General semantics is a school of thought that incorporates philosophic and scientific aspects. Although it does not stand on its own as a separate school of philosophy, a separate science, or an academic discipline, it describes itself as a scientifically empirical approach to cognition and problem solving. It has been described by nonproponents as a self-help system, and it has been criticized as having pseudoscientific aspects, but it has also been favorably viewed by various scientists as a useful set of analytical tools albeit not its own science.
General semantics is concerned with how phenomena (observable events) translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. 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. Accurate map–territory relations are a central theme.
After partial launches under the names human engineering and humanology, Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) fully launched the program as general semantics 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. In the 1947 preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity, Korzybski wrote: "We need not blind ourselves with the old dogma that 'human nature cannot be changed', for we find that it can be changed." While Korzybski considered his program to be empirically based and to strictly follow the scientific method, general semantics has been described as veering into the domain of pseudoscience.
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. The Institute of General Semantics, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938,Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography, p. 440. 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, neuro-linguistic programmingLinder-Pelz, S. and Hall, L.M., 2007. The theoretical roots of NLP-based coaching. The Coaching Psychologist, 3(1), pp. 12–17.Wmediaitkowski, Tomasz. "A review of research findings on neuro-linguistic programming". Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (2011) and rational emotive behavior therapy.Ellis, Albert. "General Semantics and Rational-Emotive Therapy". General Semantics Bulletin, 1993, Number 58. Institute of General Semantics, Englewood, NJ. pp. 12–28.
Overview
"Identification" and "the silent level" In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram,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. 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",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." 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".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. 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."
By making it a 'mental' habit to find and keep one's bearings among the ordered stages, general semantics training seeks to sharpen internal orientation much as a GPS device may sharpen external orientation. Once trained, general semanticists affirm, a person will act, respond, and make decisions more appropriate to any given set of happenings. Although producing saliva constitutes an appropriate response when lemon juice drips onto the tongue, a person has inappropriately identified when an imagined lemon or the word "l–e–m–o–n" triggers a salivation response.
"Once we differentiate, differentiation becomes the denial of identity," Korzybski wrote in Science and Sanity. "Once we discriminate among the objective and verbal levels, we learn 'silence' on the unspeakable objective levels, and so introduce a most beneficial neurological 'delay'—engage the cortex to perform its natural function."Korzybski, Science and Sanity (5th ed.), p. 404. British-American philosopher Max Black, an influential critic of general semantics, called this neurological delay the "central aim" of general semantics training, "so that in responding to verbal or nonverbal stimuli, we are aware of what it is that we are doing". Black's chapter about general semantics originated as an April 1946 lecture at the State University of Iowa.
Abstracting and consciousness of abstracting Identification prevents what general semantics seeks to promote: the additional cortical processing experienced as a delay. Korzybski called his remedy for identification "consciousness of abstracting."Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. 500 The term "abstracting" occurs ubiquitously in Science and Sanity. Korzybski's use of the term is somewhat unusual and requires study to understand his meaning. He discussed the problem of identification in terms of "confusions of orders of abstractions" and "lack of consciousness of abstracting".Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. 36 To be conscious of abstracting is to differentiate among the "levels" described above; levels II–IV being abstractions of level I (whatever level I "is"—all we really get are abstractions). The techniques Korzybski prescribed to help a person develop consciousness of abstracting he called "extensional devices".Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. lx.
Extensional devices Satisfactory accounts of general semantics extensional devices can be found easily.For example, a source reference for "scare quotes" and other extensional devices not treated in this article is Postman, Neil. "Alfred Korzybski," ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Winter 2003 This article seeks to explain briefly only the "indexing" devices. Suppose you teach in a school or university. Students enter your classroom on the first day of a new term, and, if you identify these new students to a memory association retrieved by your brain, you under-engage your powers of observation and your cortex. Indexing makes explicit a differentiating of studentsthis term from studentsprior terms. You survey the new students, and indexing explicitly differentiates student1 from student2 from student3, etc. Suppose you recognize one student—call her Anna—from a prior course in which Anna either excelled or did poorly. Again, you escape identification by your indexed awareness that Annathis term, this course is different from Annathat term, that course. Not identifying, you both expand and sharpen your apprehension of "students" with an awareness rooted in fresh silent-level observations.Encyclopædia Britannica (1947). 10 Eventful Years: 1937 through 1946. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. Volume 4, pp. 29–32. "Semantics: General Semantics". The article, written by S.I. Hayakawa, states, "Korzybski did not intend these extensional devices simply as things to say by rote or to sprinkle through one's writing. Each of them was intended to point beyond itself to subverbal levels—to observing and feeling and absorbing as directly perceived data the nonlinguistic actualities...." Explaining the name selection for the devices, Hayakawa wrote, "Appropriating from formal logic the term 'extension,' which means the aggregate of things denoted by a term (as opposed to 'intension,' the qualities of properties implied by the term), he [Korzybski] called his rules extensional devices."
Language as a core concern Autoassociative memory in the memory-prediction model describes neural operations in mammalian brains generally.Hawkins, Jeff. On Intelligence. p. 99. 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.
Criticism Korzybski wrote in the preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity (1947) that general semantics "turned out to be an empirical natural science".Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. xxxiv. But the type of existence, if any, of universals and abstract objects is an issue of serious debate within metaphysical philosophy. So Black summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics".Black, Max. Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method. p. 246. And in 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic Martin Gardner wrote, "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover Publications. ch. 23, pp. 280–291.