I’ve recently begun reading the newest addition to my general semantics library, Paradox Lost: A Cross-Contextual Definition of Levels of Abstraction, which is available from the Institute of General Semantics and which I picked up at the recent symposium at Fordham University. It is the posthumously released dissertation of Linda G. Elson, who passed away in 2001, who willed her work, nearly complete, to be published.
Not but a page or two into the book, I was moved by her crisp distinction between paradox and contradiction, which from the outset distinguishes the two perhaps seemingly identical kinds of statements. She offers, rather agreeably, on page 2:
‘[A] contradiction consists of two such incompatible statements wherein if one is true then the other must be false; a paradox, on the other hand, may comprise two equally incompatible statements, both of which are true.
She uses the statement “It is raining; it is not raining” as an example. In the typical sense, it is a contradiction: Both statements “It is raining” and “It is not raining,” “logically speaking,” can’t be true. However, say both statements are true. This would make “It is raining; it is not raining” a paradox.
And quickly Elson then solves this paradox, and provides for me what might prove the biggest lesson of the book: With a little bit of explanation, the paradox behind “It is raining; it is not raining” goes away. She resolves the paradox this way on page 2:
‘If one were assured then, in the case of the example just given, that both statements represented true states of affairs, the paradox could easily be resolved by recourse to the qualifying information that it is raining in London and not raining in New York.
Elson goes on to say on page 2 that “Without information regarding position in space, the wordmap [i.e., the statement ‘It is raining; it is not raining’] was incomplete […]” From what I glean, the paradox comes primarily from a failure to communicate relevant information in a statement. The implication for me is that where there’s a paradoxical statement, there’s a statement that simply leaves out important information that creates the seeming paradox, such that when the information is invited back into the statement, the paradox goes away.
Elson calls the particular example she provides a “space paradox,” and she distinguishes it from a “time paradox,” in which the inclusion of a time component solves the paradox. She makes a further distinction mentioning a “levels paradox,” which appears at this point to be the paradox of interest in this book. An example of a levels paradox is the Liar Paradox, which could be summarized as this: “I am lying.”
It is soon after page 2 that I start to get a bit, I dunno, “paradox lost.” Elson seems to have set up a solution to the dreaded Liar Paradox, suggesting as with space and time paradoxes that the solution is in simply including missing relevant information. But instead, the dissertation seems to diverge from a practical treatment of the paradox onto a relatively tangential journey to cover Russell & Whitehead’s logical types and Korzybski’s “levels of abstractions.” This is to say, the book “starts to get all academic” when it starts off as practial, and I am sitting here reading wondering when I’m going to get to something I can use in everyday treatment of paradoxes that might come up in conversation or debate.
Of note, although my training is rather academic (I went to school for acting but came from a very studious, book-minded heritage), I have developed a particular disrespect for things academic. That disrespect is not global; instead, it comes when presentations deemed “academic” lack practical application and dance at high levels of abstraction, talking so generally, non-specifically, and vaguely that they can’t be refuted, much less followed. That is, I’ve heard a tireless amount of academic drivel that fails to communicate to its readers or audience, leaving the readers and audience scratching heads over what is meant. Compare these statements: “The falsification of the ungrasp communicates pseudodirectionally toward nowhere except one place, the ingestor of the medium” vs. “I put my spoon in my mouth.” Enough academia I have heard and read dance in the former verbiage and hardly in the latter. From my albeit dramatic perspective.
Elson’s academia is nothing too unusual, and so far it is something I am tolerant of being only about 20+ pages in. That is, I’ll sit with this a bit. But as her reader, I’m sitting here with only so much patience, and I want her to get right to telling me the resolution of the (levels) paradox, because the answer seems to sit before me: Just give a little more information. What’s my resolution to the Liar Paradox, given Elson’s early insights? “I am lying except now.” Or something like that. The inclusion of “except now” is a practical solution to the paradoxical statement.
Thinking along the lines of adding information to solve a paradox, it seems to me that paradoxes arise from subtracting too much information from some kinds of statements. We might say that the original statement was “I am lying except now.” Perfectly fine statement with no paradox. But if I go subtracting the last phrase, I get “I am lying,” which suddenly becomes a hullabaloo. Keep in mind, in normal conversation, if I said that, I would probably be implying that what I said prior to the statement was a lie, which is to say that it’s no problem at all that it sounds paradoxical.
Another objection I have so far to Elson’s dissertation is that she says that Korzybski’s levels of abstraction are heretofore undefined. To some degree, I suppose she has a point, but a study of his work and specifically Science and Sanity probably makes it clear what he means. Elson seems a bit wrong-footed early into her treatment of Korzybski’s notion dubbed “levels of abstraction.” First off, there aren’t that many mentions in Science and Sanity of levels of abstraction. Instead, from what I recall, he speaks more of a) orders of b) abstracting. And those orders are steps in a process. So Korzybski’s “levels of abstraction” are better phrased, in my opinion, “steps in the abstracting process,” and those steps could be summarized as objectification, description, inference, etc. That is, the steps of the abstracting process represented in Korzybski’s model called The Structural Differential equate to the “levels” to which Elson points. “Level” is a metaphor for “step in a process” and levels are made pictoral by Korzybski’s Structural Differential. “Confusion of levels of abstraction” is thinking that objects are the same as words or descriptions, descriptions are the same as inferences, or more basically, what-is-going-on at the event level is the same as the object my nervous system constructs.
It seems a bit unfair to provide such critical opening remarks to Linda Elson’s lifework (which took nearly 10 years to compose), for one because she can’t respond to my complaints, for two, because I’m not done with her book. But her so-far well written and thought-out book has provoked me to comment immediately both on ideas I found exciting (like her resolutions to paradoxes) and regretful (treating korzybskian notions academically). It’s hard to understand where she’ll go from where I am 20+ pages in, but I’m curious to see where. Pick up the book: Not too many books get you thinking so profoundly by the second page.
See also: academia, alfred-korzybski, contradiction, levels-of-abstraction, liar-paradox, linda-g-elson, paradox, paradox-lost, science-and-sanity, structural-differential
July 8th, 2013
by Anil Behal
Thank you for your opening comments! I too have just obtained a copy of this book, in part because it is related to the topic of my own doctoral dissertation (in progress). Whilst I understand your frustration, I thought that perhaps if you had read the entire book, we could have received a more through evaluation. On the other hand, this is not meant to discount your effort and initial reaction, both of which are commendable. Thank you!