Who Are The Friends of Semantics?
Albert Wohlstetter and M. G. White
MR.
s.
I. HAYAKAWA
in the New Republic of August 2 under·
takes to defend semantics. Convinced that its attackers have badly
misunderstood this study, he proceeds to a long, very imposing
counter-attack on their "primitive two-valued orientation." He
says: semanticists do not believe they can save the world; and
people who claim they do are guilty of the very linguistic errors
semantics is supposed to eliminate. Such errors flow from a "two–
valued" approach; we must use a many-valued logic and surrender
Aristotle's law of the excluded middle. Another savage survival we
must get rid of is the identification of things and their names.
Now these recondite warnings, so we are told, have enormous
practical significance. For example, they furnish unique scientific
support for institutions of democratic capitalism. We learn that
such familiar doctrines as the separation of the judiciary and the
legislature are "multi-valued" in orientation. The above is far from
· a complete account ·of Mr. Hayakawa's article. The points listed
are only those of general importance. They illustrate a widespread
.'tendency which is very influential in contemporary political dis–
cussion. Consequently the issues involved are larger than the mere
settlement of a debate between Mr. Hayakawa and
PARTISAN
REVIEW.
The bearings of semantics on our day-to-day opinions
deserve more serious consideration.
In his eagerness to embrace semantics in general, Mr. Haya–
kawa has lumped figures of the most disparate abilities and beliefs.
The result has been a pernicious blurring of the meaning of
'semantics' although we are promised clarification of that very
term. Any heading that covers groups of thinkers so sharply sep–
arated as:
(l)
Chase, Arnold, Jerome Frank, Korzybski and (2)
Carnap, Tarski, Felix Cohen, Malinowski, is bound to result in
intellectual confusion. What is more, it perpetuates the confusion
created by Korzybski and Chase themselves. Like them Mr. Haya·
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