Our world takes its form through our verbal descriptions
Then sloppy semantics creates the bulk of world and personal problems and misunderstanding, either by rote, by laziness, or by nefarious intention. Book review of Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase.
THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK IN THE LIBRARY.
That is because everything we think or read is viewed through our verbal filter. Stuart Chase doesn’t know your verbal filter, but he considers, what about words (semantics), obscures our clear vision? It’s a clear vision of our real world situation. All thinking is about bending the world, (nature and other people), to our needs. Sometimes we are not even thinking about “their needs”.
(3,400 words)
Any (and every) society creates a virtual reality. We describe, react to, and act upon what’s agree upon. Everyone may not agree, but just saying the same thing over and over again, perhaps louder, makes it into a “reality”. The moment you move out of that “verbal cage”, that so-called reality collapses. Thank-god for that; but of course then we go right ahead and create another “virtual” limiting-monster. I think that is the necessity of society and I don’t see any preferred alternate methodology. No-one wants to live alone in the forest.
Our only hope is that our creation can reflect, to some degree, the necessities of the life of the species, (and of the individual). All Meaning is conceptual, with no physical referent. Concepts CAN be related to the material world, (as best we are able), or they can be totally detached from it. I believe that bending semantics to equate abstractions with “a reality” is the foundation for all distortions in living. We can say that “we don’t know any better”, or that we are all culpable of trying to victimize the less fortunate and less aware, through our “word-schemes”.
WHAT AM I SAYING? Everything we read, think or do is filtered through this verbal virtual reality. It is the basis of our (mis)understanding, of everything written in this library, or any other source, or web site. It behooves us to lighten the weight of our filter, as much, and as often as we can. Therefore, a book about semantics is as important to ancient history as is the ardent historian who carefully researches each epoch.
This book has really two interest points. First in semantics, we are reminded to be aware of what each word refers to, which Chase call the referents. If it is an abstract concept, referring to nothing solid, we know all people will have a subjective view of what it means. Thus, perhaps it loses all meaning in a crowd, and it is perplexing why people are fighting over it. Many concepts are nested, referring just to another concept as its definition, in endless loops, until we don't even know what “WE” ourselves are talking about. Defining “liberty” by “freedom”, “What is fire burning?” It's “Oxidation.”
Still all talk produces some feeling. Maybe concepts are good for whipping up a crowd into a rage? I'll talk about semantics extensively.
The second interesting point of the book, is that this may be one of the few books written right in the middle of a very contentious period. Other books are written with hind-sight, after the fact. The author and the local populations had lived through the devastating first world war. Perhaps they welcomed the economic bubble of the 1920's, but then it all crashed in 1929, and got worse and worse for at least 4 years. Now Europe was agitating with violent Fascist tendencies and Germany had just annexed Austria on March 12th 1938.
Here's a quote:
“1937 At this moment, a brazen invasion of France is going on. The Prussian militarist powers, in undisguised violation of their own signatures, of every canon of international law, of every principle of decency and humanity, are trying to crush the French people and their elected democratically constituted government. Apparently, this does not matter to us. We sit by idly and contentedly, denying French democracy the means to defend itself. Neutrality followed to its logical conclusion has made America effectively pro-German.”
(However; the quote wasn’t exactly like the above, since the French armistice, the surrender to Germany wasn’t until June 22, 1940. But the real quote is just below.)
The way Louis Fischer actually wrote the paragraph, published in the Nation, March 27, 1937, was this: “At this moment, a brazen invasion of Spain is going on. The fascist militarist powers, in undisguised violation of their own signatures . . . are trying to crush the Spanish people. . . . We sit by idly and contentedly, denying Spanish democracy the means to defend itself. Neutrality followed to its logical conclusion has made America effectively pro-fascist.”
This book is not about geopolitics, but it uses those current world affairs to demonstrate its principles of distorted semantics and misuse of language. You can see the foreboding in the author, maybe not dreaming that another world war would be possible, but very concerned about where "we are headed". All books on geopolitics are written after the fact, with hind-sight. This is not about geopolitics, so it is right in the middle of turmoil. The references are not in a separate section, but in all the examples throughout the book. I found that part fascinating in itself, to be immersed in the feeling of that age. I won't talk further about that, and leave it for your reading.
