by Martin Gardner’s essay in his Fads and Fallacies and, academically, by Max Black’s chapter in his Language and Philosophy. Specifically, Gardner concludes his essay with “Where the Count was sound, he was unoriginal. And where he was original, there are good reasons for thinking him ‘unsane’,[11] and that "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."[1] Black summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics".[12] and that “the theoretical foundations of general semantics as logically incoherent and in need of thoroughgoing revision”.[13] Peter Strawson, in a review of Black’s book, commented on the chapter "Korzybski’s General Semantics" that it was "a subject which, to judge from the quotations from Science and Sanity, was hardly worth Professor Black’s attention."[14]

The current consensus on general semantics among linguists is best reflected in the entry in the encyclopedia The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (ELL) as having "little to offer the 21st century linguist."[15] as it does not afford an account of the Principle of Compositionality and has little or nothing to say about semantic relations within a language. The ELL further notes that although Korzybski claims that the ‘neuro-semantic relaxation’ induced by general semantics was attested by physicians as regulating blood pressure,[16]}} no attestations are supplied.[15] The ELL also criticizes Hayakawa's[17] method of verificationism as impractical, as there is generally considered to be no upper limit on the number of conditions in which a sentence can be used, [18] and because it presumes these conditions to be either true or false which is not applicable to speech acts such as questions, commands and promises.[15] *Hayakawa contrasts the verifiable This room is fifteen feet long with the non-verifiable Angels watch over my bed at night or Ed thinks he dreamt he was in bed with Marilyn Monroe saying that these last two are meaningless and therefore synonymous which, as the ELL argues, they are clearly not.[19]

However, despite criticisms, many of its ideas live on in other cognitive fields such as media literacy,[20] [21] and rational emotive behavior therapy.[22] Albert Ellis (1913–2007), who developed rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1991. Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been influenced by Korzybski[23] 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. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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."
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. (2011). Korzybski: A Biography. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing. p. 257. ISBN 978-0-9700664-0-4.
  6. ^ Gorman, Margaret (1962). General Semantics and Contemporary Thomism. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. p. 31.
  7. ^ Korzybski, Alfred (1974). Time-Binding: The General Theory. Two Papers 1924–1926. Lakeville, CT: Institute of General Semantics. pp. (5), 54.
  8. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography. pp. 343, 439.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography, p. 440.
  11. ^ Gardner (1957) p. 287
  12. ^ Black, Max. Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method. p. 246.
  13. ^ Black (1949) p. 246
  14. ^ Strawson (1951) p. 366
  15. ^ a b c Allan, Keith (1972). "General semantics". In Brown, Keith (ed.). The encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Vol. 4. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 758–759. {{cite book}}: Missing |editor1= (help)
  16. ^ Korzybski, Alfred (1958). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics. Lakeville, Conn.: International Non-Aristotelian Library Pub. Corp. p. xlvii. ISBN 0937298018. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  17. ^ [General semantics] tells you what to do and what to observe in order to bring the thing defined or its effects within the range of one’s experience. Hayakawa, Samuel (1972). Language in thought and action. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. p. 54. ISBN 0155501194.
  18. ^ Ayer, Alfred J (1946). Language, truth and logic (2 ed.). London: Gollancz. p. 12. ISBN 0334041228. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  19. ^ Hayakawa, Samuel I (1972). Language in thought and action (3 ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. p. 54. ISBN 0155501194.
  20. ^ 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.
  21. ^ Wmediaitkowski, Tomasz. "A review of research findings on neuro-linguistic programming". Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (2011)
  22. ^ Ellis, Albert. "General Semantics and Rational-Emotive Therapy". General Semantics Bulletin, 1993, Number 58. Institute of General Semantics, Englewood, NJ. pp. 12–28.
  23. ^ "Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy".
  24. ^ "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)
  25. ^ "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)
  26. ^ "... 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.
  27. ^ 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.)"
  28. ^ O'Reilly, 1981 (p. 180), "The influence of General Semantics is particularly obvious in Whipping Star"...
  29. ^ Science Fiction, Language, and General Semantics, The New York Society for General Semantics, https://nysgs.org/event-2475332
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