A general semantics glossary (part 10).

extensional devices revisited; over/under-defined terms. In our last entry (1) I emphasized indexing and dating, with what seemed to me telling applications. Here I will touch on other tools of extensionalization, concluding with the too-little discussed but fundamental over/under-defined terms.

First, I note with pleasure the striking relationship between general-semantics, especially the extensional devices, and aspects of the "Fuzzy Logic" formulated by Lotfi Zadeh, Professor Emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley. Fuzzy logic may well qualify as one of the non-aristotelian systems that Korzybski called for. I introduced Dr. Zadeh at the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture at the Yale Club in New York on November 3, 1994. I alerted the audience there to keep in awareness such formulations as the extensional devices, general uncertainty, etc., while listening for similarities and differences between general-semantics and fuzzy logic. Zadeh later approved my introductory suggestions and, at our colloquium the next day (Saturday, November 4, 1994) stated several times that he knew that there was a connection between his methods and general-semantics, but that he hadn't realized "how symbiotic" that relationship was/is. (2) Here we have a fine and important topic for an article (at minimum) or a subject for a doctoral dissertation.

I have used etc. more than I have explicitly formulated it. I'll briefly specify it here. I can state the second premise of Korzybski's three summary premises of general-semantics (3) in this way: the map (any map) does not (cannot) represent all of its (presumed) territory. We sometimes call this the principle of non-allness, designed to combat the pathology, of "allness." Current (1995) neuroscience firmly supports the notion that we abstract in the rich Korzybskian sense, and that in abstracting we inevitably, unavoidably, inescapably miss much, mis-attend to much that we have attended to and constructed in accordance with our own structures (we as nervous systems), leading to a general uncertainty in abstracting, map making, statement making, etc. We can't say 'all' about anything - etc. Et cetera.

William James is credited with suggesting that every sentence should begin with and and end with and. In my Institute of General Semantics seminar lectures I have often observed that our lives may be compared to the situation wherein we enter a theater while the play or movie is already in progress and we leave before it's 'over'. A similar observation can be made about any situation in the non-theater world - the world in which drama originates. Thus the et cetera, to remind us of what we've left out, what we didn't notice in the first place, what we've forgotten, ....

Korzybski called the three extensional devices, indexes, dates, etc., "working devices." He called quotes and hyphens "safety devices," sort of "watch out" calls to use with terms whose structural implications make them suspect.

Quotes (single), as we have seen throughout this glossary, are used to tag terms, mostly long-established and in common use, such as 'mind', 'space' by itself, 'time' by itself, etc., which we have learned (physics, neuroscience) are structurally unsound, i.e., they either label fictions or mis-label something that we need to talk about. I recommend to my students and colleagues that a deeper solution to the problems such terms represent would be to eschew them, to search out alternative, more appropriate terms.

The hyphen is used to join what has been, by traditional usage, elementalistically split, e.g., 'mind' from 'body', 'space' from 'time', 'observed' from 'observer', etc. I deem it vital to recognize that what we are 'joining' or 'rejoining' with the hyphen has not been split in the first place. As far as we know, empirically, there have not been 'minds' separate from 'bodies' and, in the case of evolved humans, no 'bodies' without 'minds', (i.e., nervous systems of increasing complexity). The problem, then, is in the usage, in the language as used, not in the non-verbal processes being referred to.

An extensional orientation leads to and is developed by greater use of qualifiers related to the over/under-defined nouns and verbs that constitute the bulk of our utterances, namely, adjectives, adverbs, and other degree-words. Here too, however, we need to remember that it is we who are doing the qualifying. (4)

Korzybski presented over/under-defined terms in the Introduction to the Second Edition of Science and Sanity (pp. xxxii-xxxvii; pp. lxiv-lxix in the new Fifth Edition). It constitutes a derivative of what he wrote in the First Edition, related particularly to the just-mentioned principle of non-allness. In its most succinct formulation it reads:" ... most terms are over/under-defined. They are over-defined (over-limited) by intension, or verbal definition, because of our belief in the definition; and they are under-defined by extension or facts, when generalizations become merely hypothetical." Succinct, but densely packed. He then spends 4 4/5 pages fleshing out (extensionalizing) his definition - so that it not be over-defined by intension. (5)

We need to remind ourselves that by "intension" Korzybski intended (i.e., 'meant') that attitude/orientation that leads people to be overconfident in dealing with definitions and verbal formulations of all sorts, while neglecting the potentially empirical, lower-order verbal or non-verbal realm too readily satisfied with the "If I can define it, I know it" position. Rather like the exacting schoolmaster, M'Choakum-child, in Dickens' Hard Times. In that novel the schoolmaster severely chastises a student who, having personal experience with horses, defines the animal extensionally rather than limiting himself to genus, species, phylum, class, order, etc., or something like, "a large, solid-hoofed quadruped, Equus caballus."

Extensional people (those who manifest the extensional orientation), while being fully-to-adequately articulate, realize that "the word is not the thing," and that the majority of our most important terms show the multiordinal character. (6) Extensional people routinely check their verbalizings against observation, validated documentation, etc.

A strong, perhaps unexpected aspect of Korzybski's formulation here is the insistence that most terms (nouns in particular, which we may understand as vernacular "fuzzy sets") are under-defined by extension. He reminds us here that, though he recommends the extensional approach, even here we can't exhaust (we can't observe or count) 'all' of whatever we're being extensional about. We abstract (leave out, add in, etc.) at 'all' levels/orders of abstracting. As he says earlier in his Introduction, Second edition, p. xxxii: "'Pure' extension is humanly impossible; 'pure' intension is possible, and is often found in hospitals for 'mentally' ill, and in some chairs of 'philosophy'."

