A general semantics glossary (Part XVII).

It is clear that there is but one substance in the world, and that man is its ultimate expression.

Julien Offray de la Mettrie 

Uni-substantialism. You won't find "uni-substantialism" in the publications of Alfred Korzybski, nor of other writers on general-semantics. I invented the term - rather, I made it up for my "Neuroscience Update 1995" which recently appeared in the General Semantics Bulletin. (1) In so doing I am accepting Korzybski's published invitation to time-bind with him in the further building and development of his system. (I have done this before. See glossary entry XIV, "neuro-linguistic feedback.") (2) Korzybski often wrote that one person alone could not do what he was attempting, namely, formulating and developing and testing the "first non-aristotelian system." He called for help from responsible, serious "coworkers." (Despite his rollicking, sometimes devilish sense of humor, Korzybski was a very serious man. But then, we can't be safely serious if our seriousness is not leavened by a well-exercised sense of humor.) This glossary entry represents one of my modest but not trivial contributions in answer to Korzybski's call.

When Korzybski formulated non-elementalism, (3) he was concerned to correct for the structurally unsound splitting with words of non-verbal, unitary structures, e.g., 'mind' and body, etc. He recommended that we 'join' what was not separated in the first place with the extensional device of the hyphen; thus, 'mind'-body, etc. More importantly, he recommended that we (and he) search for terms that don't suggest the sharp, elementalistic split at all; such 'terms' as organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment-at-a-given-date. Well, that's about as clumsy as we could wish, and we still need the hyphens. Some of Korzybski's better consciously formulated non-elementalistic terms are: semantic reaction (which includes 'thought,"feeling,' non-verbal, organism-as-a-whole effects, etc.), formulation (which includes the formulator), process (unitary but in discernible gradients), evaluation (which includes the evaluator), consciousness of abstracting, extensional devices (to promote consciousness of abstracting, consciousness of process, the extensional orientation), etc. These are all represented in prior installments of this glossary.

Underlying Korzybski's formulation of non-elementalism is his awareness that we have evidence for only one 'stuff' in (of) the 'universe,' humans included. He indicated this awareness in his use of such terms as "plenum," "plenum of some structure" (to be determined by scientific work), "process," "organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment," "differentiation of structure," "excitation-transmission gradients," etc.

What we know positively about 'space' is that it is not 'emptiness,' but 'fulness,' or a 'plenum.' Now 'fulness' or a 'plenum,' first of all, is a term of entirely ... non-el [non-elementalistic] structure. When we have a plenum of fulness, it must be a plenum of 'something,"somewhere,' at 'some time,' ... .

The problems of 'time' are similar, although they have a different neurological background. ... What we have to deal with in this world and in ourselves appears as periods and periodicity, pulsations, [etc.]. We are made up of very long chains of atomic pulsating clocks, on the sub-microscopic level. On the macroscopic level, we have also to deal with periodic occurrences, of hunger, sleep, breathing, heartbeats. We know already that, beyond some limits, discontinuous times, when rapid enough, are blended into continuous feelings of pressure, or warmth, or light. On objective levels we deal with times, and we feel 'time,' when the times are rapid enough.

...

The splitting of these processes into 'matter,' 'space,' and 'time' is a characteristic function of our nervous system. These abstractions are inside our skins, and are methods of representation for ourselves to ourselves, and are not the objective world around us. (Science and Sanity, pp.229-231)

For Einstein, 'space-time' is, semantically, 'fulness,' not 'emptiness,' and, in his language, he does not need any term like 'ether,' as his 'plenum,' structurally, covers the ground ... . (Ibid., pp.318-319)

... the sub-microscopic fulness ('space' ['stuff']) is more important than a few kinks or concentrations of that fulness ('matter'), - a fact which science has established, ... (Ibid., p.319)

Professor Child's physiological gradients, the structural precursors of the nervous system, are a necessity, because of the dynamic potentialities of the plenum and the necessary relation to the environment, as there is no such thing as anything without environment. (Ibid., pp.345-346)

The natural order consists of asymmetrical relations expressed by an ordered series, not only as to space-time, but as to values. All our experiences and all we know indicate definitely that ordinary materials ('objects') are extremely rare and very complex special cases of the beknottedness [!]

of the plenum; that the organic world and 'life' represent extremely rare and still more complex special cases of the material world; and, finally, so-called 'intelligent life' represents increasingly complex and still rarer special cases of 'life.' (Ibid., p.480) (4)

Et cetera!

