Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Theoretical Introduction & Overview of Radical General Semantics

Gad Horowitz introduces Radical General Semantics [(r)GS] in a keynote address at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 2010. 

The introductory Radical General Semantics lecture:

[(r)GS] in relation to continental philosophy

Introduction to the structural differential

Introduction to the devices of General Semantics.

Lecture 1. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Semantic Blocks to Creativity and Democracy

The first Radical General Semantics lecture:

[(r)GS] and the spirit of democracy

Unsanity: identification of map and territory

Semantic blocks in actually existing democracies

Alfred Korzybski and the general semantics movement

The unfortunate ‘is’ of identity.

Lecture 2. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Event, Object, Label

The second Radical General Semantics lecture:

Korzybski’s Structural Differential:

The event level: what is going on (WIGO)

The object level: sensory experience inside and outside the skin

The distinctively human label levels: language, language about language, etc.

Lecture 3. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Working With the Structural Differential

The third Radical General Semantics lecture:

Is of identity and is of predication

Neurological transform of the event

Linguistic transform of the object

Just seeing and seeing-as

Semantic blocks and damaged life

Silent practice.

Lecture 4.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Entering the Object Level

The fourth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Total domination by verbal definition: the intensional orientation

Sanity: the extensional orientation

The Name of God

Teleology and perversion

Nonlinear life, sex, etc.

Sam Mallin's concept of sinuosity.

Lecture 5.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - The Event Level

The fifth Radical General Semantics lecture:

The event level: absolute relationality

Teaching non-elementalism in high school.

Hua Yen Buddhism: infinite interpenetration of all ‘things’: the jewel net of Indra

Achieving  a non-el orientation to my ‘achievements’.

Lecture 6.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Advanced Silent Practice

The sixth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Continuous silent practice: “Always dwell at the silent level”

Korzybski's pause: ‘neuro-logical delay’

‘Naked Empty Awareness’

Silent practice: looking at a person

Consciousness of abstracting: a state of mind about all states of mind.

Lecture 7.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - The (Spiral) Circularity of Human Thought

The seventh Radical General Semantics lecture:

More on ‘dwelling at the silent level’

More critique of ‘achievement’

The (spiral) circularity of human thought

Cortical-thalamic integration (no more ‘reason’ versus ‘passion’)

Phantom semantic structures, sanity, democracy

Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing

Marcuse’s Essay on Liberation

Participatory Economics.

Lecture 8.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - The Devices of General Semantics

The eighth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Overview of the devices

Index and date in depth

Fascism indexed and dated

Time travel and justice

The date and Whitehead’s fallacy of simple location.

Lecture 9. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Etcetera and Chain Index

The ninth Radical General Semantics lecture:

The object cannot be reduced to the concept

Etcetera

The subject cannot be reduced to its identities

Alterity politics

The multi-ordinal index;

The chain index;

Gorilla nature and human nature.

Lecture 10. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Non-elementalism

The tenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Quotes and hyphens

Damaged life: globalized-smithereened

Humanity-technology

‘Crime’, ‘Intelligence’, ‘independent thinking’, etc.

‘Stuttering’ and self-fulfilling prophecy

A new non-el device: the mobius strip

Society-individual, hive-market

Nature-nurture: lifting the lid of the genome

Steve Fuller’s social-epistemology.

Lecture 11. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Levels of Self

The eleventh Radical General Semantics lecture:

Structural differential applied to myself

Self as world, self as 'somebody', self as stories

Amour de soi versus amour propre

Self observation and self empathy

Alan Watts: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Inner Presence

Albert Ellis’ critique of self worth

Feeling the breath: I am

Ellis’ ‘irrational diagonal’

Jesse Jackson’s sermon: ‘I am somebody’

Confusing excellence and worth

The bipolar disorder of aristotelian civilization

Hopi basketball and communist scrabble

Is a person with less, less of a person?

Radical critique of ‘victims’ rights.

