Talk:General semantics

message: As of this date, September 4, 2016, the article begins this way, "General semantics is a self improvement and therapy program begun in the 1920s that seeks to regulate human mental habits and behaviors."
 
In my 57-year study and use of general semantics, I can't recall where the author of the system ever described it as a "program" of any sort. He described it as "a new extensional discipline which explains and trains us how to use our nervous systems most efficiently." And that's how I believe it should be reported in an encyclopedia: "General semantics was said by its author to be a general system of evaluation, and an extensional discipline which 'explains and trains us how to use our nervous systems most efficiently.' It is based on the theory that there are 'factors of sanity' to be found in the methods of modern science. However, since no one has ever determined what it means to be 'trained in general semantics,' or how to measure the level of it to whatever degree, rigorous testing of Korzybski's system by his proponents or critics which would be generally convincing either way for both sides, has never been done; and thus his 'theory of sanity' remains largely undetermined. This does not mean that certain individuals (including some psychiatrists with regard to their patients) have not attested to the use and efficacy of general semantics, or that the evidence has been necessarily slim, just that the evidence has been almost entirely anecdotal." - JDF, 04 September 2016.   
         — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF98:5110:CABC:C8FF:FE8E:263E (talk) 01:29, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, that seems like a reasonable request. But I don't know if I could fairly describe the opposing views. The article contains a link to "Contra Max Black", a response by GS writer Bruce Kodish to the one scholarly critique of GS that I've managed to find. Kodish's account of that critique seems accurate and fair to me, but you may want to see if you can locate Black's original essay yourself. I found the book (Max Black's Language and Philosophy) through inter-library loan. Kodish also addresses some of Gardner's criticisms, but the warning about hearsay may apply more strongly here. Sadly, in order to give a fair account of Gardner's best argument I would have to put words in his mouth, because IIRC he did not even attempt to put that argument in strict logical form. Dan 08:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll give you an example of the problem. Gardner (I think) wrote that even if we use many-valued logic in some cases, we would have to use 2-valued logic when evaluating math. Since many-valued logics count as math, 'we would actually be using 2-valued logic on a deeper level'. Gardner sees this as a refutation of Korzybski's (perceived) attack on traditional logic. Now, since Korzybski described two-valued logic as a special case of the many-valued version (namely, a case where we can safely ignore the other values) and since he urged the use of two-valued logic in certain cases, Gardner seems to refute a strawman. This illustrates a general problem: while general semantics may well suffer from flaws, none of its famous critics seem to grasp it well enough to find those flaws! (Addendum: Lotfi Zadeh...showed that fuzzy logic was a generalisation of classical logic.) Dan 08:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

text: The reality is that your average academic is not going to touch general semantics with a ten-foot pole, but see if you like the changes. Hpvpp (talk) 09:16, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thats much better, thanks for the quick reaction. Although it is nice to have the conclusions of both Gardner and Black there, I'd quote some less ad hominem part of Gardner's text in favour for facts. (Till yesterday, I only knew that Gardner did write a text against GS. Reading that text left me with very mixed feelings about people who refer to Gardner's criticism of what he calls pseudosciences in general. It's a funny text for some magazine, but it I can't really take it seriously because of its many flaws). Black's book is on its way to me via mail, I hope his criticism is of much better quality. I'll be back in a few days after I had time to read Black, hopefully with my account reactivated. --89.183.73.239 (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest you take some account of the fact that Gardner is highly respected. Hpvpp (talk) 08:26, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms? 

message: Any reason why this is at General Semantics instead of general semantics? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it is a movement and not a field or discipline? --maru   (talk)  contribs 17:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you capitalize "antinomianism" in the middle of a sentence? What about "conceptualism"? (See article.) --Dan 23:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends on the context. --maru   (talk)  contribs 03:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Considering that a simple Google search shows that outside wikimirrors lower case is the preffered usage, I'll move this article soon unless there are any objections.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

text: It appears those treaties have been broken.... I'm curious why this article isn't at the uppercase "General Semantics", since that capitalization is dominant throughout the article. -Phoenixrod (talk) 03:51, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to lowercase 