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Thoughts are concerned primarily with objective relationships between the individual and the outside world, between the “me” and the “beyond-me.” Into those subjective relationships inside the “me.” How does the outside world work in this given context, approximately? That seems to be the sum and quest of human knowledge. To see the outside world primarily in terms of relations rather than in terms of absolute substances and absolute properties allows that vision to develop an intellectual keenness hitherto unknown. It will give us as much power over the environment as we are competent to handle. The psychological domain of motives, association paths, complexes, fixations, and all the rest, are in the field of semantics.
It is said:
“All generalizations are false," but the distrust is seldom profound; “campaign oratory,” “empty verbalisms,” “slogans,” “just hot air,” “taking the word for the deed,” they are usually employed to score off an opponent in a debate or to discredit statements with which one does not agree. Labels for essences and qualities, such as “the sublime,” “freedom,” “individualism,” “truth,” for such terms, there are no discoverable referents in the outside world, and by mistaking them for substantial entities somewhere at large in the environment, we create a fantastic wonderland. This zone is the special domain of philosophy, politics, and economics. “The true meaning of a term is to be found only by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it.”
“A controversy,” says Richards, “is normally an exploitation of a set of misunderstandings for warlike purposes.” Bad language is now the mightiest weapon in the arsenal of despots and demagogues. (1938) Witness Dr. Goebbels. Indeed, it is doubtful if a people learned in semantics would tolerate any sort of supreme political dictator.
The mind is a connecting organ; it works only by connecting and it can connect in an indefinitely large number of ways. Words are meeting points at which regions of experience come together; a part of the mind’s endless endeavor to order itself.
Experience has the character of a recurrence of similar contexts. It is the key to the problem of meaning. A synonym for the word “meaning” is the word “concept.” Concepts, observes Bridgman, must be constructed out of the materials of human experience and workable within that experience. When concepts move beyond the reach of experience, they become unverifiable hypotheses. Knowledge advances when we find how things are related, and in what order. When we encounter something brand-new, a crisis in meaning develops. There is no memorandum in the files. When an impression hits the sensory nerves from the outside world, it is probable that factual material has caused it, and it demands interpretation. In this context a fact is a sign from “beyond me” to “me.” The impression can be subjected to the operational approach; and often it can be measured. The more civilized men become, the more skeptical they become. And with skepticism they learn to overcome the fear of a mental vacuum, of uncertainty about the truth of things and the meaning of their own existence. It is the point of discovery. It requires great courage to stand up in the face of the universe and say: “I do not know.”
In dealing with the physical world the test of fact is generally accepted as supreme. In dealing with the world of social control it is widely believed that there are other tests more to be respected—authority, ideology, internal consistency, rationalistic thinking, historic principles. To see the world as it is, says Robinson, rather than suffused with the rosy light of principles, is not an effort to get along without ideals, aims, and aspirations; “it is an effort to make these abstract purposes real, to make them more attainable in concrete terms.”
A large fraction of what passes for human folly is failure of communication. The exciting promise of the science of semantics is that certain kinds of folly can, for the first time, be analyzed and modified.
1. That words are not things. (Identification of words with things, however, is widespread, and leads to untold misunderstanding and confusion.)
2. That words mean nothing in themselves; they are as much symbols as x or y.
3. That meaning in words arises from context of situation.
4. That abstract words and terms are especially liable to spurious identification. The higher order the abstraction, the greater the danger of saying nothing.
5. That things have meaning to us only as they have been experienced before.
6. That no two events are exactly similar.
7. That finding relations and orders between things gives more dependable meanings than trying to deal in absolute substances and properties. Few absolute properties have been authenticated in the world outside. (The only absolute I can think of is that it is always “Now”.)
8. That mathematics is a useful language to improve knowledge and communication.
9. That the human brain is a remarkable instrument and probably a satisfactory agent for clear communication.
10. That to improve communication new words are not needed, but a better use of the words we have. (Structural improvements in ordinary language, however, should be made.)
11. That the scientific method and especially the operational approach are applicable to the study and improvement of communication. (No other approach has presented credentials meriting consideration.)
12. That the formulation of concepts upon which sane men can agree, on a given date, is the primary goal of communication. (This method is already widespread in the physical sciences and is badly needed in social affairs.)