I refer the reader back to the last installment of this glossary. There we demonstrated that four terms very much involved in discussing the Holocaust in German and Russian-occupied Poland during World War II were hopelessly over-defined by intension and under-defined by extension. No verbal definition or 'philosophical' evaluation of any of those terms can 'capture' all of what they claim to define; and it is humanly impossible to specify, to display each member of those groups so defined.

Again, none of this establishes that we cannot evaluate responsibly by being as extensional as we can, by accepting 'fuzziness' and probabilistic methods which, being more structurally appropriate in application to a process world, allow us to be more, not less, precise.

Finally, let's recall Korzybski's quiet, balanced admonition: "I must stress again that this difficulty is not inherent in our language as such, but depends exclusively on our attitude toward the use of language." (7)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Robert P. Pula, "A General Semantics Glossary (Part IX): Extensional Devices: indexing and dating." ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 51, No. 4, Winter 1994, pp. 440-452.

2. The following is an approximation of what I said in my introduction of Lotfi Zadeh at the Yale Club. I include it here as an extension of my instructional intent in this glossary:

I won't detail Lotfi Zadeh's biography here. You have read it in the flyers you received in the mail or picked up when you came in. Besides, there's too much to tell in a brief introduction - so many achievements, so many awards! Here I will limit myself to reminding us that we are particularly privileged to have Dr. Zadeh as our annual speaker, because he is a genuine pioneer - rather in the Korzybski mold.

I want to do some italicizing, make some suggestions about what might be helpful for you to keep in awareness as you listen to Dr. Zadeh's discussion of Fuzzy Logic, as you listen for similarities and differences with relation to general-semantics.

General-semantics and Fuzzy Logic have several, perhaps many, factors in common. They share some originating non-aristotelian influences, among them the three-valued, then multi-valued, then 'infinite'-valued mathematical logics of Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956). They also share a commitment to scientific uncertainty, at least (and at most) partly derived from Lukasiewicz, whose first paper on "indeterminacy" was published in 1906.

Another up-front commonality is that both disciplines have names which have caused them great difficulties, resistances, strong negative semantic reactions. General-semantics (largely owing to the careless usage of some of its practitioner) is consistently confused with narrow linguistic semantics and with linguistics in general. The neurolinguistic, non-aristotelian center seems deflected by readers' reactions to the term "general-semantics," which Korzybski came to regret. I don't know if Lotfi Zadeh yet regrets "fuzzy logic," but I do know that many in the very fields he most directly addresses have been put off by taking "fuzzy" for "vague," even "sloppy, even "mystical." Yet his methods, recognizing and accepting indeterminacy, degrees and dynamism in all structures we know of, yield more precise representations of those structures. And, even though they are increasingly applied in "soft programming," they have proven especially effective in designing and manufacturing very sophisticated operational hardware. In general-semantics, the extensional devices serve a similar function.(*) Both systems propose a degree-orientation, promoting sensitivity to gradations, shades, etc., and to their precise representation.

When Charlotte Read and I were working over the first draft of my Preface to the Fifth Edition of Science and Sanity, she convinced me that it was too long. She observed, "After all, Bob, it is Alfred's book." I can hear her now saying, "After all, Bob, it is Lotfi's lecture."

Ladies and gentlemen, Lotfi Zadeh!

3. As stated by Korzybski in his final paper:

A map is not the territory. A map covers not all the territory. A map is self-reflexive.

(See "The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes," in Alfred Korzybski, Collected Writings: 1920-1950. Collected and Arranged by M. Kendig. Final editing and preparation for printing by Charlotte Schuchardt Read, with the assistance of Robert Pula. Englewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics, 1990, p. 704.)

4. For an especially fine job of presenting these extensions of the extensional devices (what he calls "extensional terms"), see Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries: The Semantics [sic!] of Personal Adjustment. Harper and Brothers, 1946, pp. 205-239. Currently available from the International Society for General Semantics, Concord, CA.

5. The reader is encouraged to read these passages in the Introduction to the Second Edition of Science and Sanity, pp. lxiv-lxix in the new Fifth Edition. That entire 49-page 'introduction' qualifies as a small book or monograph in its own right. Highly recommended.

The presentation of over/under-defined terms was "introduced" in Science and Sanity but preceded by two papers Korzybski gave before annual meetings of the American Mathematical Society in 1935 and 1938, and one before the American Psychiatric Association in 1940. Abstracts and versions of them may be found in Korzybski's Collected Writings, listed above.

6. Robert P. Pula, "A General Semantics Glossary (Part VI): multiordinality of terms and mechanisms," ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 50, No. 4, Winter 1993-94, pp. 492-495.

7. Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Fifth Edition, With a New Preface by Robert P. Pula. Englewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics, 1993, p. lxvi.

[Regarding Robert Pula's use of quotation marks in his glossary, see "Addendum to A General Semantics Glossary (Part VII)" in ETC. Vol. 51, No. 1. Ed.]

* At our Saturday colloquium Dr. Alan Meyrowitz, Director of the Navy Center for Artificial Intelligence at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, gave an important paper, "The Relevance of General Semantics to Current Research in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics."

Robert Pula edited the General Semantics Bulletin from 1977-1985 and served as Director of the Institute of General Semantics from 1983-1986. He has recently written the Preface for the Fifth Edition of Science and Sanity.