Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As I understand it, it refers to the response, which is conditional on personal (non-verbal?) meanings applied to an event. An example might be if someone sees a criminal and says "he believes in law and order." A verbalistic/"elementalistic" analysis wouldn't be able to understand how such a semantic reaction is formed.
Though to be honest, Korzybski is quite confusing, so I possibly misunderstood. I just think it's a neat term for the relationship between map and territory (Korzybski coined the phrase) when specifically talking about how people respond to things.
For clarity, it isn't just mismatched reactions, it's any reaction. One of his goals was to teach "extensional" semantic reactions (ie. non-elemental, multi-level) such as more use of words like "I don't know," I have run into some of this in my experiments with E-Prime. I ended up using a lot more of the phrase "I don't know at present" rather than things that let one off the hook like "I'm not sure" (which often implies that I have an idea and knowledge is just around the corner, and does so without explicitly trying to justify that claim).
More options
Context Copy link