Institute of General Semantics

I address this thread mostly to Milton as I see it most often crop up in his writings:

I have trouble understanding the meaning of the phrase "the theory of time-binding," esp. in light of how GS uses the word "theory."

It feels to me that the sense of the word "theory" in the phrase "the theory of time-binding" differs from the scientific sense of the word. I think my confusion comes from trying to use the scientific sense in understanding the phrase, failing to understand the phrase from that perspective, and searching for a different sense of the term to decode Milton's phrase, unsuccessfully.

I should point out that Milton did not coin the phrase. I believe the phrase shows up in AK's work, though I don't know for sure. It has baffled me there, too. But hopefully Milton can translate the phrase into another phrase so I can understand what he means when he says that.

Thanks in advance!
Ben

Hey Ben,
Just to add to your confusion , Korzybski called his work the 'General Theory' ('G.T.' ) of Time-Binding, in the Time-Binding papers of 1924, 1926.

Bruce, any simple translation of that phrase from your studies?

Korzybski provided his definition of "time-binding" in these places.

My up-to-date abstraction:
Time-binding: cross-generation learning using symbolic communication resulting in exponental growth of information. (Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. 2009)

By adopting empiricism (extensional orientation) to select from the exponential accumulation of information, and by using only valid reasoning methods, we can reduce the store of information to a managable amount of (strongly) corroborated maps - "knowledge" of our environment. But what of literature, plays, fiction, religious belief systems, and more? We accumulate those too, but not as knowledge.

Time-binding plus empiricism plus valid reasoning produces knowledge, just a fraction of the information accumulated by the time-binding activities of symbol users.

Thanks, Ralph. I don't really have trouble with the term "time-binding." Rather, I have trouble with the phrase "the theory of time-binding" ( or as Bruce points out, "the general theory of time-binding" ).

I would like to have a clearer understanding of what a person means when s/he talks of time-binding as a theory in this way.

Starting with Bruce's expansion "The General Theory of Time-binding".

Some abstractions.

Time-binding is often thought of as one of the principles of of general semantics --despite the founder's statement on page 7 of Science And Sanity "In the present volume I undertake the investigation of the mechanism of time-binding." Each one of the general semantics principles constitutes part of the theory of time-binding.

In the opening sentence of "The Introduction To The Second Edition": Science and Sanity: An introduction to Non-aristotelian Systems and General Semantics..... was intended to be a textbook showing how in modern scientific methods we can find factors of sanity to be tested empirically.

If we 'structiure' scientific activity we find factors such as: emphasis on structure-order-relationships, variables, functions, calculus, non-linearity, clear (unambiguous) 'thinking', etc.--a focus on how 'things' are interrelated, how they behave and interact, etc., rather than putting emphasis on and valuing what 'things' are--an orientation which often results in unresolvable arguments, irreconcilable differences, and sometimes violence.

From the premise that science and mathematics provide us with examples of human thinking at its best (in terms of predictability), and a valuing of this--General Semantics was formulated as a generalization of the approach and methods of science and mathematics. Korzybski generalized many scientific and mathematical notions to principles including non-allness, non-identity, non-elementalism, non-additivity, semantics of the calculus, consciousness of abstracting, and others.

General Semantics was offered as a theory--"a testable proposal", "a suggestion", "a method", "an inference", "a procedure set forth for acceptance or rejection and offering the possibility" that our usual way of thinking involving "allness", "identification", two-valued (either/or thinking, etc., leads us towards insane and unsane attitudes and behaviors. General Semantics involves "a proposal" that we can improve our usual way of 'thinking' about 'things', and make progress (I have expanded on what I intend by "progress" in the article "Practicing Conscious Time-binding") by applying the methods of science and mathematics (general semantics principles) as modifiers of our usual ways of evaluating, relating to, and doing 'things'; and that in doing this, we are likely to achieve a measure of success in whatever we do--comparable to the successes achieved by scientists and mathematicians.

Whether we are aware of this or not (not only in science), our whole existence is based on 'theories' (See "Theories in Everyday Living" at <miltondawes.com>) . But a theory (an idea, an explanation, a belief, a proposal--and to be rigorous even what we see) is not the territory we 'theorize' about. (For more see Science And Sanity second paragraph page 11.) To help us recognize and practice this proposed saner way of 'thinking', general semantics 'offers' "consciousness of assumption", consciousness of projecting, and consciousness of abstracting, dating, indexing, and others for us to try, and put to the test for ourselves.

Hope this helps.

Korzybski published papers using the title "Time-binding: The general theory".

[Korzybski] introduced the term "Time-binding" to cover all the factors "as-a-whole" which made man, a man. We may agree that man differs somehow from animals by the capacity for building this accumulative affair called civilization. ... civilization is a joint affair of all ....

Universal Peace ... depends ultimately on Universal Agreement.
Universal Agreement—is finally based on Rigorous Demonstration. Rigorous Demonstration—absolutely depends on Definitions.
Definitions—are ultimately conditioned by
Correct Symbolism.

... A prototype of correct symbolism we may find in mathematics.

