A general semantics glossary.

neuro-linguistic feedback. Korzybski came across the term "feedback" in late 1948. (1) The term dates from around 1915 when it was used in the noun phrase "acoustic feedback" related to problems in audio systems, especially loudspeakers. It was given widespread computer-related currency by Norbert Wiener in 1948, the year in which he also introduced the term "cybernetics." (2) I introduced this formulation early on (early 1970s) in my lectures at Institute of General Semantics seminar-workshops. My list of general-semantics formulations that I have worked from to keep myself on track at those seminar-workshops shows this:

neuro-linguistic feedback: 'feedback' borrowed from [as used by] Norbert Wiener, but anticipated by Korzybski in his formulation of the circular-spiral character of abstracting and neurological emphasis. (See "On the Structural Differential," Science and Sanity, pp.386-411.) (3)

Korzybski's earliest published uses of his terms "neuro-linguistic" and "neuro-semantic" that I (1996) know of appear in the Introduction to the 2nd Edition of Science and Sanity (1941). But many of his descriptions in that 1933 book are precisely of the mechanisms of neuro-linguistic feedback. In the Abstract to a paper delivered before the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May 1940, he wrote, "Consciousness of neurological mechanisms of abstracting eliminates identifications in general, which shortens psychotherapy and results in proper evaluation, and therefore better adjustment." (4)

We should review the term "feedback," since, as casually used, even by knowledgeable people, it seems often restricted to the sense of "response" ("Give me some feedback") without the concomitant notion that what is 'fed back' reinforces or changes (restructures) the organism or machine that 'fed out'.

The key notion of feedback is that what some system has produced directly affects the subsequent functioning of that system. Feedback is said to be 'positive' (reinforcing) or 'negative' (corrective). The term "loop" (as in "feedback loop") pictures the self-reflexive mechanism (the 'return' of some of the output as slightly later 'input') within the same system. Other terms now used to refer to ramified aspects of this mechanism are "recursive structures," "self-reference," "self-reproducing," "strange loops," "tangled hierarchies," "self-mapping," "semantic bootstrapping," "reentrant maps," "reentrant connections, pathways and circuits," "reciprocal connections," "neuronal group selection," "adaptive learning," "recategorization," "reintegration," "reentrant cortical integration model," "neurally organized multiply adaptive devices," "reentrant signaling," "thalamo-cortical systems" (Edelman), ... etc.! (5)

That may strike the reader as a formulational frenzy. Yet, say I, knowledge of the descriptive power and implications of such terms is required for an adequate understanding of Korzybski's neuro-linguistic, neuro-semantic system and its underpinning mechanisms. I especially recommend the study of two authors who are still publishing at the top of their respective forms, namely, Douglas Hofstadter and, particularly for recent, clearly formulated Korzybski-related neuroscientific data, Gerald Edelman. In response to Edelman's term in the previous paragraph, just before the exclamation point, the reader who has read Korzybski probably recalled his "thalamo-cortical integration." (6)

Neuro-linguistic feedback, then, qualifies as a multiordinal phrase which refers to multi-level structures/mechanisms.

First, the dotted-line 'arrow' on Korzybski's Structural Differential model or diagram (which is only a map for differentiating structures of the abstracting process) refers to the recognition that our 'highest' abstractings are about the 'lowest' order non-verbal structures we know of at a given date. For example, we say that at the quantum level there be 'atoms', 'atomic nuclei', 'blackbody radiation', 'quarks', etc. We say that the 'universe' constitutes a process, that whatever we know of constitutes events, including the products of our own quite private introspection. That way of talking makes a big difference, at least to physicists in their labs and to 'outward'-staring cosmologists. Especially among the 'hard' scientists, such well-grounded assumptions, devised with great difficulty and much hard work within the community of researchers over recent centuries, determine the character of their experiments, the risky predictions (risky because testable) they make to find out more.

All of this activity, at the formulational, neuro-linguistic level is happening within, as a function of, individual (unique) nervous systems. Right now, what you are making of this writing, leading neuroscientists say, is an expression of multi-ordinal, multi-level feedback mechanisms, loops, reentrant circuits, etc., which indicate the brain doing something and doing something to itself at the 'same"time'. When we nervous-systems-brains operate at all, when we learn, we restructure ourselves. As I have said and written elsewhere, no brain change, no learning. These seem the mechanisms that justify Korzybski's claim that improving one's formulating (via general-semantics) can improve one's overall functioning.

