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Barack Obama will win a second term as U.S. President.

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I have cancer.

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I’m a Vegan.

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4 out of 5 dentists would recommend sugarless gum to patients who chew gum.

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Osama bin Laden has been killed.

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Osama bin Laden has been murdered.

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The U.S. murdered Osama bin Laden.

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The U.S. killed Osama bin Laden.

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The Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden.

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Smoking causes cancer.

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Smoking causes coughing.

These are just a random smattering of statements that came to mind.  Now the question for you is, What did they imply to you?

Write some of the implications you experienced in the comment box below.  Then read on …

***

If you can read English, in all likelihood a number of implications came to mind.  Some of those implications may have been about the events referred to.  Other implications may have been about the speaker of the statements.

The point is, language implies things.

Now compare the implications you experienced with the implications another person experienced.  Or better yet, compare your implications with what the speaker of these statements tried to imply.

What implications you have to language may differ from what another person has, and those implications may different from what the speaker intended.

How does this overlap with general semantics?  The field of general semantics is about adopting modern scientific thinking–and the implications of such an adoption.  There are a number of implications in taking on this “non-aristotelian” mindset (as it’s called in general semantics).  One is that pseudoscientific language people use in their personal and professional lives should be revised to more scientific language.  With the revision of that language comes different implications.  That is, what comes to others’ minds when you shift to scientific language is different.

While you might not be able to completely control the implications of your speech, you should be able to influence the resulting implications.  For example, if you say “I have a cat” when you actually have a dog, that statement is not going to imply a dog.  But if you revise to the more scientific “I have a dog” when you actually have a dog, that statement is going to imply a dog.

For what it’s worth, take a look over others’ implications in the comment box.

In describing these manuals, I described them as “time-binding manuals.”  While I was definitely referring to general semantics with the reference, the reference was a surprisingly natural thing to say when it came to describing these manuals.  In writing these manuals, I was helping bind the future who might inherit my work with the past–that is, me, now–who is doing the work.  The manuals were like glue–they did the binding of the two different generations.

Things like manuals and a number of different kinds of written works are time-binding tools.  They exist by design to help the future understand the past.  Alfred Korzybski coined the term “time-binding,” and expounded upon it in his 1921 book Manhood of Humanity.  He described time-binding as the characteristic that distinguishes man from animal.  According to Korzybski, animals don’t time-bind.  Have you ever seen a monkey’s manual or a cow’s guidebook?

But maybe we didn’t need Korzybski to coin the term.  Maybe it would eventually have been used by the manual-writer who needed to underline the purpose of writing the manual.  “The manual is a time-binding tool to help preserve organizational procedure.”  In such a sentence, the term “time-binding” doesn’t have a technical meaning–just an everday one.  Remarkable, huh?

But it took Korzybski to underline the importance of this characteristic to humanity.  Animals and plants just don’t seem to do this.  Because of time-binding, humans can pick up where others left off in their work.  Because of time-binding, we don’t have to relearn things after our predecessors’ deaths; we can read a little bit then skip much of the frustrations they encountered and jump to the successes.  Of course I’m talking in general, and there’s something to be said about the value of making mistakes.  But it is because of things like manuals, we don’t need to make wrong steps in order to find right steps.  We can jump right to right steps.

And animals don’t seem to have this kind of benefit.  Surely, there is some evolutionarily programmed behavior animals exhibit.  But animals don’t typically progress from generation to generation.  If they build a wasp’s nest, it doesn’t end up with a porch or garage complete with garage door opener. It stays a wasp’s nest and becomes a wasp’s nest every time.   The human builds huts, then houses, then houses with garages with garage door openers, then whatever is to come.  The hut becomes something next.

What is fundamental to a manual?  Instruction.  How is instruction conveyed?  By words.  Give a future reader a set of words, and you yield particular results in the future.  So, your choice of words in your instructions now can have cultural impacts later.  Choose your words wisely as you offer instruction in your manuals because you might inadvertently wire the future for failure over success.

Or if you aren’t aware of what I’m talking about, in ETC 68:2 (April 2011) I edited together a transcript from a recording of Alfred Korzybski I came across on a record series at the Institute of General Semantics.  It had not been released.  My friend Victoria Libertore voluntarily did the original transcription of the records, which I sent to her in MP3 files I created from the recordings.  From there, I polished the transcript, correcting words and punctuation to match more closely what is on the recordings.  Voila!  “New” Korzybski work!