13. That academic philosophy and formal logic have hampered rather than advanced knowledge, and could be for the most part abandoned.
14. That simile, metaphor, and poetry, are legitimate and useful methods of communication, provided speaker and hearer are conscious that they are being employed.
15. That the test of valid meaning is: first, survival of the individual and the species; only second, the enjoyment of living during the period of survival.
But the semantic discipline is not to be achieved verbally. One must practice it, as in other disciplines. Training in semantics gets into the reflex arcs of the nervous system and after a while we respond, as an airplane pilot responds to a shift of wind or pressure.
Applying the test of operations to statements whose referents are hazy; by asking what, when, where? Final validity in science rests on doing, on performing an operation, not on talking. Extrapolation and shaky assumptions may dominate the field, when the scientific method is undeveloped. It is a safe rule that any study where students cannot agree upon what they are talking about is outside the scientific discipline.
The semantic student will know a fact from an inference as a watchdog knows his master from a chicken thief. He will know when an inference is a ✓sober hypothesis and when it is a ✓drunken extrapolation. He will cut down on his use of ✓the “is” of identity. He will try never to forget that words are ✓as much symbols as x and y and have no power in themselves. He will be extremely conscious of ✓high-order abstractions, constantly on the search for ✓referents, with the ✓operational approach always in his cartridge belt. What the semantic discipline does is to ✓blow the ghosts out of the picture, and create a new picture as close to reality as one can get. One is no longer dogmatic, emotional, bursting with the rights and wrongs of it, but humble, careful, aware of the very considerable number of things he does not know. His new map may be wrong; his judgment may err. But the probability of better judgments is greatly improved, for he is now swayed more by happenings in the outside world than by reverberations in his, and other’s skulls.
His standard of evaluation will be survival (for all) and then comfort: Does this event seem to contribute to improved conditions of human livelihood, or does it not? Intelligent individuals generally should stop feeling obliged to have “sound” opinions on every issue. It is humanly impossible.
First, avoid the waste of time on unanswerable or meaningless questions:
May time have a beginning and an end?
May space be bounded?
Are there parts of nature forever beyond our detection?
Was there a time when matter did not exist?
May space or time be discontinuous?
Why does negative electricity attract positive?
Is heredity more important than environment?
What is truth?
What is economic value?
Is the soul more important than the body?
Is there a life after death?
What is national honor?
What is a classless society?
Does labor create all surplus value?
Is the Aryan race superior to the Jewish race?
Is art more important than science?
So observes William James. Example: God, being the first cause, possesses existence per se; He is necessary and absolute, unlimited, infinitely perfect, one and only, spiritual, immutable, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. This is an impressive philological parade, but it gets one no nearer to an understanding of God. It is all high-level (meaningless) abstractions.
The abstraction of “original sin” is one of the most troublesome ever contrived. It assumes that men will get into mischief unless they are chronically unhappy, worked long hours, rigidly disciplined, and filled with a sense of inferiority. This is supposed to give them character. From this unverified premise emerges the ferocious dogma of hard work, the equally ferocious dogma of the character-building attributes of poverty and slum-dwelling, the fear of mass leisure, the fear of decent living-standards for all citizens, and indeed the persistence of the paradox of plenty. Influential people quake at the prospect of an ample living for all, because of their indoctrination with the logic of “original sin.” (Really, they just want everything for themselves.)
When this is combined with another logic-monster which takes the form: In 1798, Malthus published his famous essay on population, one of the grandest examples of extrapolation on record. The essay was in part designed to answer William Godwin’s argument to the effect that mankind could achieve happiness through the use of reason. Malthus wanted to scotch the dangerous idea that happiness was in prospect for the mass of the people. (The principle of “original sin” again.) So, by study of the exceedingly unreliable statistics of the time, he laid down two postulates: first, that population tends to grow at a geometrical rate; second, that the food supply tends to grow at an arithmetical rate. The population of England was then 7,000,000; in a hundred years if the curve was followed it would be, he said, 112,000,000. If food was sufficient for the 7,000,000 in 1800, by 1900 the supply would expand to feed only 35,000,000—“which would leave a population of 77,000,000 totally unprovided for.”