Conversely, mis-evaluating/formulating in a way which does violence to (is not in accord with) one's personal organismic structures and/or the 'silent' structures of extra-neural space-time, can scramble you toward pathology. For example, I recently read a passage in an essay by a 'critical thinker' who affirmed that 'thought' is 'instantaneous'. That qualifies as primitive neuroscience. Such mistaken evaluations can be devastating in teaching-learning situations. You yourself have probably experienced the deleterious neuro-linguistic feedback effects of accepting the notion that 'thought' is instantaneous and that, therefore, you must 'get it' right now. The nervous system, as a matter-energy-space-time structure, takes 'time' to work. That fact must be respected. And inputs to be learned require exposure and repetition. The reassuring aspect of this (I personally learn cheerfully) is that, because of neuro-linguistic feedback mechanisms which work inevitably, living brains can not not learn. The vital questions remain: To what are they being repeatedly exposed? What is it that they are learning?

The "circularity of knowledge" (spiral character over 'time'), then, indicates not just that our most serious sayings are about the most fundamental structures we know of (or speculate about) at a given date, but that our on-goingly present formulations greatly influence, even determine, our subsequent formulating - until our personal coagulation. Amelioration and enhanced degrees of 'sanity' may be realized through development of consciousness of abstracting. The mechanisms by which this happens we call neuro-linguistic feedback.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. For an account of Korzybski's enthusiastic acceptance of the term, see the book comment by the late, remarkable M. (Marjorie Mercer) Kendig, Korzybski's long-time associate at the Institute of General Semantics, General Semantics Bulletin, Nos. 1-2, 1950, pp.46-47. When she discussed with me, probably in the late 1960s, Korzybski's reaction, she was still chucklingly pleased by his open enthusiasm for Wiener's use of the term, seeing it as an example of Korzybski's willingness to learn from others, even later in life. (In July 1948 Korzybski celebrated his 69th birthday.) For Korzybski's incorporation of "feedback" into his own formulating, see his last paper, "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, pp.683-720, especially pp.716-717.

2. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1948.

3. Robert P. Pula, "Some General-semantics Formulations Related to Human Communications Processes, Human Evaluating, etc." Guide and handout used at Institute of General Semantics seminar-workshops since c. 1970, periodically revised. I note that in his article "What is General Semantics? A Personal View," (ETC., Vol. 52, No. 3, Fall 1995, p.304) Paul Dennithorne Johnston, in referring to the 'returning arrow' on his version of Korzybski's Structural Differential, wrote: "The dotted-line 'feedback loop' indicates that our inferences, evaluations, and language influence our perception." Paul attended an Institute of General Semantics seminar-workshop at Alverno College in 1989.

4. Alfred Korzybski, "Abstract: General Semantics, Psychiatry, and Psychotherapy" (1940). American Journal of Psychiatry, September, 1941. Reprinted in Alfred Korzybski, Collected Writings: 1920-1950, op cit., p.296.

5. Korzybski wrote this in 1950: "This circular process of our nervous systems in inter-action with the environments turns out to be a 'feedback system,' a most happy term which has been introduced lately and which exactly depicts the situation." ... "The mechanisms of 'feedback' have been brought to their culmination in humans, and the process of time-binding itself may be considered as an unprecedented, unique organic spiraling of feedbacks. In the exponential 'spiral' theory' given in my Manhood of Humanity ..., our time-binding capacity is obviously based on feedback mechanisms, chain-reactions, etc., without which humans as humans could not exist." Collected Writings, ibid., p.716-717.

6. See Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Vintage Books, 1980, and Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1992. If you want to start with 'shortcuts', see my reviews of Hofstadter and Edelman in the General Semantics Bulletin (for Hofstadter, GSB No. 49, 1982, pp.129-131; for Edelman [and Patricia Churchland and Steven Rose], "Neuroscience Update 1995," GSB No. 62, 1995, in press).

[Regarding Robert Pula's use of quotation marks in his glossary, see "Addendum to A General Semantics Glossary (Part XIII)" in ETC. Vol. 52, No. 4. Ed.]

Robert Pula edited the General Semantics Bulletin from 1977-1985 and served as Director of the Institute of General Semantics from 1983-1986. He was recently named Director Emeritus by the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics.