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For the paper 'General semantics', see ]. For semantics in general, see Semantics. Not to be confused with Generative semantics.

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General semantics is an educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski. Its basic assumption is that “language ‘enslaves’ us by conditioning our brains to perceive a false reality”

Korzybski’s central goal was to attain a "consciousness of abstracting," or an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how information gets deleted/distorted in the linguistic and other representations used. He considered sporadic and intellectual understanding of these concepts insufficient and argued that full sanity can be achieved only when the consciousness of abstracting becomes constant and a matter of reflex.

Overview

The name ‘general semantics’ refers to the study of what Korzybski called "semantic reactions", or reactions of the whole human organism within the environment to some event — any event, not just perceiving a human-made symbol — with respect to the meaning of that event. However, people most commonly use the name to mean the particular system of semantic reactions that Korzybski called the most useful for human survival, that is to say delayed reactions as opposed to "signal reactions" (immediate, unthinking ones).

Advocates of general semantics view it as a form of mental hygiene that enables practitioners to avoid ideational traps built into natural language and "common sense" assumptions, thereby enabling practitioners to think more clearly and effectively. General semantics thus shares some concerns with psychology but some do not consider it specifically as a therapeutic system, evaluating it as more focused on enhancing the abilities of normal individuals than curing pathology.

Many general semantics practitioners view the associated techniques as a kind of self-defense kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertising, politics, and religion, as well as those found in self-deception.

Viewed philosophically, some consider general semantics as a form of applied conceptualism that emphasizes the degree to which human experience gets filtered and mediated by contingent features of human sensory organs, the human nervous system, and human linguistic constructions.

The most important premise of general semantics has been succinctly expressed as "The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined". 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 possibility of describing such an essence. In this, general semantics purports to represent an evolution in human evaluative orientation.

Other aspects of the system

There are more elements, but these three in particular stand out:

Time binding: The human ability to pass information and knowledge between generations at an accelerating rate. Korzybski claimed this to be a unique capacity, separating us from other animals. Animals pass knowledge, but not at an exponential rate, that is to say, each generation of animals does things pretty much in the same way as the previous generation. For example, at one time most human societies were hunter-gatherers, but now more advanced means of food production (growing, raising, or buying) predominate. Excepting some insects (for example, ants), all other animals are still hunter-gatherer species, even though many have existed longer than the human species.

Silence on the objective levels: As 'the word is not the thing it represents,' Korzybski stressed the nonverbal experience of our inner and outer environments. During these periods of training, one would become "outwardly and inwardly silent."

The system advocates a general orientation by extension rather than intension, by relational facts rather than assumed properties, an attitude, regardless of how expressed in words, that, for example, George 'does things that seem foolish to me,' rather than that he is 'a fool.'

Much of general semantics consists of training techniques and reminders intended to break mental habits that impede dealing with reality. Three of the most important reminders are expressed here by the shorthand "Null-A, Null-I, and Null-E".

Null-A is non-Aristotelianism; general semantics stresses that two-valued (Aristotelian) logics cannot adequately map the totality of human experience. (See also: Abductive reasoning)
Null-I is non-Identity; general semantics teaches that no two phenomena can ever be shown identical (if only because they may differ beyond the limits of measurement) and that it makes more sense to say that the seemingly-identical phenomena show "sufficient similarity for the purposes of the analysis we are currently performing".
Null-E is non-Euclideanism; general semantics reminds us that the space we live in is not adequately described by Euclidean geometry.

The underlying purpose of these reminders is both to adjust our conceptual maps better to the territory of reality and to keep us reminded of the limitations of conceptual maps in general. Non-Aristotelian, in this particular case, refers to the use of non-Aristotelian logic rather than the aforementioned philosophical disagreement. However, Korzybski saw these as linked. The complex nature of the objects we interact with means that reasoning from "essence" or definitions will often lead us astray. This creates uncertainty, which general semantics links to the use of non-Aristotelian logic.