In my general semantics blog, you’ll find some of my new essays on general semantics and my explorations of its ideas.  I’ve followed general semantics since 1994 or 1995 (I became a member of the International Society for General Semantics in 1995).  In recent months, I’ve explored the meaning of the term “general semantics,” which seems to get its profile from the title of the major work in the field, Korzybski’s Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.  I make a case that in the title, the phrase “General Semantics” actually means “General Implications.”  Therefore, the name of our field, “general semantics” doesn’t really mean much more than “general implications,” a fact that will lead you to asking the question, “General implications of what?”

I follow by arguing “General implications of adopting a non-aristotelian system.”  But finding “non-aristotelian system” a bit clunky in normal parlance, I opt for the term “modern scientific thinking.”  By that, I mean the thinking that scientists employ these days, especially in contrast to the “scientific” thinking that contemporaries of Aristotle or subsequent followers of his adopted.  To summarize Science and Sanity, it is a study on the general implications of adopting modern scientific thinking, particular when those adopting this kind of thinking are the unsane or insane.  The language component in general semantics is not all that remarkable in its advice: “Change your language to fit reality.”  It’s just that not all that many people who exhibit unsane or insane tendencies understand a modern scientific take on reality.  Thus, they operate delusionally.  So proposing that the unsane and insane look at what they’re saying and change what they’re saying to fit reality I suppose was pretty innovative at the time.  Given how some of my friends think, act, and stress, many people still don’t get or simply resist looking at their problems with revised, more scientificaly accurate language … so general semantics remains still pretty innovative!

In this general semantics blog, I also cover some communication theory as well as semantics (in contrast to general semantics).  Use the Search box at the top to cover specific topics, or use the tags found at the end of essays or in the flyout above to pull up essays on topics of interest.  I’m periodic in my writing in this blog on general semantics, and these last few months have been a little light as I cover other responsibilities in the field.  But I love writing here, and I hope to do some more for you, so subscribe via RSS if you won’t be checking back soon.  Thanks for stopping by, and read on!

Cheers,
Ben Hauck
http://benhauck.com

Traditional communication goes like this: I write the following sentence in my blog:

‘

I like to act.

It’s hard to count how many signals are given here, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say one signal–that I like to act.  So what I do is, I write it (I write this signal) in my blog.

Presuming you speak English, you detect that signal.  You do what we call “reading” of it.  “Reading” simply means that you have the ability to draw appropriate implications from the signal.  In this case, you draw that I like to act–that is, what is implied by the signal “I like to act” is that I like to act.  If you “read” that signal appropriately, we call that “communication.”  I’ve “communicated” with you.

Of course, if you read “I like to act” and conclude that I like to drive, or fight, or eat, then you’ve drawn an inappropriate implication from my signal, and we haven’t “communicated.”

Not all communication is verbal.  Of course you know that.  There are all sorts of body language that signal and imply.  The expression on my face, if you know how to read faces, implies my mood.  The yellow color of my skin implies, if you are medically inclined, jaundice.  My foul breath implies, yes, that I didn’t take care of my mouth recently.  Or it implies I don’t floss.  Or it implies–who knows–the point is that it signals, and hence can imply.

Here is where the differentiation between intentional and unintentional signals, and thence intentional and unintentional communication, come into play.  We signal intentionally, and when we do, we are aiming to communicate a specific implication.  When we signal unintentionally, we still communicate implications, but maybe we don’t want to do this.  Play poker?  In poker, we call them “tells.”  They give away information we don’t want others to know.  I just watched Fargo, and Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) offers a lot of intentional and perhaps more telling unintentional signals, which have definite implications.

So from the above perspective, the key terminology in communication is “signal,” “implication,” “transmission,” and “reading.”  We can also add in there the differentiators “intentional” and “unintentional.”

And those are my notes on reading intentional and unintentional signals.

Implications

First of all, when talking about the word “meaning,” it is very helpful to throw the word “mean” out the window.  I prefer to use the word “imply.”  That is, when we refer to the meaning of something, we refer to what that thing implies.  We call that implied thing an “implication.”

