Words and models – a systems approach to linguistics

Implicit context

One of the reasons why the notion of ‘context’ has been badly understood is that it has always been equated with explicit context. However, the statement “King Leo of Ruritania arrives tomorrow at Southampton” will ‘mean’ something different to different people, depending both on the nature and the amount of relevant information they possess.

Thus, the information value of the statement will be much greater for the king’s nephew currently reading PPE at Oxford, and the Chief of Protocol who will be responsible for his reception, while it will be much lower for Joe Bloggs who is a greengrocer at Nuneaton. In each case, a very different context will be implied.

Ogden and Richards seem to consider [9] that words are only valid within a specific and restricted context, which they refer to as a “universe of discourse”. They write:

“All definitions are essentially ‘ad hoc’. They are relevant to some purpose or situation, and consequently are applicable only over a restricted field or ‘universe of discourse’.

“Taken out of the universe of discourse, it becomes a ‘metaphor’ and its use is no longer possible in a scientific context: [10]

“When a word is taken from one universe of discourse to another one, we obviously have the case of a very apparent metaphor, which is unlikely to lead to any verbal ambiguity save that which might be exploited in the grossest of puns. The resemblance between the use of the same word in two universes of discourse, being so flimsy, only the vaguest analogy obtains.”

They therefore accept the notion of a ‘context’ – but by stating that only a specific type of context is acceptable for a particular word, they attach too great an importance to the meaning of the word and not enough to that of the context.

Ogden and Richards’ view is, of course, consistent with the unfortunately still prevalent view that the various disciplines constitute independent fields of enquiry that are unrelated to each other.

To avoid ‘verbal ambiguity’, what is important is not to restrict the use of words to a limited number of different contexts but to specify the context in which they are used and in terms of which, their precise meaning will be apparent.

Indeed, the use of words connoting or implying a particular context in a different, explicit, one is the basis of most linguistic ambiguities. To understand this point, one must comply with Korzybski’s dictum of concentrating on the actual events in the world, that a particular proposition represents, rather than on the words constituting this proposition. We will take an example. Let us consider the following propositions:

1. England has declared war on China.
2. England has beaten the West Indies at Lords.
3. England has 56 million inhabitants.
4. England is the shaded area on the map.

The first proposition refers to a certain number of middle-aged men sitting round a table who, together, constitute the British Government. The second refers to a team of 11 youngish men dressed in impeccable white flannels playing cricket at Lords; the third to an island occupying about 90,000 square miles off the Northern coast of the continent of Europe and the fourth to the small area on the page of an atlas.

In each of these four cases, the use of the word ‘England’ is quite legitimate but in each case it refers to something very different. All things denoted by it, though structurally very different, are, in other respects sufficiently similar to justify their being referred to for specific purposes as “England”. If, however, the term is used for other purposes, ambiguity must result.

In each of these four cases, the term ‘England’ stands for an implicit model. We know that when we say “England beat the West Indies”, we are referring to a cricket team and not to the Government, nor part of a page on a map, nor to the entire British people. The information value of this statement is quite high to any inhabitant of England but particularly high to those who know something about cricket.

If, however, a Martian were to hear the latter phrase used out of context, he would ‘legitimately’ conclude that if England can beat the West Indies, their chances of beating China, if war were declared, would be gauged by examining China’s cricket record against the West Indies.

This may be considered an absurd example but it is, nevertheless, illustrative of the point I am trying to make. Let us take some less ridiculous ones. This same error characterises, without exception, all the highly admired dialogues of Plato. When Socrates asserts his intellectual superiority over his opponents, he is merely showing himself up as being a greater master of the art of using words out of context. Look at this passage from the Symposium: [11]

“Consider, then, whether when you way ‘I desire what I possess’ you do not really mean, ‘I wish that I may continue to possess in future things which I possess now.’ If it were put to him like this he would agree, I think.”

“Yes”, said Agathon.

“But this is to be in love with a thing which is not yet in one’s power of possession, namely the continuance and preservation of one’s present blessings in the future.”