Lecture 12. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Discovering the Person Behind Concepts

The twelfth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Levels of self

‘The infinite worth of human life’

Follow the breath to yourself beyond concepts

Discovering the person beyond labels

H.S. Sullivan’s inter-personal psychiatry

‘there but for the grace of God …’

Lecture 13. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Approaching Non-Violence

The thirteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Looking for ‘somebody’

Is Hitler ‘somebody’?

Electrocuting a murderer

What about ‘choice’?

Animal righteousness and war.

Lecture 14. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Cortico-Thalamic Integration

The fourteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

More meta-model patterns

Violent emotionality and thalamic overload

Silent practice and cortico-thalamic integration

The condominium of certainty and confusion

Magic and war

A case of flag abuse.

Lecture 15.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Crime and Sanity & Justify My Hate

The fifteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Meta-model review

Peace-making criminology

Democracy Means Non-Violence

Eugene Debs, Prison Abolitionist

Abandoning the ‘crime’ script

Justify My Hate

Hate-and-Justice

The projection of evil

Always hyphenate fear-hate

The work of the Devil is

the personification of Evil.

Lecture 16. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Shifting the Focus to Relational Systems

The sixteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Rules versus relationships in the Law

Monstrification: Faces of the Enemy

From Persons to Relational Systems

Two case studies of monstrification;

- ten year old ‘evil freaks of nature’

- ‘keep the racists away from our children’

Multiple perceptional positions

Loosening time-spirit possession

Empathy.

Lecture 17. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] – How to Multiply (Multiple Perceptual Positions)

The seventeenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Becoming Seal

Dialogue of the selves

Making conflict saner

How to observe from third position

How to find non-malevolent intentions of ‘the enemy’

Case studies:

- gay marriage

- Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women

Reciprocal causation in the self-other dynamic

‘Perceptual filter’

Finally: the MPP task assigned.

Lecture 18. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] – Ghandi’s Satyagraha

The eighteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

The many-sidedness of truth

Truth is non-violence

Even ‘paranoids’ have ‘enemies’

Non-violent struggle avoids arousing resentment

Dialogue versus debate

Advocating For the ‘enemy’

Sublimation of anger

- the Mbuti tug of war

- the humming bird and the dinosaur

MOLOCH !

Meditation with anger

The sword of Manjusri

From Gregory Bateson:

- no one is in charge

- ‘to be able to create such a mess looks like power’

A neuro-linguistic basis for socialism.

Lecture 19. Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] – Nothing Personal

The nineteenth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Nothing Personal: Non-A approaches to agency, responsibility, free will, etc.

Ted Honderich’s How Free Are You?

Voluntariness and origination

Free will: multiordinal vertigo

The user illusion

Paranoid libertarianism

Equality of opportunity

Free won’t and Korzybski’s pause

Complexity, chaos and instantaneous determinism

Barnes et al: Understanding Agency

Mutual susceptibility reified as free will

Derrida: taking Freud seriously: no sovereign ego.

Lecture 20.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] – Mapping Responsibility in Bio-Social Space

The twentieth Radical General Semantics lecture:

Multiordinal levels: systemic causation and personal responsibility

Sequential diagrammatic reformulation

Case study: Boris’ Trap: unemployed, worthless …

Michael White: externalizing the problem

Responsibility without blame and shame

Task: working with a ‘character flaw’.

Lecture 21.  Gad Horowitz [(r)GS] - Korzybski’s Timebinding & Husserl’s Phenomenology

The twenty-first Radical General Semantics lecture:

Timebinding: man is not a kind of animal

Mapping the multiordinality of 'Life'

Irigarayan footnote

C-T Integration revisited

Stanley Rosen’s Topologies of the Flesh

Natalie Depraz: ‘Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis’

Bracketing the Natural Attitude

The Object is not the Event

Silent Practice 2.0: Attending to the Act of Attention itself

Husserlian Uncertainty

A poem by Emily Dickenson

What is blue and hollow?

How to feel one’s constitution of the world

Advice from Allen Ginsberg and William Blake: see through the eye

Trigant Burrow’s eye-work.