Module 1 Review and Reflection
Module Review and Reflection
| Dare to be naive (Fuller, 1975, p. xix). |
Foundational Premises of General Semantics
Any language, to be most effective, must incorporate what we know (from scientific investigations) about the world around us and what we understand about ourselves. Therefore it's important to discern the world "out there" (beyond our skin) from the world "in here" (within our skin).
- Our awareness of 'what goes on' outside of our skin is not the same as 'what goes on.'
- Our ability to experience the world is relative, unique to our own individual sensing capabilities (or sensory acuities), past experiences, and expectations.
- Every person abstracts and evaluates their life experiences differently, based on their prior experiences, genetics, their their environments.
- Our environment, the world around us (including ourselves), is ever-changing. We never experience the 'same' person, event, situation, or thing more than once.
- We have limits (due to evolution, genes, physics, etc.) as to what we can experience.
- We can never experience all of what's to experience. We abstract only a portion of what we can sense. We experience incompletely on all levels (macroscopic, microscopic, sub-microscopic, cosmologic, etc.).
- We sense and experience on silent, non-verbal levels, from which we speak, think, infer, etc.
What Happens ≠ What I Sense ≠ How I Respond ≠ “What It Means”
- These facts lead to the inevitable conclusion that, for our language behaviors to be most effective, they must reflect our knowledge about ourselves and our world. We must apply all of our knowledge to our language habits, evaluations, and how we view ourselves in our world.
Scientific Orientation
I want to emphasize that the the system or methods of General Systems, including the language habits and behaviors which are espoused in this course, are not random tips, hints, secrets, or common sense aphorisms. These methods and recommendations flow from the premises and logical consequences that are consistent and integrated throughout General Semantics. Again, we want to reiterate that GS begins with a scientific orientation.
The application of a scientific approach or method has proven to be the most effective problem-solving process yet created by humans. Therefore it makes sense to apply a scientific approach in our evaluations and judgments about ourselves and our experiences.
This means that we should continually test our assumptions and beliefs; continually gather new facts, data, and observations; revise our beliefs and assumptions as appropriate; and then hold our conclusions and judgments tentatively, in accordance with our own experiences, pending the possibility that new data, new experiences, might necessitate new theories or new assumptions to be tested.
Unstated or hidden assumptions of which we are unaware can often drive our behaviors and attitudes. One of the oft-repeated "conventional wisdoms" we hear is the admonition to avoid making assumptions. The joke goes, "You know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ASS out of U and ME!"
This aphorism is problematic from my GS perspective, in addition to just being lame humor. Making assumptions and inferences is not only unavoidable, but a vitally-important human capability. Some of our most intelligent and productive human behaviors depend on our ability to intuit, correlate with past experiences, match patterns, and dozens of other activities akin to "making assumptions." In short, we cannot NOT make assumptions.
The key takeaway is here that rather than trying to avoid assumptions, we need to make a special effort to recognize and become more aware of our assumptions, inferences, beliefs, etc. An activity to highlight how much we unknowingly infer about simple situations is the uncritical inference test.
GS as an Overlay to Evaluating
General Semantics itself can be considered a special type of map.
As the man-made invention of latitude and longitude enabled predictable navigation across (and above) the earth possible, you can think of GS as providing an overlay to guide one's evaluating processes.
Map of Latitudes and Longitudes provided by World Atlas Links to an external site. with permission.
In other words, you can apply the GS principles to:
- making better verbal maps;
- evaluating the maps that others make;
- evaluating your own evaluations.
Neil Postman on Korzybski
Neil Postman held the position of Paulette Goddard Professor of Media Ecology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education, and former Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication. He authored 17 books on education and culture, such as Amusing Ourselves to Death, Teaching as a Subversive Activity with co-author Charles Weingartener, and Conscientious Objections: Stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education.
Less well-known about Postman is that he edited the quarterly journal, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, from 1976-1986. During his tenure, I think it's fair to say that his views about Korzybski changed. From an initial ambivalence about Korzybski, Postman came to appreciate and even admire him by the time he wrote the following.
Like psychoanalysis, general semantics lends itself, too easily, to the predilections and idiosyncrasies of its practitioners, and there has been no firm consensus about the path it should follow. Moreover, general semantics is not easy to fit into conventional academic territories. It is simply too broad in its scope to be contained within a single discipline, for it is part philosophy, part epistemology, part psychology, part linguistics, and several other "parts," all of which when taken together comprise the university curriculum. In a world of specialists, general semantics appears too diffuse, too divergent, too holistic to suit the modern style of academic thought. In a word, to study and teach it is not likely to further one's chances for tenure.
And yet, although [Alfred] Korzybski's name is relatively obscure at the moment, his impact has been felt. Some of his terminology and many of his insights have found their way into semiotics, psycholinguistics, educational psychology, media studies, and, of course, semantics. Many people in the nonacademic world - in business, government, social work, psychotherapy - employ Korzybski's methods with great effectiveness and freely acknowledge their debt to him. But beyond all this, it is indisputable that together with such figures as C .S. Pierce, William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I.A. Richards, Alfred Korzybski helped to heighten our awareness of the role of language in making us what we are and in preventing us from becoming what we ought to be but are not yet (Postman, 1988, p. 146).
Steve Stockdale
This 6-minute excerpt is from a 56-minute lecture I presented at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2004 (Stockdale, 2004). Note: adjust your volume lower, this recording is pretty loud.
If you have trouble viewing YouTube videos, try this as an alternative:
unlv-edited-b.mp4 Download unlv-edited-b.mp4
General Semantics