“Certainly.”

“Such a man, then, and everyone else who feels desire, desires what is not in his present power or possession and desire and love for that object, things of qualities which a man does not at present possess but which he lacks.”

“Yes.”

“Come then,” said Socrates, “let us sum up-the points on which we have reached agreement. Are they not first that Love exists only in relation to some object and second that that object must be something of which he is at present in want?”

“Yes.”

“Now recall also what it was that you declared in your speech to be the object of Love. I’ll do it for you if you like. You said, I think, that troubles among the gods were composed by love of beauty for there could not be such a thing as love of ugliness. Wasn’t that it?”

“Yes.”

“Quite right, my dear friend and, if that is so, love will be love of beauty will he not, and not love of ugliness?”

Agathon agreed.

“Now we have agreed that Love is in love with what he lacks and does not possess.”

“Yes.”

“So after all Love lacks and does not possess beauty?”

“Inevitably.”

“Well, then, would you call what lacks and in no way possesses beauty, beautiful?”

“Certainly not.”

“Do you still think then that Love is beautiful, if this is so?”

“It looks, Socrates, as if I didn’t know what I was talking about when I said that.”

“Well, it was a beautiful speech, Agathon. But there is just one more small point. Do you think that what is good is the same as what is beautiful?”

“I do.”

“Then if Love lacks beauty and what Is good coincides with what is beautiful, he also lacks goodness.”

“I can’t find any way of withstanding you, Socrates. Let it be as you say.”

“Not at all, my dear Agathon. It is truth that you find it impossible to withstand: there is never the slightest difficulty in withstanding Socrates.”

In this nonsensical argument, Socrates is transferring the connotations of the phrase “lacks and does not possess” from one context to another, as if it had a definite meaning on its own, rather than as part of a given context.

Logic has, on the whole, been a fairly fruitless pursuit. Korzybski goes so far as to say:

“Academic philosophy and formal logic have hampered rather than advanced knowledge and should be abandoned.” [12]

The main thing wrong with logic is that it considers words by themselves, as if they have a reality of their own, and can thus be transferred with total abandon from one context to another.

Take a stock example of a mediaeval syllogism:

• Major premise: No cat has eight tails.
• Minor premise: Every cat has one more tail than no cat.
• Conclusion: Therefore every cat has nine tails.

It needs no lengthy explanation to point to the fact that the word “no” is merely used in a different way in the major premise than in the minor premise, providing us, thereby, with a totally absurd conclusion. If one again abides by Korzybski’s dictum of finding the referent, i.e. looking beyond the words at what in fact is going on, no ambiguity is possible. In such a case, one would be using the term ‘no’ with its full information value in each case, i.e. by considering the model of the world implied by the use of the term ‘no’, and not just regarding the explicit symbol ‘no’, which by itself communicates no more information than does any isolated unit of a model.

Let us take another example: a paradox formulated by the mathematician Frege:

“In a village there was only one barber, who shaved only those who didn’t shave themselves. The question arises if the barber shaves himself; if we say Yes, then he didn’t shave himself; if we say No, then he shaved himself.” [13]

The solution to this problem is quite simple – the term ‘shaved’ is a high order absubstraction; if we think of the processes or events that it describes rather than the word itself, we can imagine totally different processes, which fall within this linguistic classification. Among these processes are two in particular which are relevant to this case: one is shaving a customer seated in front of him for a fee; the other is shaving himself in front of a mirror. In most contexts, the use of a single term “shave” for these processes is quite sufficient.

We have hit upon an example where, to avoid ambiguity, two different terms describing these two different processes are necessary. The Eskimos have four words for snow; the Navaho differentiate between three different types of cause, as did Aristotle, and if the Germans distinguished between the two different uses of the word “shave”, then Frege’s paradox could no longer have been formulated.