Null-A

Non-Aristotelianism "does not attack Aristotle," and in fact does not necessarily concern the Greek philosopher himself. Within the preface to the first edition of his book Science and Sanity - in 1933 - Korzybski wrote the following:

The system by which the white race lives, suffers, 'prospers', starves, and dies today is not in a strict sense an aristotelian system. Aristotle had far too much of the sense of actualities for that. It represents, however, a system formulated by those who, for nearly two thousand years since Aristotle, have controlled our knowledge and methods of orientations, and who, for purposes of their own, selected what today appears as the worst from Aristotle and the worst from Plato and, with their own additions, imposed this composite system upon us. In this they were greatly aided by the structure of language and psycho-logical habits, which from the primitive down to this very day have affected all of us consciously or unconsciously, and have introduced serious difficulties even in science and in mathematics.

The beginning of Chapter VII quotes A.N. Whitehead as saying,

...the subject-predicate habits of thought...had been impressed on the European mind by the overemphasis on Aristotle's logic during the long medieval period. In reference to this twist of mind, probably Aristotle was not an Aristotelian.

and

The evil produced by the Aristotelian 'primary substance' is exactly this habit of metaphysical emphasis upon the 'subject-predicate' form of proposition.

Korzybski goes on to say, in the third paragraph of that chapter, that Aristotle

was not only a most gifted man, but who, also, because of the character of his work, has influenced perhaps the largest number of people ever influenced by a single man; and so his work has undergone a most marked elaboration. Because of this, his name, in this book, will usually stand for the body of doctrines known as aristotelianism...Some of the statements may not be true about the founder of the school; yet they remain true about the school.

In the preface to the second edition, having compared his system to non-Newtonian physics and non-Euclidean geometry, Korzybski also explains the purported advance of human thought in general semantics as follows:

I must stress that as the older systems are only special limitations of the new more general 'non' systems (see p.97), it would be incorrect to interpret a 'non' system as an 'anti' system.

He therefore asserts that general semantics includes, or can include, all the prior gains that humanity achieved due to Aristotle and his followers. Today for example we can use many-valued logic with as many truth-values as the situation seems to merit. In many cases when doing mathematics, one might choose to apply a limited case of this broader logic with only two truth values, because the probability of altered and unreliable thinking on the part of the mathematician—or other factors that might introduce uncertainty in the conclusion in practice—seems negligible.

Null-I

Since no two things are exactly the same, Korzybski recommended the use of index numbers to distinguish between objects or people that share one name, perhaps pairing this device with the word "etc." Whenever using a group name like "person", one might speak of "person, person, person, etc." Consistent use of the technique will, on this theory, serve to remind the speaker of what s/he had previously understood dimly or in a purely theoretical way, and bring it to full consciousness in daily life.

Similarly, one might attach dates to a name in order to remind oneself of the ongoing process of change. This would yield Smith₁₉₈₀, Smith₂₀₁₀, and so forth.

Korzybski also used a diagram he called the Structural Differential to bring attention to the non-identity of "levels of abstraction", such as a person and a name for that person. The image summarizes the whole principle, so that a glance or a finger pointing at the diagram could remind one of non-identity. Sometimes when describing a possible therapy based on general semantics, he recommended meeting the vehement application of a name to a person or object with the statement, "as you say, but-" coupled with this non-verbal reminder.

Korzybski's books

Korzybski's first book, Manhood of Humanity, published in 1921, introduced the notion of time-binding as the defining distinction between humans and other organisms. There, he used the imagery of dimension to spell out the unique niche humans occupy among organisms. The book became an immediate best-seller, and remained in that status for several years. He rejected explicitly the claim that we could consider a human as either a ‘monstrous hybrid’ of animal with some supernatural or immaterial ‘mind’, ‘soul’, or ‘spirit’, or simply as animal. In his defining of humans in terms of what they do rather than attempting to state what they are, he declared a fundamental revision of the 2,500-year old Western philosophic foundations of science, philosophy, and biology.

His major work was Science and Sanity, an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, published in 1933. A third book of his writings, Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings 1920-1950, was published in 1990.

History

General semantics is an educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. His major work was Science and Sanity, an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, published in 1933. Korzybski's student S. I. Hayakawa further introduced the subject in Language in Thought and Action (1941). An earlier and less influential book in 1938 was The Tyranny of Words, by Stuart Chase. A current book is Drive Yourself Sane, by Susan and Bruce Kodish, published in 2000.