Verbal Implications

Many times when we talk about the meaning of a word, we talk about verbal implications.  In layman’s terms, a verbal implication is another word, another phrase, a dictionary definition, etc., implied by the word.  So, for the word “human,” one possible verbal implication of that word is the phrase “featherless biped.”  (This is also called an intension of the word–with an s, not a t–but that word doesn’t invoke the notion of implication.)

Non-Verbal Implications

But not all words imply other words.  The meaning of a word can be non-verbal.  In fact, probably most meanings are non-verbal implications.  In layman’s terms, a non-verbal implication is anything implied by a word that is not other words.  For the word “human,” one possible non-verbal implication of that word is yourself, or me, or Aristotle, or Jackie Kennedy, or Barack Obama.

However, there are plenty of other kinds of non-verbal implications outside of representative examples for the word.  Another type of implication is a concept.  For the word “human,” the implication may be smart.  It may be polluter.  It may be subject to error.  Each of these are concepts that may be implied by the word “human.”  A concept, in layman’s terms, is a notion or thought implied by the word.

But even a feeling can be a non-verbal implication.  A feeling is something conceptually different from a concept, though at times they may be decidedly overlapping.  In layman’s terms, a feeling is a physical experience implied by a word.

This means that what Alfred Korzybski called “semantic reactions”–total-body responses to words, etc.–counts as non-verbal implications.  If I say the word “lemon,” and your mouth starts to water, your watering mouth is an implication of the word (a semantic reaction). That implication is non-verbal.

Non-Verbal Impliers

In truth, words aren’t the only initiators of meaning.  You can find meaning in non-verbal events (i.e., non-words) and thus experience implications.

If you think of, say, a tragic family event, this is a non-verbal event.  You will perhaps have thoughts and feelings related to the memory; these are non-verbal implications.  You might tear up; this is a non-verbal implication.  You might say “It was hell”; this is a verbal implication.

This is to say that both verbal and non-verbal impliers have implications, and that nearly anything you experience–fact or fiction–can have implications.  This is to say that nearly anything you experience can have a psycho-somatic effect on your body, even if it is just the submicroscopic level below your sensitivity.  You might never be aware of the implications of verbal and non-verbal events on your mind-body.

I submit, in the form of a thesis, the proposition that semantics is the study of implication.  This idea, albeit relatively uninformed by actual professional or academic semantic study, I divine as new, a characterization of which I may be mistaken.  However, I take as lightweight but inspiring support a recent search of the Wikipedia page for “Semantics,” and I don’t find to date the use of the word “implication,” except in a citation pointing not to a study of implication.

Herein, I aim to persuade the reader that semantics deals primarily with implication, and not primarily with definition, signification, or some other more mechanical, mathematical, or otherwise deterministic interpretation of definienda.  By dealing primarily with implication, semantics is properly viewed as a behavioral science, and lexicons like dictionaries are viewed as historical documents telling the general implications of words in their time and times–historical documents of human mental behavior–and not listings of definitions per se.  This is to say that definitions are simply kinds of implications.  To study definitions in the field of semantics is to take merely a special interest inside the overarching field, and insofar as that special interest is rigid, that special interest is a fetishization of definitions.

“The Study of Meaning”

Many sources, whether they be periodical or human, will cite that semantics is “the study of meaning.”  I. A. Richards and C. K. Ogden point out in their famous The Meaning of Meaning that the word “meaning” has a number of different definitions.  Their point demonstrates that the word “meaning” and its counterparts (“mean,” “means,” “meant,” “meaningful,” etc.) have a level of genericity that complicates their absolute and definitivie interpretation in the contexts in which they appear.  That is, the words “meaning,” etc., are generic, and in being generic, they aren’t specific, and in not being specific, they are open to interpretation, and in being open to interpretation, they are plagued with the potential for misinterpretation.  That they are misinterpreted is illustrated by academic and philosophical discussion of meaning throughout civilization, having an undercurrent of the unfamiliar despite being such a familiar, everyday concept.

This is to say that to say semantics is “the study of meaning” is to open up for interpretation what exactly the study of semantics is of.  “Meaning” means what?  What kind of meaning?  Is it the study of words and their definitions?  Is it the study of literary symbols and their interpretations?  Is it the study of terrestrial events and their possible consequences?   Is it the study of the relevance of activities in time toward the achievement of particular goals?  If it is but the study of words and their definitions, why is it not the study of these other events, which are situations in which the word “meaning” is also pragmatically used?