Implied contextual transfer

I shall refer to this as the principle of ‘implied contextual transfer’. It is of paramount importance and, as I have already said, the basis of most verbal ambiguities. Let us take the word ‘exist’. The word is usually used to refer to things like tables, chairs, telephones, etc., as having in common the fact that they occupy space/time and whose behaviour is explicable in terms of the natural sciences. The term is also used to apply to things which are very different indeed, such as the particles of an atom.

If we say that the ‘positron’ exists we cannot help but transfer to it, unconsciously at least, some of the characteristics of tables, chairs and telephones. This is clearly a great disadvantage because of the fact that atomic particles have very little in common with such objects. Scientific progress, in fact, as we have shown, has been made in proportion to our ability to understand things in terms other than those of our immediate experience.

In fact, the term ‘exists’ is incorrect. Rather, we should say that it is possible to build a model of our environment by dividing it into objects and processes, such as chairs, tables and telephones, and sitting, eating and telephoning, which is satisfactory for our day-to-day requirements. However, for certain scientific purposes, a more complex model is required, in which the world is divided into atoms and their various four-dimensional constituents. Neither chairs, tables, nor telephones, nor atomic particles, exist. They are in fact just words or models, which are used to represent the world for specific behavioural functions.

The term ‘exist’, however, is not only restricted to chairs and tables and atomic particles but also to ‘universals’ or ‘abstract ideas’, such as ‘beauty’, ‘truth’, ‘God’, etc. Again, we are using the term ‘exist’ in a very different way. These terms have very little in common with chairs, tables and atomic particles. They are terms of very considerable subjectivity, designed for building a simple model of the world around us, for the purposes of day-to-day behaviour.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that when we say “God exists” we are transferring the connotation of concreteness and solidity that we associate with chairs and tables to this concept of God. We are automatically supposing that God, chairs, tables, and atomic particles, have enough in common to justify the common use of the term ‘exist’.

Theologians might reply that God has nothing in common with these other two categories. In fact, they accentuate the abstract nature of God and resent any tendency towards anthropomorphism, which is usually considered as highly blasphemous. Thus Antonio Perez, a minister of King Philip II of Spain, was accused by the Inquisition of threatening to cut off God’s nose. It was not so much the threat that upset them as the implication that God, like we poor ordinary mortals, had a nose. If theologians disapprove of anthropomorphism, why then use the term ‘exist’ to apply to God?

Thus we use the word ‘tree’ because there are many contexts in our everyday conversation where differences between oak-trees, palm-trees, beech-trees, apple-trees, are of no consequence. It is the fact that it is a tree that is important to us. Certain Indian tribes, we are told, have never recognised the usefulness of these classifications, for which they apparently have no need in the context of day-to-day conversation and, consequently, though they have separate words for each different type of tree, they have none for “tree”.

Thus we have words with very little in common, such as ‘typewriter’, ‘obstinacy’ and ‘influenza’ and it would be quite conceivable to invent a new word representing a category into which all three of them could be fitted. Let us call this category ‘typobin’. The trouble with a ‘typobin’ is that there are few statements that we can make about it that are denotatively very significant, since the concepts falling within this category have practically nothing in common. Since we can find no use for ‘typobin’, let us swallow our pride, admit that it was a mistake ever to coin the term, and eradicate it from our already over-encumbered vocabulary.

The word ‘exists’ is in this respect very much like the word ‘typobin’. The things that are said to fall within the class of ‘existing’ things, such as chairs and tables, atomic particles, goodness, truth and God, have no more in common than typewriters, obstinacy and influenza. It is thus denotatively as useless as ‘typobin’ yet we continue to use it – why?

The answer is that, although it has not denotative meaning, it has acquired a powerful connotative one and in this respect the inclusion of such diverse concepts in the category of existing things is no hazard. Indeed, when we say “God exists”, we are unconsciously transferring the connotation of concreteness which the term ‘exists’ imparts to material things such as tables, chairs and telephones to the concept of God. How do we avoid this?

The answer is by refraining from looking at words in vacuo. Instead they must be regarded as the functional units or variables of a model whose role is to represent some aspect of the world for specific behavioural purposes.

References

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