A Review of General Semantics:

...Modern formal logic is in fact "non-Aristotelian" in certain respects, and contemporary mathematicians have challenged the classical principle of the "excluded middle" on serious grounds...

...Leslie A. White's paper on symbol behavior as a human characteristic is a very good introduction to the problem...

...All those whose business is to help others by talking will receive much enlightenment from Professor Rogers's analysis...

...Whorf's analysis thoroughly demonstrates that much of what we take to be plain "reality" is in fact a reflection of certain fundamental properties of the language we use...

...Of course, if these sound though somewhat trite prescriptions had been presented as just new versions of the wisdom of the ages, their sales value would have been considerably diminished...

...Rigid "all-or-nothing" thinking (anybody is either a friend or an enemy) could be believed to reflect the principle of the "excluded middle" only by those who confuse the "contrary" with the "contradictory," an elementary fallacy against which students of classical logic are usually warned in the first semester...

...The limiting and distorting ontologies implicit in the very structure of language are one thing, the crisis of communication arising in certain disciplines is another, and the degeneration of language in the case of mental defectives yet another...

...To return to language: It is quite true to say that it is by no means a neutral medium through which we can discover and convey an unadorned and undistorted picture of reality itself...

...there are excellent discussions of newspaper reporting (by Donald M. Schwartz) and radio newscasting (by Clifton M. Utley...

...The thing to be mistrusted in this case is language as it is generally used in everyday life, as well as in politics and in philosophy...

...It is clear that the various pitfalls and deficiencies of communication we just outlined do not constitute, as it were, one syndrome...

...To avoid the pitfalls of ordinary speech with which Korzybski deals, classical logic is both necessary and sufficient...

...there is no middle ground" is (I agree) a deplorable motto of many of our contemporaries...

...This was in sharp contrast to the situation prevailing in the exact and empirical sciences like mathematics and physics, where communication was smooth and disagreements could always be resolved, at least in principle, by appealing either to logical proof procedures or to reliable techniques of experiment and observation...

...We tend to trust those, and those only, who teach us new ways of mistrusting ourselves...

...On classical reasoning, if every person in the world is either a "friend" or a "non-friend" for me, then the "non-friends" must include, in addition to my enemies, all those whom I don't know, all those who are indifferent to me, all casual acquaintances and partners bound to me by mere interest, etc...

...That is, we are prevented from being "sane" because we are thinking in terms of "identity," "non-contradiction," and the "excluded middle"—the fundamental principles of classical logic...

...They belong to different levels...

...its main point is that withholding value judgments and concentrating upon the reasons for the other's acts and attitudes is essential if one wants to achieve anything in communication...

...To students of propaganda, language appeared as a first-class medium of deception and self-delusion...

...Many of the mentally ill do not use symbols as normal people do...

...The moment they lapse into "non-Aristotelian" language, critical sense deserts them...

...SPRING BOOK NUMBER May 16 Reviews & Essays by Lewis Mum-ford, Leslie A. Fiedler, Robert E. Fitch, Seon Manley and others...

...Korzybski's "non-Aristotelian" system is, then, a sham and a delusion...

...What he did in his "general semantics" was to pull all of them together and treat them all under the categories of psychopathol-ogy, as if these were relevant to, and responsible for, all the shortcomings of communication...

...The chief contributors, Prof...

...One paper by Professor Carl J. Rogers on "Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation' deserves special mention...

...The magic term, "sanity," had a mesmerizing effect upon people...

...All of Korzybski's famous "non-Aristotelian" prescriptions, like "indexing," "dating" and so on, are perfectly consistent with classical logic...

...The suspicions thus aroused concerning the pitfalls lurking in communication through language were by no means unfounded...

...There is not enough space to illustrate this in detail, but I can touch upon one point briefly...

...Now Korzybski had a good intuitive grasp of all of these limitations and defects of language, but he failed to observe and analyze them on different levels...

...The result was a thoroughly bewildering and meaningless confusion of categories...

...most of them go back to Aristotle himself...

...One can appear today as a savior only by pointing an accusing finger at villains who have deceived us...

...From this, there was only one step to the study of the linguistic aspects of mental illness...

