Drive yourself sane?

From Drive yourself sane: using the uncommon sense of general semantics By Susan Presby Kodish, Bruce I. Kodish. No comment needed.

Since the Aristotelian language structure still dominates our language, let’s
take a look at what it involves. Aristotle’s ‘Laws of thought’ involve three
basic premisses. He proposed that a thing is what it is: A is A. For
example ‘Facts are facts’, ‘A fault is a fault’, ‘An apple is an apple’.
(This is known as the premiss of identity).

He proposed that anything must either be a particular category or class of thing
or not be that thing: Anything is either A or not-A. For example, ‘Something is
either a fact or not a fact.’ ‘Something is either a fault or not a fault.’
‘Something is either an apple or not an apple.’ (This is known as the premiss of
the excluded middle).

He proposed that anything cannot both be a particular thing and not be that particular thing: Something cannot both be A and not-A. For example ‘Something cannot both be a fact and not be a fact’. ‘Something cannot both be a fault and not be a fault’. ‘Something cannot both be an apple and not an apple’. (This is known as the premiss of non-contradiction).

The ‘laws of thought’ made sense in Aristotle’s time, before the microscopes and other instruments which have enabled us to develop modern physical science. Aristotle’s logic also made more sense before knowledge of other cultures and languages enabled us to develop modern social science. When we have only our senses to get our information, we view the world only at the macroscopic level, as described in Chapter 5. When we have only one culture and language which we consider ‘correct’, we view the world only from that point of view. These views support the common sense of a pre-modern-scientific era and ‘metaphysics’.

This pre-modern-scientific sense, as we’ve noted, leads us to sense certain ‘structures’, and therefore assume them as correct; for example, when we look out at the horizon it looks as if the earth ends, which at one time led to assumptions of a flat earth. It leads us to assume that things we can’t sense, like germs, can’t have effects. It leads us to assume that qualities reside in things: ‘This rose is red’. ‘The boy is lazy’. It leads us to assume that the way we and our culture categorise things is the way things are: ‘An apple is an apple’. ‘Psychologists are psychologists’. It leads us to assume that if something happened or someone experience something, some thing must exist to have caused the happening or experience: ‘My boss caused my failure’. ‘Because I’m aware of reading these pages, I must have some ‘thing’, like a ‘mind’, causing that awareness’. It leads us to assume that ‘things’ are separate from what they do.

In sum, following the ARISTOTELIAN ORIENTATION leads us to view the world as static and unchanging. It leads us to assume we can know all. It leads us to assume our categories exist in the world and cannot be changed. It leads us to look for single causes for events. It leads us to evaluate in either/or terms. It leads us to a lack of awareness of our own evaluating process. This orientation so pervades our culture that these ways of evaluating still, for most people, seem like common sense. [ p. 130]

Korzybski’s Concept Salad

Intrigued that the philosopher Max Black had written about Korzybski (in the concluding chapter of Language and Philosophy, and that Peter Strawson had commented that General Semantics was “a subject which, to judge from the quotations from Science and Sanity, was hardly worth Professor Black's attention”, I had a look for myself. Korzybski’s Collected Writings, 1920-1950 contains a generous dollop of his theories about logic, language, life the universe and everything. The passage quoted below is representative.

As far as I can see, the book is a good example of what I call pseudo-scholarship. What he writes is copiously cited, using an eclectic range of sources from Russell to Wittgenstein to Łukasiewicz, but it hardly shows even a basic understanding of the sources. Why mention the ‘three laws of thought’ in the same chapter as Łukasiewicz? The ‘laws of thought’ formulation was outmoded well before the 1930s, and is not even Aristotelian (Aristotle does not mention the first, for example, and the English rendering of the second two does not capture exactly what he meant). Nor is it true that the second law is a negative statement of the first, nor that the third is a consequence of the first two.

What comes next is even weirder: that we could not properly investigate the semantics of the verb ‘is’ unless we studied all the disciplines he mentions. Logic is generally understood as a propadeutic or preparation for all the sciences, and a basic understanding of the copula ‘is’ is one of the first part of logic (actually the second stage of three, according to Aristotle). Why study colloidal chemistry in order to understand logic? Finally, Korzybski says that this will result in an A_ or non-Aristotelian system. Exactly why, is not clear. But judge for yourselves!

Let me recall the ‘philosophical grammar’ of our language which we solemnly call
the ‘laws of thought’, as given by Jevons.

1. The law of identity. Whatever is, is.
2. The law of contradiction. Nothing both can be, and not be
3. The law of excluded third. Everything must either be, or not be.

