Institute of General Semantics

Hello everyone -

This is my first time posting on these forums, although I've sifted through them as a guest many times before. I'm in the process of designing an experiment as part of my honors thesis, and could use a little help.

Like many of you, I'm a big-time Korzybski fan. Complementing the count, I'm high on Michael Hall, Dilts (NLP), the Buddhist tradition, Norman Holland, Milton Erickson, Metzinger, and the like. There are many parallels in the works of the above. Each, in a way, uses Korzybski's ideas as a foundational groundwork from which to build.

The point of this post is to gather ideas for an experiment that would lend itself to Korzybski's theories. I'm investigating consciousness, subjectivity, personality, the self, and / or whatever I'm able to tab into via experiment.

So, 1) does anyone know of a conductible experiment that would reinforce Korzybski's models? And 2) does anyone have a journal articles or empirical studies that lend themselves to Korzybski?

Appreciate any help I can get!

Hi there!

Sounds like some exciting work!

As far as a conductible experiment, hm. One idea might involve the reconditioning of a unsane person (e.g., a person suffering with a diagnosed mental illness) by means of general semantics principles to see if such application results in a diminishing of symptoms or even eradication of the "illness." To me, Korzybski's theories aim at eradicating delusion from the individual's mindset, particularly by means of getting the individual to talk more factually, even more scientifically, under the belief that an individual's speech has a strong influence on his perceptions and nervous system responses, and that becoming more acquainted with facts over delusions, the person has a more adjusted living.

Occasionally ETC: A Review of General Semantics contains a study scientifically conducted, yet I have a feeling more korzybskian research you'll find in the 1940's than more currently. (I do not know for sure.) Similarly, you may want to look into Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy as practiced by the Albert Ellis Institute, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as practiced by those around David Burns, et al., for insights into current uses of principles akin to and perhaps even rooted in korzybskian general semantics. The organizations around those practices may lead you to studies that may remotedly connect to korzybskian ideas.

As for korzybskian models, I feel that the popular ones (like the Structural Differential) serve as teaching tools aiming to set up a scientific way of thinking about the human process of abstracting rather than, say, modeling how reality works or "truly looks." In other words, I don't know how you'd really test them--you pretty much just teach them. They aid in setting up the student's brain to see a difference between, say, the event level and object level, the object level and the verbal level, etc. At least in my opinion.

Ben