Two major groups were formed in the United States to promote the system: the Institute of General Semantics, in 1938, and the International Society for General Semantics, in 1943. In 2003, the two groups merged into one organization, now called the Institute of General Semantics, with headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. There are also a New York Society for General Semantics, a European Society for General Semantics, and an Australian Society for General Semantics.

During the period of the 1940s and 1950s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction, most notably through the works of A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A and its sequels, and Robert A. Heinlein, Gulf. 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 (often without attribution) in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson.

In 1952, general semantics was pilloried in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science an influential book by Martin Gardner. Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard claimed that his work was based partly on general semantics. However, in Etc: A Review of General Semantics, in the fourth quarter of 1951, Hayakawa said of Scientology, "The lure of the pseudo-scientific vocabulary and promises of Dianetics cannot but condemn thousands who are beginning to emerge from scientific illiteracy to a continuation of their susceptibility to word-magic and semantic hash."

Under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, U.S. medics in World War II used general semantics to treat over 7,000 cases of battlefield neuroses in the European theater. Kelley is quoted in the preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity. The development of neuro-linguistic programming owes debts to general semantics.

General semantics has continued to exert some influence in popular psychology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Usually because of the efforts of individual teachers, such as Doctors Michael Wapner and Chris Aable at CSULA, it has been taught at various times and places in high schools and universities in the U.S.; but in general, the system has had no consistent home in academia.

Connections to other disciplines

General semantics has important links with analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science; it could be characterized without too much distortion as applied analytic philosophy. The influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, and of early operationalists and pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, is particularly clear in the foundational ideas of General Semantics. Korzybski himself acknowledged many of these influences.

The concept of "silence on the objective level" attributed to Korzybski and his insistence on consciousness of abstracting are parallel to some central ideas in Zen Buddhism. Korzybski is not recorded to have acknowledged any influence from this quarter, but he formulated General Semantics during the same years that the first popularizations of Zen were becoming part of the intellectual currency of educated speakers of English. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts was influenced by ideas from general semantics.

Although he appeared to have misunderstood or altered some of the basics of general semantics, L. Ron Hubbard is widely believed to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics and later to have incorporated it into Scientology; the first of these two movements in turn introduced General Semantics to a wider audience in the early 1950s, including popular science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, personal growth theorist Harvey Jackins and his movement Re-evaluation Counseling and movements like Gestalt therapy. The founders of these movements did not themselves credit Korzybski for their ideas.

Albert Ellis, who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledges influence from general semantics. The conceptually related cognitive therapy, developed by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, formulates a program that could have been taken directly from the declared intentions of General Semantics - cognitive therapy is rapidly developing into the most successful treatment of the more common psychological problems, thereby also validating the corresponding concepts of General Semantics.

Criticism

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (August 2010)

General semantics is generally assumed to have been adequately criticized, popularly, 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’, while Black concludes with saying that he regarded “the theoretical foundations of general semantics as logically incoherent and in need of thoroughgoing revision”. However, given that general semantics is concerned with correct interpretation of natural language, the current consensus is probably best reflected in the entry in the encyclopedia The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (ELL) where Korzybski is quoted as saying:

In general semantics we utilize what I call ‘neuro-semantic relaxation’, which, as attested by physicians, usually brings about ‘normal’ blood pressure.

but no attestations are supplied. Also, Hayakawa is quoted as saying:

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.

which the ELL entry precisifies as:

The literal meaning of a statement expressed by sentence Σ is given by defining the method for observationally verifying the conditions under which Σ is properly used.

The problem here is, as argued by the ELL, that

there is no upper limit on the number of conditions for Σ
verificationism presumes these conditions to be either true or false which is not applicable to speech acts such as questions, commands and promises
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.
general semantics does not afford an account of the Principle of Compositionality
general semantics has little or nothing to say about semantic relations within a language.

Hence, the closing sentence in the ELL:

In sum, general semantics has little to offer the 21st century linguist; but for what it does offer, check out the Institute of General Semantics.