Implication

When we ask the question, “What does that mean?,” in most cases but the truly exceptional, we are asking the question, “What does that imply?”  If we ask that of a word, someone else may follow with a definition, but she may also follow with a synonym, a translation, a photograph, a non-verbal referent like an actual thing, etc.  That is, definitions are not the only answer to that simple question of meaning, and meanings aren’t always definitions.  In fact, a number of referents can meet the criterion we naturally have for calling something “a meaning.”  The word “semantics” and the word “meaning” do not exclusively cover definitions.

Definitions, as well as those other referents, are formally classed as implications.  Lest you think of “implication” as a highfalutin concept, instead it is a simple idea, a cognitive response the human body has to a stimulus.  That is, first there is some sort of stimulus, followed second by neural responses that construct what that stimulus implies to the human.  Meeting in nature a growling wolf with snarling teeth and dripping saliva implies you’re about to be attacked.  Meeting the word “Enter” on a door implies you can pass through and into a store.  There really is no difference between these two stimuli, one non-veral, one verbal, each neurological.  Semantics, I argue, may study both.

But implications manifest in the human body in ways other than because of non-verbal or verbal stimuli.  Reading the news, an editor may posit, “What do the events in Egypt mean for the stability of the Middle East or North  Africa?”  To ask that question is to get one wondering about the implications of the events, to think about consequences.  The events are not language–they are empirical events–but they can still imply things to people, mainly because they can stir implications in people.  For people with no grasp of the happenings in that region of the world, the implications may be few–for example, a 2-year-old experiences few implications in light of the news.  However, a scholar in Egyptian political science may experience countless implications as a result of the news.  If semantics is the study of implication, a subfield of semantics studies the meaning (implications) of world events.

And the answer to the question “What do the events in Egypt mean for the stability of the Middle East or North  Africa?” can lead to many different kinds of answers.  There may be social answers, political answers, geographic answers, geneological answers, cartographical answers, American answers, Libyan answers, Muslim answers, Catholic answers, U.S. Presidential answers, tourismal answers, economic answers, predictive answers, scientific answes, mathematical answers, statistical answers, and the list goes on.  In terms of society, the events imply ___.  In terms of politics, the events imply ___.  In terms of statistics, the events imply ___.  And so on.

Cassius Keyser & Alfred Korzybski

Cassius Keyser, the respected Columbia University mathematics professor whose interest also was in philosophy, covered the topic of implication eloquently in his book Mathematical Philosophy.  While Keyser does not seem to get into covering the human-behavioral component of implication, his friend, engineer and polymath Alfred Korzybski, regarded thinking as behavior, and thus would likely regard implication as behavior as well.

While not explicitly saying so, Korzybski preferred the term “semantic reaction,” which might be interpreted as “implication” given how he uses the term as referring to the reactions humans have to words and events in connection to their meanings.  Korzybski spoke of total-body (“organismal”) reactions to words and events–which is to discuss, I argue, the psychosomatic implications of words and events like “Enter” and a snarling wolf.  That is, in my opinion, when Korzybski was talking about semantic reactions, he was talking about implications.  The name of the field he developed, “General Semantics,” I argue in an earlier essay simply means “General Implications,” and his field is not so much about words but about non-aristotelian thinking, and the general implications of non-aristotelian thinking.  (His major work, Science and Sanity, is subtitled An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.)

Applying These Insights to the Field of Semantics

Any derivative field of semantics that tries to lock up absolutely the meaning (implication) of a word is on the wrong path, at least on the whole.  Given that human behavior is variable, what is implied by words varies with each individual.  Of course we know this on the whole, but semanticists (or their respective philosophers) may still not believe so.  For example, the Wikipedia entry for “Semantics” contains the phrase “the meaning of signs,” as if single meanings could be applied to signs.  A more scientific formulation would be the phrase “the meanings of signs,” which implies that signs have meanings, not some single meaning to be understood.  That is, signs imply multiple ideas, no question, so signs have multiple implications, never just one implication.