message: :"Popular acceptance has likewise been very limited. As of 2005, the reputation of General Semantics has yet to recover from the damage Martin Gardner and L. Ron Hubbard did to it. Matters have not been helped by the fact that most General Semantics advocates, like Korzybski himself, have never learned how to write both precisely and clearly. Thus, the value in General Semantics tends to be obscured beneath clouds of jargon-filled pedantry."
(Comment: This statement is highly debatable. With the exception of Korzybski -- for whom English was not his first language -- the major popularizers of General Semantics -- e.g. Stuart Chase, S.I. Hayakawa, Irving Lee, Wendell Johnson, Anatol Rapoport, Neil Postman, Edward MacNeal -- are all clear and straightforward writers. Indeed, it is part of the intrinsic discipline of General Semantics that they should strive to be clear and straightforward; again, Korzybski is the exception, as even his admirers admit (see Neil Postman's essay on Korzybski in his collection Conscientious Objections (1988) and Rapoport's view of the history of General Semantics in his autobiography Certainties and Doubts (2000)) -- although Korzybski also can be reasonably clear for a few pages at a time in Science and Sanity.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.82.188.68 (talk • contribs) 
I'm the author of the above comment.  (Posting from public terminals at the University of British Columbia, hence the different addresses.)  I'd also add that I have read (or browsed) my way through a complete UBC library collection of ETC. (the quarterly journal of General Semantics founded by Hayakawa) from 1943 on and it had good articles in every issue from 1943 up to about 1992 (Neil Postman was editor from 1976 to 1986) or so, when I noticed a big fall-off in quality.  (Did all the old, good guys die off?)  I think a critic would justifiably have a markedly different opinion of the quality of General Semantics writing based on the last fifteen years of ETC. (e.g. fetishizing of EPRIME) rather than (roughly) the first fifty years.  If I was going to introduce someone to General Semantics I'd hand them a copy of Neil Postman's Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk (1976) which, to my mind, is -- as all of Postman's writing is -- as clear and straightforward as writing gets. 142.103.168.16 05:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we want to edit the paragraph that you responded to. The comment you added to the article makes a good point, but does not fit the format of Wikipedia (or indeed any encyclopedia). We could either delete the debatable statement on the grounds that nobody's supplied a source for its claim, or modify that paragraph to describe the dispute from a neutral point of view. Incidentally, can you give an example of "fetishizing of E-Prime" from that magazine? I don't know it as well as you do. Dan 22:37, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misstatement - anon's 'plaint 

message: Ok guys, what about Asimov's books ? They are quite funny and quite related to this. Shall I ? --DLL 21:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead. I can't think what you mean at the moment. Dan 08:13, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, t'was Van Vogt. Nevermind. --DLL 20:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asimov 

message: Why does the article give "time-binding" as an alternative name? Someone may use it that way, but it originally had a more general meaning. Dan 00:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I added it some time ago due to a redirect, but it may be confusing considering that time bind is a sociological concept introduced by Arlie Russell Hochschild. We could use an article on that subject, and perhaps disambig at time binding?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:39, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that sounds good. You seem to know more about it than I do. Dan 19:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:09, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

text: It seems we misunderstood each other. While someone, somewhere might use "time-binding" to mean general-semantics, Korzybski used it to mean something much more general. The article itself explains this fairly well. I will therefore change the first sentence of the article. Dan 04:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: time-binding

message: I don't remember if Gardner made that criticism explicitly. Frankly, I don't know if he understood GS well enough to see the importance of the criticism. But he accuses Korzybski of "confused ideas, unconscious metaphysics, and highly dubious speculations", while calling GS a cult, all in his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. I think that strongly implies the charge of unscientific behavior. (The first section of this talk page gives my reasons for including it.) The other quotes give K's own explanation for his terms. Gutenberg gives us reason to think that he quoted Whitehead accurately and fairly. Please justify the inclusion of the template. Dan 17:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Weasel words"

message: Deleted the "Word Magic" comments because what they discuss seems like an idea or definition external to general semantics specifically, rather than an element of general-semantics proper.  "Word magic" is mentioned by Korzybski as an example of primitive evaluation, but what the writer says is too far removed from Korzybski's comments about it to be recognizable.  JDF, March 2, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.32.2.75 (talk) 01:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Other Aspects of the System" Section

message: The link to ideation does not help explain what the ideational trap is. I think most readers would need help with this. (I do.) --Ettrig (talk) 17:00, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Ideational trap

message: I think there should be a brief note, somewhere near the top---perhaps either right before, right after, or alongside of the italicized note: "For semantics in general, see Semantics.", which says something to the effect "Not to be confused with Generative Semantics (Chomsky)", because many readers might not realize the distinction between the two, especially if skimming.  I'd do it now but I'm not sure how and I don't want to screw it up.--Shanoman (talk) 22:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  should include a note about "Generative Semantics" 

message: Link...-->      --Faustnh (talk) 19:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A convenient distinction of two kinds of meaning 