Notes

Okrent, Arika (2009). In the land of invented languages: Esperanto, rock starts, Klingon poets, Loglan lovers, and the mad dreamers who tried to build a perfect language. New York: Spiegel & Grau. p. 200
Hayakawa, S.I., Language in Thought and Action, Harcourt, Brace and Company, (New York), 1949, p.31: "The symbol is NOT the thing symbolized; the word is NOT the thing; the map is NOT the territory it stands for."
Margaret Gorman, General Semantics and Contemporary Thomism, p. 31. Gorman says, "denial of substances and of essences," but her claim logically implies the other.
^ Margaret Gorman, General Semantics and Contemporary Thomism, p. 10-11.
Robert P. Pula, A General-Semantics Glossary: Pula's Guide for the Perplexed, p. 21-22.
^ Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings, 1920-1950 By M. Editor Kendig, p. 674. Google Books preview accessed March 26, 2010.
"Dianetics: From Science-Fiction to Fiction-Science," pp.280-293.
L. Ron Hubbard The Anatomy of Thought, Data Series 1, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter (HCO PL) of 26 April 1970: "As Alfred Korzybski studied under psychiatry and amongst the insane (his mentor was William Alanson White at Saint Elizabeth's Insane Asylum in Wash. D.C.) one can regard him mainly as the father of confusion."
Gardner (1957) harvtxt error: no target: CITEREFGardner1957 (help) p. 287
Black (1949) harvtxt error: no target: CITEREFBlack1949 (help) p. 246
^ 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)
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.
Hayakawa, Samuel (1972). Language in thought and action. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. p. 54. ISBN 0155501194.
Ayer, Alfred J (1946). Language, truth and logic (2 ed.). London: Gollancz. p. 12. ISBN 0334041228.
Hayakawa, Samuel I (1972). Language in thought and action (3 ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. p. 54. ISBN 0155501194.

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (September 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Preface by Robert P. Pula, Institute of General Semantics, 1994, hardcover, 5th edition, ISBN 0-937298-01-8 (An online version is available at ; archive link).
"The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes," Alfred Korzybski's 1950 article in Perception: An Approach to Personality, edited by Robert R. Blake and Glenn V. Ramsey. Copyright 1951, The Ronald Press Company, New York. online here. (Archive link)
Symbol, status, and personality by S.I. Hayakawa, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963.
The tyranny of words by Stuart Chase, 1938 (later reprints). Probably the first popularization of Korzybski, pre-dating Hayakawa's first edition of Language in Action.
The art of awareness; a textbook on general semantics by J. Samuel Bois, Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown Co., 1966.
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.
Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition, S. I. Hayakawa and Alan R. Hayakawa, Harcourt, ISBN 0-15-648240-1.
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.
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).
Semantics by Anatol Rapoport, Crowell, 1975. 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.
Hayakawa's critique of Dianetics at
The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A (also published as The Players of Null-A) by A. E. van Vogt, science fiction novels which take a fanciful approach on how the non-Aristotelian discipline of general semantics might affect a society.
Assignment in Eternity, (1942), specifically the story "Gulf," is a representative example of the influence of General Semantics in the work of Robert A. Heinlein. The homo novi or "supermen" of the story express recognizably Korzybskian ideas about the relationship between language and thought.
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. by Martin Gardner, New York: Dover Publications, 1957.
A recent critique of Martin Gardner, "In the Name of Skepticism: Martin Gardner's Misrepresentations of General Semantics," (archive link) by Bruce I. Kodish, appeared in General Semantics Bulletin, Number 71, 2004, pp. 50–63.
Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics, by Harry L. Weinberg, Harper and Row, 1959, hardcover, 274 pages.
ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, journal, Institute of General Semantics. See a compendium of ETC articles at .
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.
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.
Living With Change, Wendell Johnson, Harper Collins, 1972.
Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method, Max Black, Cornell UP, 1949.
"Contra Max Black: An Examination of 'The Definitive Critique' of General-Semantics" by Bruce I. Kodish closely examines Black's writing on general semantics and is available in the articles section of http://www.driveyourselfsane.com.
Language Revision by Deletion of Absolutisms, by Allen Walker Read, 1984.
a bibliography of general semantics papers.
The Original Structural Differential.
The Structural Differential. (Archive link
A Discussion of Korzybski's ethics, with emphasis on time-binding. (archive link)

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