Semantics may focus itself on different kinds of implication in its division into subfields.  For the historian interested in the implications of words over time, especially as phrased into other words (definitions), that semanticist might be involved in “verbal lexical semantics.”  That is, verbal lexical semantics is the study of the implications of words as manifest as other words.  If the semanticist is more interested in the implications of words not as words but as pictures or some other more visual referent, that semanticist might be involved in “non-verbal lexical semantics.”  Non-verbal lexical semantics is the study of the implications of words as manifest as empirical entities.  To use a more korzybskian phraseology, for the semanticist interested in non-verbal lexical semantics, that semanticist studies extensional semantics, while the semanticist interested in verbal lexical semantics studies intensional semantics.

But what of the semanticist who studies the consequences of world events?  That editor who poses the question “What is the meaning of these events?” may be implying “What consequences may occur because of these events?”  That semanticist is a non-linguistic semanticist.  That is, that editor “reads” events as if they were language, and makes characterizations about what those events imply.  Many fields offer their own non-linguistic semantic account of events.  A forensic scientist (“criminal semanticist”) might say, “If the defendant’s DNA was on the victim in that manner, that means the defendant had contact with the victim.”  A meteorologist (“weather semanticist”) might offer for the viewer the implications of a cold front’s approaching the area.  A statistician (“statistical semanticist”) might offer his insights on which player to bat in light of what that slugger’s stats imply in the moment.  Excuse the exaggeration, but non-linguistic semanticists are “everywhere.”  They ask the question about meanings (implications) about given ___s.

Now, Please Inform Me

With these claims, I realize they may be misinformed or juvenile.  However, I hope they are anything but.  I hope they get you thinking about the field of semantics, and open it up away from some kind of quest for 1:1 correpondence between word and definition.  Semantics deals with implication, not just definition, and with that broad reframing I believe is the potential to open the field up for more valuable contributions to society.  As we better understand language, we better use language.  At least I think that’s what I’m implying.

Please comment below.  Again, semantics is the study of implication.

Reading an unpublished lecture by Korzybski, I came to see that the use of indexing is especially important when you’re deailng with labels. By “labels,” I mean simply words or phrases that stand for a particular thing. The phrase “Ben Hauck” is a label that stands for me. The word “zebra” does the same, only for the black and white striped mammal. Indexes help to distinguish one-individual-called-”zebra” from another-individual-called-”zebra.” Chain-indexes are another extensional device, and they are strings of subscripts. For example, Smith₁₁. Chain-indexes are meant to distinguish, say, different states of the thing-labeled. If you had a wooden chair in a dry attic and then that “same” chair in a humid kitchen, you might label the first chair₁₁ and the second chair₁₂, wherein the second subscript represents the different states of the chair, but the first subscript denotes that it’s the “same” chair in each instance.

Now Korzybski doesn’t say it too often in his currently published work–at least from what I could see–but from what I measure, he meant “labels” and “undefined terms” to mean basically the same thing. In fact, a label is a kind of undefined term … but you have to come at labels from a particular perspective to understand this characterization. Korzybski often talks about undefined terms when having students research dictionary definitions of words, then the dictionary definitions of the words in the definitions. Eventually, he claims, students start to define words by other words circularly (say “length” by “space” and “space” by “length”). These words he called “undefined terms.”

But in another breath, these words are actually defined–they are extensionally defined, representing particular ideas, concepts, formulations, objects, individuals, etc. These undefined terms are merely labels. Korzybski says as much in his to-be-published “Difficulties in Learning to Apply General Semantics” (ETC: A Review of General Semantics 2011).

Indexes help to distinguish labels so you don’t think this is that. Imagine how valuable labels are in distinguishing identical twin babies in the nursery! If they’re both marked by their last name “Smith,” the index helps to distinguish between which Smith to avoid confusion of the twins. No index? Then presumably the twins are interchangeable, as Smith and Smith are (labeled as) one and the same.

Truth be told, it is not dictionaries that write what other people say.  Instead, people use words, and they happen to use them in historically measureable ways, at least on the whole.  “Enough people” use a word in a particular way, then it may meet the criteria for entry into a dictionary with a definition that generally matches historical use to that publication date.

But a dictionary does not account for what this particular word means in this particular situation.  In fact, a word can assume a meaning independent of the dictionary’s meaning.  While this notion may be a no-brainer to you, from my experience, people who would regard themselves as quite intelligent don’t think a word can mean something other than what’s in the dictionary.  Use a word in a way deviant from dictionary meaning, and said person would reject your meaning before allowing it, on the grounds that the definition is not in the dictionary.