message: The article leads off with Arika Okrent's claim from In the land of invented languages that the basic assumption of general semantics is that “language ‘enslaves’ us by conditioning our brains to perceive a false reality.”  General semantics is not as heavily language-focused as this quotation makes the "basic assumptions" seem.
Instead, "general semantics" is the name for a field covering non-aristotelian thinking (korzybskian).  In layman's terms, it is modern scientific thinking, brought into the sphere of everyday thinking--especially in place of primitive scientific thinking, pseudoscientific thinking, religious or faith-based thinking, dogma, etc.  So where you have people thinking or speaking in non-scientific ways, general semantics provides lessons and information to help people to update their thinking, speaking, etc.  (The eventual result or aim, GS claims, is sanity.)
Language revision is a natural consequence of moving from old scientific thinking to new scientific thinking.  (For example, we don't talk in terms of "ether" anymore, so we should update our language to remove that word from our discussions about empirical reality.)  Rather than "language enslaving us," a more appropriate assumption in general semantics is that old thinking (old metaphysics, aristotelian thinking, etc.) "enslaves us," and that thinking "conditions our brains" to "perceive a false reality."  My use of quotes is to reflect that I generally have a negative perception of these word choices, because it makes general semantics out to sound like some weird ideology.  "Enslave"?  Not an appropriate word to start off an article on the topic, in a quotation or no.  (I believe Arika Okrent is outside of the field, though I'm uncertain.  Why not use a quotation from someone within the field?)
But basic assumptions for general semantics are about thinking and the inadequateness of old metaphysics and pseudoscientific thinking in the navigation of life, be that in scientific life or in everyday life.  Talk of language in general semantics is but corollary discussion, secondary to the primary focus in GS: non-aristotelian thinking.  I would recommend de-emphasizing language in this article, at least in the opening paragraph, and if a quotation is needed, pull from someone's writings within the field. Benhauck (talk) 04:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Using "a quotation from someone within the field" would violate WP:INDEPENDENT. Hpvpp (talk) 05:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for making that point.  a) Still seems strange to me to rely on a quotation in the opening paragraph to sum up the field. b) WP:INDEPENDENT also says, "... from multiple third-party reliable sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."  Okrent's quotation that summarizes general semantics strikes me as inaccurate.  I realize that WP:INDEPENDENT is talking about the source's reputation rather than the source's claim, but still: Reputable people still make inaccurate statements.  General semantics talks about einsteinian, non-newtonian, non-euclidean, etc., thinking in addition to non-aristotelian thinking, encouraging their adoption in crucial places, and those ways of thinking wouldn't be considered in general semantics as "enslaving us to a false reality."  Quite the opposite: They would point to a more accurate understanding of reality relative to more antiquated ways of thinking about reality, and would probably "liberate sanity" (to snarkily refer to Okrent's slave metaphor). Hpvpp, thanks for following up.  Benhauck (talk) 20:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I found the lead too complicated and, having Okrent's book at hand, used that to replace it with something more succinct. Feel free to improve it. Hpvpp (talk) 01:08, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Basic Assumptions" 

message: Hello. I believe I'm starting at the right place, addressing the "Talk" page.  I wish to undertake a major edit of the General Semantics article.  I believe I understand the Neutral Point of View and Verification requirements for this and all articles.  I intend to retain almost all the current content, either within this article or moved to the Alfred Korzybski article.  My current outline for the revised article structure is:
    * 1 Overview
          o Human-centered perspective
          o Science or Pseudoscience
          o Consciousness of Abstracting
          o Extensional Devices
    * 2 History
          o Science and Sanity
          o Confusion with "Semantics"
          o Institute of General Semantics
          o International Society for General Semantics
          o Post-Korzybskian General Semantics
          o Rejection by Academia
          o Accomplishments To Date
    * 3 Connections to other disciplines
          o Psychiatry/Psychology
          o Communication/Media 
    * 4 Critiques of General Semantics
          o Reach Exceeds Its Grasp
          o Mastering Its Techniques Does Not Lead to Human Agreement
I wish to approach the edit in a manner that respects others' investments in the article.  Before proceeding, I hope you might react to this proposal. Should I tell you about myself?  Do you prefer that I develop everything first in my user space, so that others can view it there prior to seeing a work-in-progress take shape in the article itself?  Like the rest of you, I have lots of passions and interests -- more than I have time -- and although I commit to making this edit a sincerely strong effort, the best I'm capable of, I wish to avoid spending serious hours on a doomed project. Canhelp (talk) 03:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Major Edit Intended / Installed 

message: The scientific relevance of his teachings are not clear to me. --Rebestein (talk) 14:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevance 

message: I agree with Volunteer Marek's decision (24 January 2012) to dispute NPOV for this article, subsequent to Kikoman77's article edits of the same date.  I do not know the process for resolving the dispute, but I would like to help resolve, and I hope to get that opportunity. Canhelp (talk) 15:56, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV Dispute January 2012 