What I intend by "uni-substantialism" is precisely that there seems, given what evidence we have(1997), only one 'substance' which constitutes 'the world,' we humans included. The term is consciously non-elementalistic; it does not split the world into 'matter' and 'spirit,"entities' so different in kind as to exist, literally, in 'worlds apart.' There are profoundly serious implications in this formulation. As I wrote in my "Neuroscience Update(1995)":

I was pleased to see a 'quote' from me in the abstract that introduces Part I [of Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind]:" ... there has never been a solidly established demonstration of a mind without a body, ... ." Of course, Edelman isn't quoting me (he's never even heard of me), but I have repeatedly said those very words in teaching general-semantics students to combat the elementalism of "mind and body" with, at minimum, the hyphenated "mind-body." I have evolved to the point now where I recommend dismissing the term 'mind' from one's vocabulary altogether; it's neither appropriate nor necessary and only generates confusion. "Brain" (evaluating mechanism, semantic reactor, etc.) serves well.

Chapter 1 ("Mind") is a fine historically based statement of the "problem." Ranging from Descartes to Brentano, William James and Darwin, he addresses the question of why we are concerned about this stuff anyway. On pp.5-6 he states" ... we want to find out how the mind relates to matter, particularly to the special organization of matter that underlies it." (Those are my italics.) In my view, reflecting my accelerating tendency toward what I now call "uni-substantialism," no matter, no 'mind': i.e., if there be no matter, there be no 'mind.' (Please note that this is quite different from the famous, dismissive "No matter, never mind.") As far as I'm concerned (1995 [and 97[right arrow]]), 'spiritual' experiences constitute nervous system events. When the nervous system goes (death), they go too. (5)

In Chapter 10, he [Edelman] quotes Wittgenstein as affirming "'Concept' is a vague concept," and comes close to my contention that 'consciousness' qualifies as a characteristic of complex neural systems, just as relative 'hardness' is said to be characteristic of certain rocks, and 'color' a resultant from the interaction of extra-neural frequencies and the frequencies of the visual system of some brain; in other words, that 'consciousness' can be understood as a characteristic quite like 'eye color,' and not beyond the realm of bio-physics, surely not a-physical or 'supernatural.' (6)

As that wonderful Bard and unexpected natural scientist, William Shakespeare, wrote:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Robert P. Pula, "Neuroscience Update(1995)," General Semantics Bulletin, No. 62, 1995, pp.29-52 (p.30). If the reader wants to study the mechanisms of uni-substantialism as related to human brains/nervous systems, this extensive review of three recent books in the neurosciences makes a convenient place to start.

2. Robert P. Pula, "A General Semantics Glossary (Part XIV): neuro-linguistic feedback," ETC., vol. 53, no. 2, Summer 1996, pp.221-226. I state there that I formulated "neuro-linguistic feedback" in the early 1970s, but, in editing my selected writings, I see that the formulation dates from 1968, the 'final' draft of the monograph containing it completed in 1969.

3. See the copious indexed references in Science and Sanity under elementalism and non-elementalism. See also Robert P. Pula, "A General Semantics Glossary: elementalism/non-elementalism," ETC., vol. 50, no. 1, Spring 1993, pp.69-72.

4. There are further discussions of the 'plenum' on pp.576, 622, 625, 666, 700, and 718.

5. Robert P. Pula, op. cit., p.30.

6. Pula, ibid., p.33. See also Korzybski, Introduction, Science and Sanity, 4th Edition, pp.xxvii-xxviii; pp.xxxix-xl in the new 5th Edition.

ADDENDUM 

My use of quotation marks in this glossary is in conformity with the conventions of the General Semantics Bulletin. To wit:

SINGLE QUOTES (Extensional device)

1. To mark off terms and phrases which seem to varying degrees questionable for neuro-linguistic, neuro-physiological, methodological or general epistemological reasons.

2. To mark off terms used metaphorically, playfully, etc.

a. 'mind,"meaning,"space,' or 'time' used alone, etc.

b. "...the semantic reaction formulation could serve as a 'bridge'... between Pavlovian classical conditioning and Skinnerian operant conditioning." (Silverman)

SINGLE QUOTES (Standard usage)

To indicate a quote within a quote.

DOUBLE QUOTES (Standard usage)

1. To indicate a term or phrase used by some referred-to person but not necessarily indicating a direct quote. Example: What Korzybski referred to as the "semantic reaction."

2. To indicate a direct quotation from a named source.

General Semantics Bulletin, Nos. 44-45, 1978, p.8.

Robert Pula edited the General Semantics Bulletin from 1977-1985 and served as Director of the Institute of General Semantics from 1983-1986. He is Director Emeritus of the Institute.