With no standard, no proof, anywhere in the premises, a brand of philosophy can be overthrown as easily as it can rise up.
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What, then, are we reformers to do? I modestly suggest that we divest our minds of immutable principles and march after tangible results. Use the ballot box, social legislation, collective bargaining, co-operative associations, the TVA structure, conservation programs, holding-company regulations, stock-market control, central banking, public ownership—if, as, and when, the context of situation, after study, gives promise for an advance. An advance to what? To making John Doe and his family more comfortable and more secure.
But let the fight be on the real situation. Let us see clearly a possibility of success. And let it be known that we are going after adequate goods, services, jobs for all, rather than after “classless societies” or some “co-operative commonwealths.”
Civilized living is impossible without machinery to settle disputes. If we accept this, and also accept the statement that legal decisions are always made by human beings, we can admire those who assume the difficult task of finding the facts and rendering decisions, and be grateful to them. But their belief filters enhance the bad effects of the judges’ prejudices, passions, and weaknesses, for they tend to block self-examination by the judges, for their own mental processes. Judges develop a kind of oracle complex. “It has become compulsory and respectable for judges to give explanations of their decisions in so artificial a manner as to ensure, to the maximum, the concealment from other judges and from other people, about their judicial biases and predilections.”
Legal terms, Manifest intention, prudent negligence, freedom of contract, good faith, ought to know, due care, due process, reasonable, such terms are used as if they had precise meaning, thereby creating an appearance of continuity and uniformity which does not in fact exist. A special legal style, says Wurzel, has been developed, with such phrases as “we must assume as proved,” “it appears to be without foundation,” “we cannot justly doubt.” It is the purpose of such phrases to make the difference between the probable facts of a case, and the inference drawn from them as inconspicuous as possible.
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Semantics promises a method to make a difference in everything it touches, and it excites me as a (word) craftsman; more, it seems to promise a revolution in the process of thinking.
From 1870 to 1914 in the United States, this kind of thing did not make so much difference. Men were busy overrunning a continent, and words could not seriously deflect the course of hustling and impetuous action. But those of us who have lived through the Great War, the Great Boom, the Great Depression, and now observe the rise of the dictators abroad are not so easy in our minds as were our fathers in the days of Cleveland and McKinley.
Semantic analysis helps to explain many baffling contradictions. Why are Christian preachers so ferocious in time of war? Why do well-to-do church members oppose laws against child labor so bitterly? Why is Tammany Hall, the notorious den of political brigands, so kind to poor people? Why do great scientists like Eddington and Millikan bring Heaven into their deductions, if not into their experiments? Why are radicals so bent upon exterminating one another through factional splits? Why do socialist mayors call out the police to beat up strikers? Why are people with deplorable opinions frequently pleasant to talk to? Why do moral sinners often have such a good time? Why can’t we find the money to finance better living-conditions when we readily find it to finance better dying-conditions? Why is a balanced budget no longer a sacred symbol when a nation goes to war? Why is the right of private property enforced in many areas but not in the anthracite coal district of Pennsylvania? Why do we close down factories when unemployment is spreading? Why do all of us have such a dreadful time living up to our principles?
At what point befuddlement becomes a dominating characteristic, and the needle swings to anti-survival, no one can say. We desperately need a language structure for the clear communication of observations, deductions, and ideas concerning the environment in which we live today.
What possibilities of survival and happiness may be found here - now? Not up in the “Beyond”—but here! With this open-mindedness, flexibility, skepticism, perhaps men can find many more things which are true, which bring a measure of peace and happiness, than were ever assumed in an abstract Heaven, nor in its ancient dictates of obedience.
The promise of the semantic discipline lies in broadening the base of agreement. Under the going canons of philosophy, theology, and the rest, there is no possibility for wide agreement. Referents are way too few.
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You may know many of these premises from your life experience. But are you strict in applying them? I think we all need a reminder, and really the practice to watch our words and those of others at all times. So I suggest reading the full book.
I was just looking for links, and I found some terrible ones with just dirty photocopy scans. So I uploaded my own pdf here:
and here is a good epub version:
https://zlib.pub/download/the-tyranny-of-words-3brvnsjp7qdg?hash=1a72bf477cbbac201e1ccde77806deda
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