Meaning and definition could be thought of as implications.  That is, a word implies particular ideas, and those implications are called “meanings” and they’re also called “definitions.”  If we think of words as having implications, we realize a little bit better that context can affect the implications of a word.  Say the word “nigger” in a linguistics class, there’s a set of implications; say “nigger” on the street in the South and there’s another set of implications.  What’s implied by the word in one context is not necessarily implied in the next context.  This understanding helps to defeat any preconceptions that words have definite, unwavering meanings.  Instead, they have variable implications.

Thinking sonically, a word is but a sound.  It is recognized by humans as a symbol.  As a symbol, it is assumed to imply something.  That is, it’s assumed that the sound is intended to bring something to mind.  I say “grasshopper” outloud; you hear what sounds like the word “grasshopper”; you look on your shoulder in case you see one perched there.  If you see a spider instead, you are perhaps more surprised than when you see a grasshopper.  A spider wasn’t implied by the sound “grasshopper.”

Thinking graphically, a word is but a blot.  It also is recognized by humans as a symbol.  And just like a sonic word, the graphic word is assumed to imply something.  Something comes to mind when a human reads a word.  I write “grasshopper” and you think grasshopper, or maybe you think of more words like “cricketlike thing.”  You probably do the latter if you have never seen a grasshopper.

That is, a word can have an extensional implication or an intensional implication.  Extensional implications are actual things, behaviors, people, places, etc., that words imply.  Intensional implications are just other words that words imply.  If I write “Austin,” an extension is your pointing it out on a map, while an intension would be the phrase “the capital of Texas.”  Note that an intension is just a special case of extension: Intension is when the actual thing you’re pointing to is other words.

What’s interesting to note in addition to the above is that implications vary from person to person.  I might say “indigo,” and that word may imply a set of specific ideas to a fashion designer, yet other things to a fashionably illiterate person.  (I joke that men just don’t have concepts of colors like “fuchsia,” “indigo,” and whatnot.  We just call them “pink,” “purple,” etc.)  Implications are not absolute; they are variable, varying from person to person.

Furthermore, implications may be contrary to standard definitions (implications) of terms.  A teenager may say, “I don’t have any friends,” not realizing she’s saying this to a decent friend.  But while the decent friend might point this contradiction out, the decent friend might have been implied in the teenager’s statement as an exception.  Granted, these are the stupid verbalizations that general semantics tries to dismantle; general semantics tries to get people to talk more accurately about empircal reality.  But I’m saying that some face-value statements may have implications that are contrary to their standard meanings.  Flash back to the 1980s and see what answer you get to Michael Jackson’s question “Who’s bad?” and see if you get a list of criminals, or a list of cool people who might otherwise be considered quite “good.”

This post explains the power of the notion of implication.  Definitions and meanings are but two types of implications.  What others are implied from this post?

One stumbling block for people learning about his ideas (contained within the subject called “general semantics”) is the term “non-aristotelian.”  Readers probably don’t know what “aristotelian” means.  If they think they do, they might wonder what aspect of Aristotle’s life is negated with the term “non-aristotelian.”  Was Korzybski negating Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics?  Or his Poetics?  Or something else?  Just reading the word “non-aristotelian” offers no clues.

In truth, Korzybski uses the term in a rather particular way.  Fortunately, though, he provides a lot of examples of what is represented by the term “non-aristotelian,” and what is represented by its counterpart term, “aristotelian.”  Consult the Second Edition of his book for a list of what constitutes each kind of thinking, but for some rough synonyms, think “modern scientific” for “non-aristotelian” and “pre-modern scientific (or even pseudo- and unscientific)” for “aristotelian.”

But with these relatively easy synonyms at hand, I find that the word “non-aristotelian” requires maybe a bit more clarification.  If general semantics is considered but one non-aristotelian system, how do we distinguish it from others?

I propose this term: “korzybskian.”  It’s not an unfamiliar term, but it might be unfamiliar within this particular context.  What I propose is that we use the word “korzybskian” to denote the specific kind of non-aristotelian thinking Korzybski talks about in Science and Sanity and in general semantics as a whole.  That is, Korzybski’s non-aristotelian thinking is korzybskian thinking.  And as a result, “korzybskian” inherits the meaning ”modern scientific.”

