Hard to summarize a lot of stuff, and I don’t know that seeing the summary without the explanation of it is that helpful.
Instead, I’ll apply General Semantics to my response to the conversation, as an imaginary Korzybski (K). It’s been a while since I read the stuff, so my use of his terms will doubtless lack some precision, and be colored by my own attitude as well.
K: We have a discussion here. People are saying things like Joe is creepy, or Joe is a creep.
K: They are using the “is of identity”, and the “is of predication”. We know that this falsifies reality. An apple is not red, but is perceived as red by us in the proper circumstances. In other circumstances, we would not perceive it as red. Even taking a conscious being out of the equation, the apple would be measured as red by some instrument or process under certain conditions, and not red in other circumstances.
K: Now let’s look at the term “creep”. Our total evaluative response to the word “creep” contains a mass of associative (often emotive) and extensional (observable) components. We have many negative and unpleasant emotional associations with the term. If we are going to properly evaluate Joe and his behavior instead of merely letting our reactions to words that we chose to apply to Joe dictate our response to Joe, we should limit our discussion to extensional terms.
K: Unfortunately, it seems to me that even the implied extensional usage of the word is highly variable in this discussion, with creep_you <> creep_me <> creep_him <> creep_her, to a degree that impacts effective communication. The same is likely true even of creep_him_1, creep_him_2, creep_him_3 - people aren’t being consistent in their own usage of the term.
K: So let’s make an explicit extensional definition of the word “creep” to test whether we have been communicating at all.
ME: I would add that the various comments on blame/responsibility that try to get around blame by resorting to causality don’t get us anywhere. Joe’s behavior no more caused Jane’s reaction than Jane’s emotional and perceptual makeup. Change either sufficiently, and Jane does not perceive Joe as creepy. I think this is implicit in K’s method, but I don’t recall him this particular discussion on causality. Although it’s starting to ring a few bells in some musty old neurons.
There’s a lot of other stuff. I consider General Semantics as semantic hygiene, seeing how certain semantic practices encourage bad habits of thought, and having specific counter practices for avoiding the poor habits of thought. Purell for the mind.
In the end, I don’t think the counter practices are necessary to keep your ideas clean and tidy as long as you’ve internalized an aversion to the poor habits of thought, but they help when confusion is afoot.
Hard to summarize a lot of stuff, and I don’t know that seeing the summary without the explanation of it is that helpful.
Instead, I’ll apply General Semantics to my response to the conversation, as an imaginary Korzybski (K). It’s been a while since I read the stuff, so my use of his terms will doubtless lack some precision, and be colored by my own attitude as well.
K: We have a discussion here. People are saying things like Joe is creepy, or Joe is a creep.
K: They are using the “is of identity”, and the “is of predication”. We know that this falsifies reality. An apple is not red, but is perceived as red by us in the proper circumstances. In other circumstances, we would not perceive it as red. Even taking a conscious being out of the equation, the apple would be measured as red by some instrument or process under certain conditions, and not red in other circumstances.
K: Now let’s look at the term “creep”. Our total evaluative response to the word “creep” contains a mass of associative (often emotive) and extensional (observable) components. We have many negative and unpleasant emotional associations with the term. If we are going to properly evaluate Joe and his behavior instead of merely letting our reactions to words that we chose to apply to Joe dictate our response to Joe, we should limit our discussion to extensional terms.
K: Unfortunately, it seems to me that even the implied extensional usage of the word is highly variable in this discussion, with creep_you <> creep_me <> creep_him <> creep_her, to a degree that impacts effective communication. The same is likely true even of creep_him_1, creep_him_2, creep_him_3 - people aren’t being consistent in their own usage of the term.
K: So let’s make an explicit extensional definition of the word “creep” to test whether we have been communicating at all.
ME: I would add that the various comments on blame/responsibility that try to get around blame by resorting to causality don’t get us anywhere. Joe’s behavior no more caused Jane’s reaction than Jane’s emotional and perceptual makeup. Change either sufficiently, and Jane does not perceive Joe as creepy. I think this is implicit in K’s method, but I don’t recall him this particular discussion on causality. Although it’s starting to ring a few bells in some musty old neurons.
There’s a lot of other stuff. I consider General Semantics as semantic hygiene, seeing how certain semantic practices encourage bad habits of thought, and having specific counter practices for avoiding the poor habits of thought. Purell for the mind.
In the end, I don’t think the counter practices are necessary to keep your ideas clean and tidy as long as you’ve internalized an aversion to the poor habits of thought, but they help when confusion is afoot.
(May be worth editing your comment and replacing all instances of “_” with “\_”.)