Off the Map

Alfred Korzybski puts a lot of importance on the use of extensional devices to aid in a person’s becoming more extensional. By that he means becoming more oriented to and aware of the silent level, also known as the non-verbal level. One particular device he promotes is indexing. Indexing is the use of, say, subscript numbers to distinguish terms individuals. For example, this list includes indexes (rarely called “indices” in general semantics) on terms that denote individuals: Smith₁, Smith₂, Smith₃, etc.

Reading an unpublished lecture by Korzybski, I came to see that the use of indexing is especially important when you’re deailng with labels.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.

See also: alfred-korzybski, chain-indexing, definition, dictionary, difficulties-in-learning-to-apply-general-semantics, etc-a-review-of-general-semantics, extension, extensional-devices, extensional-orientation, indexing, labels, non-verbal-level, silent-level, undefined-terms