So non-aristotelianism would be korzybskiism.  And the modern scientific thinking that Korzybski promotes would be korzybskian thinking that he promotes.

This suggests that S. I. Hayakawa’s thinking within general semantics (which Korzybski inevitably took issue with) might be termed “hayakawan thinking.”  Or maybe it could be called “korzybskian thinking to an extent.”  Any of us within general semantics probably exhibit korzybskian thinking to varying extents.  We’re non-aristotelians, but we’re specifically korzybskian non-aristotelians.

Should another non-aristotelian formulator come along to take issue with aristotelian thinking, and develop something distinct from korzybskian thinking, then there would be that new formulator’s ism.  Is there as much room for another, as Korzybski suggests?  It’s hard for me to tell.

From aristotelianism to korzybskiism.

Quite an honor, Count.

My recent explorations of general semantics have led me to understand its name (“general semantics”) means “general implications.”

Tracing its name back to the title of Alfred Korzybski’s first book on the topic, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, I recently figured that the name de-emphasized a subject more primary to the field: non-aristotelian (systems of) thinking.

For a rough synonym of “non-aristotelian,” think “modern scientific.”  That is, non-aristotelian thinking is largely just modern scientific thinking, especially when it comes to thinking about empirical reality and what is possible that we can know about it.

The “general semantics” part of the title suggests that the field also covers the general implications of adopting non-aristotelian thinking.  That is, the field of general semantics defines the term “non-aristotelian thinking” (rather, “non-aristotelianism”) and posits the implications of adopting it.

With this in mind, it seems to me that teaching a course in general semantics is not a matter of teaching language.  Instead, it is a matter of teaching thinking, specifically thinking of the non-aristotelian variety.  That means teaching modern scientific ideas: principles like non-identity, non-elementalism, uncertainty, and related principles.

Modern scientific ideas recognize that there exists a non-verbal reality, and verbal reality is something we add on top of it (so to speak).  The map-territory analogy famous from general semantics is mostly just a tool for helping a student of general semantics understand the importance of non-verbal reality and that verbal reality is not the same thing as non-verbal reality.  For example, we may use two words to split something up (like “mind” and “body”), when there may be no empirical, “territorial” support for doing so, their being so intertwined empirically that a clean verbal split misrepresents the reality.

This is to say that language is indeed an important discussion in general semantics, but what’s more important is thinking.  Non-aristotelian thinking suggests changes in how we talk about things, and thus changes in both the kinds of words we use and how we use our words.  In short, if science is supposed to represent reality, then non-aristotelian thinking does too, and so should the language of the non-aristotelian.

Where the abstracting process so famously discussed in general semantics fits in is within the discussion of non-verbal reality (as distinct from verbal reality).  Discussion of the extensional orientation (as distinct from the intensional orientation) correlates with this discussion.

How I see them of late, intension is just a special case of extension: an extension of a term is any referent for it, and an intension of a term is a verbal referent specifically.  That is, an extension of the word “cow” is that creature I’m pointing at in the field, and an intension of the word “cow” is the phrase “a milk-producing mammal often consumed commercially by humans.”  Because the phrase is a verbal referent for the word “cow,” it’s an intension for the term.  Korzybski advocated an extensional orientation, which is essentially the same as advocating a non-verbal orientation.  He also advocated an orientation toward “facts,” as opposed to one “of definition,” which is also essentially the same correlation.

I have a feeling the above is a lot of big, alienating words.  It’s okay.  Within general semantics there are some peculiar words whose meanings can be a bit elusive at first, but study in the field suggests that, well, they’re quite easily understood.  While Korzybski might not have been the best teacher in the world, he was a pretty darn good one.  He coined some terms for ideas not really yet formulated.  There were probably better ways to put things in general semantics (something I aim to do for you), but part of the fun is in the discovery of how simple some of his ideas are.

Like “non-aristotelian systems.”  That term refers specifically to systems of thinking.  And that line of thinking is of the modern scientific variety.  When you hear about general semantics, don’t think about language change so much.  Instead, think of modern scientific thinking.  Then think of the implications in your life, in culture, and in humanity were you to adopt modern scientific thinking as your way of processing empirical reality, also known as “the world.”