...My main reaction, in reading the articles collected in the present volume, was endless wonder at the gullibility with which Korzybski's disciples and apostles ?all knowledgeable and competent students of meaning, language and communication?fell for his naive non-sequiturs and quack recipes...

...In the present volume, there is a masterful essay by Benjamin Lee Whorf which compares the implicit ontology embedded in the structure of the Hopi language with that contained in the standard languages of the West...

...You are either for us or against us...

...It was comforting to know that the predicaments we encountered in communication were, in fact, due to a mental illness for which there was a cure...

...but many of the other authors also have important and true things to say...

...The enormous popular vogue of Marx and Freud is the outstanding example of this, but many less conspicuous instances of the same thing could be named...

...In these disciplines, private languages and systems flourished, making the orderly resolution of differences of opinion impossible...

...Unless we thoroughly change our deplorably benighted and careless language habits, Korzybski maintained, mankind will be bogged down in hopeless strife and futility...

...This is an unpretentious paper but full of wisdom...

...These, however, are highly technical matters...

...Certain other phenomena in the realm of communication that emerged in the twentieth century were even more frankly pathological—for example, the prevalence of propaganda and demagoguery...

...I have already mentioned Whorf's classic essay...

...Why, Korzybski says, obviously from the classical principle of the "excluded middle" ?"a thing is either A or non-A...

...On the contrary, it represents a welcome contribution to the study of meaning and communication...

...contributor, "Partisan Review," "Commentary" IN OUR AGE, man has become enigmatic to himself...

...But, in the mental climate of the twentieth century, this very confusion was the guarantee of success...

...These two passions have landed us in a strange and tragicomical predicament...

...Other contemporary scholars, notably such members of the "logical positivist" school as Wittgenstein, Carnap and Ayer, have called attention to the crisis of communication that had overtaken both academic philosophy and certain other disciplines which relied heavily on interpretation and intuition, e.g., politics, history and sociology...

...But this does not mean to say that the collection of essays here presented under Korzybskian auspices is valueless...

...One of Korzybski's main tenets was that the chief trouble with everyday and philosophical language was its "Aristotelian" character...

...Where does it come from...

...The book to be discussed here, a collection of papers published in ETC.: a Review of General Semantics between 1943 and 1953, provides a good illustration of this theme...

...The trouble with this is, however, that the principle of the excluded middle says exactly the opposite of what Korzybski takes it to suggest...

...As Ernst Cassirer, Edward Sapir and others have shown, each language contains in implicit form a fairly elaborate ontology which unwittingly shapes our mode of experiencing the world, both limiting and in some respects distorting our perception of reality...

...General semantics," a system developed by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), is a typical twentieth-century doctrine in that it tells man how he can achieve safety through systematic distrust...

...With the use of language reformed along lines indicated by him, progress and harmony will at last come within reach...

...I merely deny that safety can be achieved by elevating that distrust to the rank of a universal principle...

...Modern psychiatry discovered the decisive role that breakdown of communication plays in many mental disorders...

...One example will suffice...

...Indexing" and "dating," for example, are nothing but new formulations of the old Aristotelian concept of "accidental" properties, just as Korzybski's principle of "non-allness" and his device of the "el cetera" are our old friend, the classical dictum "individuum est ineffabile...

...Hence our twin passions: systematic distrust of everything and everybody, and a consuming need for safety and security...

...This would be quite exciting if true, but, in point of fact, the "rigidities" deplored by Korzybski and his followers (as well as by all right-thinking people) have absolutely nothing to do with the classical principles to which the general semanticists trace them...

...they are either incapable of performing acts of "symbolization" (as K. Goldstein has shown) or endow symbols with private meanings and with weird, magical roles which have nothing to do with their normal, proper uses...

...S. I. Hayakawa and Anatol Rapoport, write very well indeed on semantics, on the teaching of physics, and other subjects, as long as they stay away from "general semantics" and Korzybski...

...Any prophet who promises salvation through suspiciousness is assured of an adoring and touchingly gullible following...

...In order to become sane, we must develop a "non-Aristotelian" style of thought...

...I am not asserting in general that the distrust preached by the prophets of our age was not well-deserved in many respects...