>Date: Wed, 19 Jul 95 20:03:04 -0700 >From: mcpherso (John McPherson) >Subject: Re: Nobelists Sign Declaration of Human Unity I received a notice that some Nobelists have signed a "Declaration of Human Unity", and I thought it would be useful to take the opportunity to analyze their statements from a general semantics perspective ... ================================================================= Re: >A DECLARATION OF HUMAN UNITY HAS BEEN SIGNED They don't say what "HUMAN UNITY" means. >by four Nobel Peace laureates Appeal to authority? >Find out how the virtual community [...] can intervene to optimize >the prospects of life on earth for ourselves and our children. The word "intervene" can be interpreted in many ways! A key referrent is being left out ... intervene against whom? I then sent off for their free offer of the full statement ... Re: >IF I ASKED "ARE YOU A HUMAN BEING?" >You would likely answer "Of course I am a human being." Identification with a higher order abstraction? >almost everyone else act out of unexamined beliefs that who we really >are is White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Christian, >Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Conservative, Liberal, and on and on. It is these >lesser identities which determine the course of our lives. I don't think identifying with any particular subgroup is all that much worse ... in fact it may represent a step towards extensionalization. What if we carried that process to its natural conclusion to find that we all ultimately act on our beliefs of who we 'are' as unique individuals? Of course, it's possible that many people do tend to operate to some degree "as a member of some group". Korzybski did offer a way of "unifying" humanity by considering every human individual as a "timebinder" because that's one function that seems somewhat common to nearly all of us (and of course individuals vary greatly as to how well and in what ways they exercise that function). On the other hand, I'm not sure how far one can go with that generalization for the purpose of "uniting" humanity ... sure, we're all timebinders, but we've bound conflicting doctrines and each human individual timebinds uniquely so disagreements would seem inevitable. The part about "unexamined beliefs", on the other hand, seems promising, and it seems very possible to me that g.s. may be of relevance there. What might be possible if we were human beings above all else? So far they haven't offered anything about what human beings "are" ... in one sense, we _are_ all human beings, and human beings do all kinds of things such as we see in the world today and in the past. But it's obvious they mean it in a normative sense, though I'm not quite clear on exactly what they have in mind. Evidently their "human being" 1 is not "human being" 2 :-) Perhaps we could change the fate of the world. Well ... if I choose to zig instead of zag, I've just changed the 'fate' of the "world", but of course that's not what they mean ... but what in the world _do_ they mean? It seems to me that this piece is operating at an extremely high order of abstraction, though I do experience some pleasant feelings when reading this non-referential prose ... WE HEREBY DECLARE OUR UNITY AS HUMAN BEINGS BEYOND ALL OUR DIFFERENCES Um, just how much overlap are we talking about here? 1% ? If we each abstract out all of our personal differences in order to match with all the other abstracted humans, then how much of us is left over and what is left over? timebinding organisms who eat / eliminate, reproduce sexually, move around, shelter themselves from the elements, etc. They can't mean this literally, so maybe they mean it in terms of our interactions with each other ... treat each human being "as a human being" and not as a member of some subgroup? How about treat each human being as an individual human being with a unique configuration of 'characteristics' who in turn responds to you, all in some particular unique subenvironment? If you like what we are doing, please include a $5 donation. Ha! Maybe I'm just too much of a cynic, but ... Whereas, the very existence of all human beings is substantially at risk, many of our institutions are impaired, and the possibilities of human life are unfulfilled, and Pure unsubstantiated generalities! I assume they are assuming we already know what these high order abstractions mean ... Whereas, our action together universally as human beings for our common survival and fulfillment is becoming a clear necessity, and ??? What action? More unspecified generalities ... heavy employment of "allness" as well as identification. But ... doesn't it _sound_ good and positive? :-) Whereas, effective means of communication are now available to unite all human beings Um, "harmony" on USENET? Methinks they're operating in a dream world ... and may later suffer from IFD disease (Wendell Johnson, _People in Quandaries_) and therefore to maximize the prospects of all human beings for a secure and full life It's far from clear that their proposed "unity" (still unspecified) is necessary to maximize the "prospects" of 'all' human beings. Perhaps the earlier discussions of Game Theory and the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma have some bearing here ... We invite all peoples throughout the world to act together as human beings in support of our shared priorities from survival to fulfillment. What are these "shared priorities"? And what does that boil down to extensionally? It is our lives as human beings which we share in common beyond all our differences such as race, sex, religion, class, culture, and nationality. Sounds very "noble", but still completely unspecified, hence highly intensional. We affirm the simple fact of our humanness as the bedrock reality of our lives and institutions. By bringing our common humanness to the foreground of our lives, we will be able to act together with all other human beings to meet our priority needs and shared aspirations. More of the same ... feel-good rhetoric with little, if any, substance. [...list of signers...] STEVE ALLEN - humorist and author, Los Angeles, California I think he at least has had some connection with g.s. RAVI SHANKAR - composer, sitar virtuoso; Member of Parliament, India Hey! Extensionally speaking, I _love_ many of his recordings :-) So, on the whole, it looks to me like very little if anything has been said in their document, but I guess if it gives one a little pleasure to sign and "be a part of it" then what the hell ... the good feelings at least are somewhat extensional :-) -- John McPherson (mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu) * Host, General Semantics mailing list (send posts to gs@lumina.ucsd.edu, admin to gs-request@lumina.ucsd.edu) ftp://lumina.ucsd.edu/pub/.../gs_dir/000_gs.html "General semantics ... an idea whose time was bound (to come ;-)."