These ‘laws’ have different ‘philosophical’ interpretations
which help very little and for my purpose it is enough to
emphasise that: (1) the second ‘law’ represents a negative statement of the
first, and the third represents a corollary of the former two; namely, no third
possible between two contradictories. (2) the verb ‘to be’, or ‘is’, and
‘identity’ play a most fundamental role in these formulations. We should
not be surprised to find that the investigation of these terms may give us a
long sought solution. Such an investigation is very laborious and
difficult. The complete attempt to deal with the term *is* would go to the
form and matter of everything in existence, at least, if not to the possible
form and matter of all that does not exist, but might. As far as it could be
done, it would give the grand Cyclopedia, and its yearly supplement would be the
history of the human race for the time’, said Augustus de Morgan in his *Formal
Logic*, and this opinion I found fully justified.

So I must bebrief, and state but roughly, that in the Indo-European languages the verb ‘to be’ has at least four entirely different uses: (1) as an auxiliary verb, ‘Smith
is coming’; (2) as the ‘is’ of predication, ‘the apple is red’; (3) as the ‘is’
of ‘existence’, ‘I am’; (4) as the ‘is’ of identity, ‘the apple is a fruit’. The
fact that four semantically entirely different words should have one sound and
spelling appears as a genuine tragedy of the race; the more so since the
discrimination between their uses is not always easy.

The researches of the present writer have shown that the problems involved are very complicated and cannot be solved except by a joint study of mathematics,
mathematical foundations, history of mathematics, ‘logic’, ‘psychology’,
anthropology, psychiatry, linguistics, epistemology, physics and its history,
colloidal chemistry, physiology, and neurology; this study resulting in the
discovery of a general semantic mechanism underlying human behaviour, many new
interrelations and formulations, culminating in a A_ system. This semantic
mechanism appears as a general psychophysiological mechanism based on
four-dimensional order, present and abused in all of us, the primitive man, the
infant, the ‘mentally’ ill, and the genius not excluded. [Alfred Korzybski, Collected
Writings p.169]

General semantics and general nonsense

I have been blocked again, and my changes to the article about Martin Gardner’s best known book reverted. This is all part of a long-running battle I have had with nonsense and junk science in Wikipedia for over three years. I fear that junk science is beginning to win.

I had corrected two claims in the article about Martin Gardner's excellent Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Gardner does not give ‘five common characteristics’ of cranks, as the article said, but only two (although he lists five ways in which the second charateristic – paranoia – is made manifest). And he certainly does not claim, as the article suggested, that we can judge a theory according to the psychological characteristics of its author. On the contrary, Gardner explicitly restricts himself ('except in a few cases') to theories so close to 'almost certainly false' that there is no reasonable doubt about their worthlessness. Thus, Velikovksy’s impossible theory of planetary motion, the flat earth theory, Atlantis, and of course ‘General Semantics’. He is not giving criteria to detemine the correctness of a scientific theory. Rather, he is taking theories that are generally recognized as bunk, and making observations about the people who promote them.

The series of articles on and around ‘General Semantics’ illustrates very well how easy it is for junk science to spread its tentacles through Wikipedia, creating the appearance of a coherent, well-sourced alternative scientific system, even when the reality is general nonsense. The article on General Semantics (not to be confused with actual semantics, please) does not represent the subject for what it is - a poorly organised, verbose, philosophically naive, repetitious mish-mash of sound ideas borrowed from abler scientists and philosophers, mixed with neologisms, confused ideas, unconscious metaphysics, and highly dubious speculations about neurology and psychiatric theraphy, according to Gardner (p. 281). Apart from a small 'criticism' section at the end, it is presented as though it were a serious academic discipline. There are many links to and from the article. For example, from Non-Aristotelian logic, although Korzybski’s rambling have very little to do with anything written by Łukasiewicz’s. From Semantic differential and Structural differential and (naturally) Neurolinguistic programming. Not to forget Map-territory relation and Institute of General Semantics. There is even a whole category for the subject.

Some of these articles are about genuine scientific subjects, with links inserted to give credibility to the junk. Others are just junk. Who can tell the difference?

Gardner, writing in 1952 , had a serious concern about the abandonment of ‘science ethics’ by American publishers in the mid-1950s. What difference did it make if the general public was misled? Gardner replied that it is not at all amusing when people are misled by nonsense and lies masquerading as science. “Thousands of neurotics desperately in need of trained psychiatric care are seriously retarding their therapy by dalliance with crank cults. Already a frightening number of cases have come to light of suicides and mental crack-ups among patients undergoing these dubious cures. No reputable publisher would think of releasing a book describing a treatment for cancer if it were written by a doctor universally considered a quack by his peers".

In 1952 his target was popular publishing. Today we have Wikipedia, an internet publication accessible to billions of readers, regarded by many of them (and by most of the popular media) as a reliable reference source. What would Gardner be doing about it if he were alive now? And who will take his place?