Take a look at http://www.generalsemantics.org/Articles/TOBECRIT.HTM
TO BE OR NOT TO BE: E-Prime as a Tool for Critical Thinking
E-Prime! — The Fundamentals
At 05:50 PM 10/23/2001 +0200, you wrote:
>Another nice quote from Korzybski is:
>
>There is a tremendous difference between 'thinking' in verbal terms, and
>'contemplating', inwardly silent, on non-verbal levels, and then searching
>for the proper structure of language to fit the supposedly discovered
>structure of the silent processes that modern science tries to find. If we
>'think' verbally, we act as biased observers and project onto the silent
>levels the structure of the language we use, and so remain in our rut of
>old orientations, making keen, unbiased, observations and creative work
>well-nigh impossible. In contrast, when we 'think' without words, or in
>pictures (which involve structure and therefore relations), we may
>discover new aspects and relations on silent levels, and so may produce
>important theoretical results in the general search for a similarity of
>structure between the two levels, silent and verbal. Practically all
>important advances are made that way.
>
>It is quoted in Thierry Bardini's book about Doug (p. 33) and at the
>following address: http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/ak2.htm (Alfred Korzybski,
>WHAT I BELIEVE).
>
>Gil
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@thinkalong.com]
>>Sent: mardi, 23. octobre 2001 17:20
>>To: unrev-II@yahoogroups.com
>>Subject: [unrev-II] Speaking & Thinking with E-Prime
>>
> From the creators of the statement "The Map is not the Territory"
><http://www.generalsemantics.org/Articles/SPEAK_E.HTM>http://www.generalsem
>antics.org/Articles/SPEAK_E.HTM
>
>Consider this excerpt:
>"In essence, E-Prime consists of a more descriptive and extensionally
>oriented derivative of English, that automatically tends to bring the user
>back to the level of first person experience. For example, if you saw a
>man, reeking of whisky, stagger down the street and then collapse, you
>might think (in ordinary English) "He is drunk." In E-Prime one would think
>instead "He acts drunk," or "He looks drunk," both of which statements
>obviously coming closer to an accurate description of the actual
>experience, and involving fewer covert assumptions than the English
>original. After all, one might have encountered an actor (practicing the
>part of a drunken man), a man who had spilled alcohol on himself undergoing
>a seizure of some kind, etc., etc. The E-Prime statement still leaves these
>possibilities open, whereas the "is" statement does not. Although E-Prime
>usually reduces hidden assumptions, it does not exclude them (for example,
>you may have seen a woman, or a robot, or an alien, etc. that looked like a
>man and acted drunk). E-Prime fosters a worldview in which the user
>perceives situations as changeable rather than static, and where verbal
>formulations derived from experience indicate possibilities rather than
>certainties. Subjectively, I have found my creativity greatly enhanced, as
>many problems that "are unsolvable" in ordinary English only "seem
>unsolvable" in E-Prime! This shift in attitude can make a great difference.
>Thus, removing the "to be" verb from English results in a language of a
>more phenomenological character, in that this change automatically causes a
>reduction of the number of assumptions in even simple sentences. Statements
>made in E-Prime almost always mirror first person experience far more
>adequately than the "is" statements they replace. E-Prime also greatly
>encourages one to use the active voice ("Smith-1 did it") rather than the
>often misleading and information-poor passive voice ("it was done"). Of
>course, as Bourland pointed out, one can continue the modification of
>E-Prime even further, adding for example the alterations and
>non-aristotelian tools that Korzybski recommended (dating, indexing, etc.),
>bringing one to E-Prime-k. My own version of E-Prime (E-Prime-p) aims at a
>phenomenological ideal, of ever more adequately representing the territory
>of my experience while ever more clearly communicating with others."
>
>I pose this excerpt, in some sense, as a follow up to my earlier posts on
>Loglan, a language for speaking and thinking with logic.
>
>I also pose this excerpt since I think it is, an some other sense, related
>to the evolution of a Collaborative Literacy, as is being developed by Jeff
>Conklin and his colleagues.
>
>Robert Rosen took Aristotle to his limits in trying to formulate a means of
>modeling complex systems. The generalsemantics.org folks are speaking in
>non-aristotelian terms, and, largely, for the same purposes. Frankly, I'm
>having some problems getting my brain around the differences in
>approach. Perhaps, somewhere 'out there', we might have an opportunity to
>discuss this particular line of reasoning. That, because, I think, if we
>don't find a way to articulate what we think in terms that others will be
>able to unambiguously understand what we are saying, then (brace
>yourselves), all this OHS/DKR stuff will be for nought (or words to that
>effect).
>
>Cheers
>Jack
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