... If we want to talk sense about the ideas "man" and "animal", wemust have them sharply defined, otherwise confusion must follow. ...

We observe again our genetic series; we note that "man" is an accumulative class of life with a special high rate, in that the son may start where the father ended, and that "animals" are not accumulative, or, if accumulative, they are so with a different and slower rate. With Korzybski we label these two different rates of accumulation "Time-binding" for "man," and "Space-binding" for "animals."

... the mechanism of this rapid accumulation (Time-binding, [PR^t (Principle times rate raised to the power of time)]) ...


Korzybski observes mankind's general behavior - using language and symbols to build civilizations that accumulate information at an exponential rate - and uses that behavior as his primary distinguishing factor to classify man as distinct from animals. He supports this with quasi-scientific knowledge and much speculation as to how humans individually perform behaviors that result it the accumulation at an exponential rate - at a time when little was known about the detailed functioning of the human nervious system. He has a broad gap between the material and the abstract in his "theory" to account for how we do it loosely subsumed under the term "abstracting", which he illustrates with the structural differential. We are just now mapping regions of the brain that activate during various types of speech and behivior (including introspective reports of "thinking" ) . [When subjects were asked to think about running, brain scans revealed activity in the motor cortex area corresponding to the legs.] But we still cannot map and correlate specific brain circuits with individual words, and our indicataions are that these will vary from individual to individual, if it ever becomes possible to non-distructively examine individual circuits.

It's clear to me that at some level we must "identify" a symbol with brain activity, though we are not capable of finding or mapping specific brain activity. Some work with individuals during conscious open brain surgery have observed that pin-point electrical stimulation evokes memory responses and other responses in the subjects - according to their conscious reports.

This gap between the material and the immaterial (abstract symbolic) has another form - Cartesian dualism - distinguishing mind from body, going back centuries of study in philosophy. As scientists (and materialists), we assume that for every symbol heard or utters, there corresponds active physical brain circuit activity. Obviously these differ from individual to individual as much as fingerprints - and that is a problem. How can any of us ever mean the same thing? General semantics and time-binding, the general theory, in spite of the insistence on clear definitions does not answer this question. We see continual arguing and disputes as to how to interpret general semantics among the so-called, alegged, would-be, etc., "general semanticsts".

Time-binding seems to be formulated and we cannot argue about Korzybski's formulations per se; only about how we re-formulate, paraphrase, or interpret them.

The phrase The general theory of time-binding, it seem to me, was meant by Korzybski to remind us also of the mechanism that he hypothesized as the means by which individual activity results in the exponential accumulation by societies - including learning, abstracting, adding to, and, above all, documenting in symbols, symbols that will be available to succeeding generations.

We learn to do the "same things" in spite of the fact that we "believe" there is no "sameness" of anything to anything else or even of itself from time to time. I chalk it up to "mirror neurons". We each "live" in our own abstractions made up of myriads of interlocking dynamic categories. It's a wonder that we communicate at all.

Hi Milton,

I really just seek a kind of synonym so I can better understand you when you say things like "the theory of time-binding."

You say above:

General Semantics was offered as a theory--"a testable proposal", "a suggestion", "a method", "an inference", "a procedure set forth for acceptance or rejection and offering the possibility"

[...]

But a theory (an idea, an explanation, a belief, a proposal--and to be rigorous even what we see) is[ [...]

So, as a synonym for that phrase when you use it, do you mean something like "the idea of time-binding," "the proposal of time-binding," "the belief of time-binding," ... or something else?

Really, I seek just a simple answer to a simple question.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I specifically introduced some synonyms (testable proposal, suggestion, a method, etc.) which I thought would help. I did not use "belief" as I wanted to emphasize scientific "testability". The problem in interpretation might be simplified if we were more extensional and moved from words, and more words about words, to what we were refering to in using the words. The word "theory" as I use it, relates to "an idea we have about some situation which we can put to the test". If I decide to take another route to work with the idea that this is a faster way to get to work, I can put this idea (words and the meanings and significance I give to them) to the test--and I can also simply believe this is a way to get to work faster--and do nothing about this. But I take the route to see if the idea (words, belief, theory) corresponds to the 'facts' --I did get to work faster or not.

"Time-binding" (these words here) relates to a behavior. Generally we are not conscious of this behavior. The behavior (as I understand it) involves improving what we do. We receive information regarding others' doings; we can observe effects of our own doings. Language contributes greatly to the passing on of information. Language is not the only way we pass on information. Korzybski formulated general semantics as a theory (a way) we could become more conscious of our usually non-conscious time-binding behavior. The general theory of time-binding (Science And Sanity) relates to ways to improve the behavior in question so we could become more skilled in this behavior and derive more benefits by applying specific principles and methods. The theory will be corroborated if we apply the principles and get the results we expected.

Sorry. I cannot answer a 'simple' question with a simple answer. Some questions are not as simple as they appear or were intended .

So given your synonyms, when you say "the theory of time-binding," you mean something like "the idea of time-binding," "the testable idea of time-binding," etc. Does that sound about right? I just wanted a clarification. As you can tell even by your own replies, the word "theory" stands for many different other words, one can find it hard to interpret.