message: User Evaluational has no talk page and no user page; otherwise I would address this privately to Evaluational. General semantics doctrine includes many insider terms, and the article in its form prior to Evaluational's edit of the introductory lead section on July 18, 2012 sought to use those terms sparingly, and, when using them, to provide context sufficient to help the lay reader who is not a general semantics insider. Evaluational has undermined that objective by her/his edits, especially by the rewrite of the lead sentence, which now reads as follows: "General semantics names a discipline begun in the 1920s that seeks to eliminate identification in human evaluational reactions, resulting in consciousness of abstracting." 
My regret in seeing Evaluational's changes tells me that I'm over-invested in this one article. I ought to move on, and I am doing so now. Canhelp (talk) 00:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree thaty definition is a non-definition because it requires that one already know the jargon of General semantics to understand it. I will revert to a previous version.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regret July 18 2012 Edits to Introductory Lead Section 

message: I'm struggling to make head-or-tail out of this. I've occasionally been stumped when asked "What are you thinking?", to find that I had clear thoughts that I could not begin to express in words. So I certainly accept there are levels below the verbal (and that seems quite different than the conscious/unconscious). In Computing Science terms, I guess you're trying to re-code some routines from a 'high-level programming language' into 'machine code' ...
Is that a useful analogy ? Of course it is inaccurate and incomplete, but it might give me a toe-hold to begin to grasp the subject, or even help others ... --195.137.93.171 (talk) 09:26, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a useful metaphor ? 

message: I'm new here. I freely admit I don't understand GS. But if Korzybski was such a genius when it came to the art of communication, why on earth did he call it GENERAL semantics when he knew that it wasn't the same thing as semantics? Surely common sense would have told him that  people would assume it was the same as semantics and confuse the two...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.20.171.127 (talk) 23:17, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  So why'd he call it General Semantics 

message: you could say that karate is all about defeating opponent via agility and powerful kicks... or you could say that it involves people practicing techniques so-and-so under such-and-such conditions. Both statements are right, but the second one is very important for getting the gist of it. So IMHO it is unfortunate that this and many other articles focus on ideas of GS but don't explain how exactly were they put into practice by the guy who presumably knew best. I mean, did he teach students to rewrite texts in some quasi legalese terminology according to his notion of "right thinking"? Or was it mostly oral practice, like being taught debate? Or what? 76.119.30.87 (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  how was it actually practiced under Korzybski? 

message: "General semantics is a program begun in the 1920s that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the human brain" -- even assuming that some complex series of redefinitions of familiar terms can turn this into something not ridiculous, to the layman (for whom these articles are supposed to be written) this sounds like complete nonsense. "A program to regulate the operations in the brain" -- huh??? What could this possibly mean? EEng 13:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah it makes it sound as if it was somekind of computer virus that people downloaded into their brains to improve the processor performance.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:37, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for bringing some readability to the article. EEng 09:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsense opening sentence 

message: I noticed that the s in intensionally is italicized. Is this to distinguish the word from intentionally? (i.e., that the s was itself intentionally put there?) - Paul2520 (talk) 23:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Is that actually a common practice, though? -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:01, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

text: (I'm the author.) General semantics is rooted in a study of non-aristotelian systems, such as non-Newtonian physics. In the Minkowski space-time, an immediate consequence of  Einstein's special relativity, each event has a unique space-time coordinate. This is the basis in general semantics for rejecting Aristotle's law of identity ("something is identical with itself"), and instead making differences fundamental, followed in importance by similarities. I've italicised the letter "s" in order to differentiate the word from something which looks and sounds extremely similar, but means something completely different. It prevents confusion (e.g if read too quickly) and has the added benefit of providing the lay person with a simplified and intuitive insight into general semantics. Sadly, someone is currently trying to revert the entire paragraphs I've written, but I will try to deal with it now. Aris.olt (talk) 17:29, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Please address the concerns raised by the people who reverted your new intro paragraph before putting it back. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 18:55, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  why italicized ''s''? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I removed the ref tags from Cratylus (dialogue) in the "See also" section. Per MOS:SEEALSO, references are not required. These are the removed references:
* 
* 
A quick search of the content of these sources suggests that general semantics isn't mentioned in either source, so I'm not sure how these sources were considered to be justificatory anyway.
I also added a couple of additional links to the "See also" section. Here are a couple of justificatory sources for the links:
* Ladder of inference:  A discussion in the flagship journal of general semantics about the relevance of the ladder of inference.
* Perceptual control theory: 
Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 15:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some see also links