#e-prime

A few scientists have taken to writing in E-Prime (notable Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. E.W. Kellogg III). Bourland, in a recent (not-yet-published) paper tells of a few cases in which scientific reports, unsatisfactory to sombunall members of a research group, suddenly made sense and became acceptable when re-written in E-Prime. By and large, however, E-Prime has not yet caught on either in learned circles or in popular speech.

(Oddly, most physicists write in E-Prime a large part of the time, due to the influence of Operationalism -- the philosophy that tells us to define things by operations performed -- but few have any awareness of E-prime as a discipline and most of them lapse into "isness" statements all too frequently, thereby confusing themselves and their readers. )

Nonetheless, E-Prime seems to solve many problems that otherwise appear intractable, and it also serves as an antibiotic against what Korzybski called "demonological thinking." Most of this book employs E-Prime so the reader could begin to get acquainted with this new way of mapping the world; in a few instances I allowed normal English, and its "isness" to intrude again (how many of you noticed that?), while discussing some of the weird and superstitious thinking that exists throughout our society and always occurs when "is" creeps into our concepts. (As a clue or warning, I placed each "is" in dubious quotation marks, to highlight its central role in the confusions there discussed).

As everybody with a home computer knows, the software can change the functioning of the hardware in radical and sometimes startling ways. The first law of computers -- so ancient that some claim it dates back to dark, Cthulhoid aeons when giant saurians and Richard Nixons still dominated the earth -- tells us succinctly, "Garbage In, Garbage Out" (or GIGO for short).

The wrong software guarantees wrong answers, or total gibberish. Conversely, the correct software, if you find it, will often "miraculously" solve problems that had hitherto appeared intractable.

Since the brain does not receive raw data, but edits data as we receive it, we need to understand the software the brain uses. The case for using E-Prime rests on the simple proposition that "isness" sets the brain into a medieval Aristotelian framework and makes it impossible to understand modern problems and opportunities. A classic case of GIGO, in short. Removing "isness" and writing/thinking only and always in operational/existential language sets us, conversely, in a modern universe where we can successfully deal with modern issues.

To begin to get the hang of E-Prime, consider the following two columns, the first written in Standard English and the second in English Prime.

Standard English

1. The photon is a wave.

2. The photon is a particle.

3. John is unhappy and grouchy.

4. John is bright and cheerful.

English Prime

1. The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments.

2. The photon appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.

3. John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office.

4. John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.

..."

- Robert Anton Wilson

Imagine the human skull as a haunted house. The ghosts in this house are the verbs "to be"—is, are, am, was, were, be, being, been. Poltergeists of identity. They sneak into our sentences and nail signs on things: THIS IS A TREE. HE IS A COMMUNIST. SHE IS CRAZY. I AM A FAILURE.

But the ghost is the nailer, not the nailed. The map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal.

E-Prime is the exorcism. E-Prime is English without any form of the verb "to be." You cannot say "X IS Y" in E-Prime. You cannot say "X IS." You cannot identify, you cannot define, you cannot predicate essence. You must speak of process, relationship, perception, measurement.

Instead of "The electron is a wave," you say "The electron appears as a wave in this experiment." Instead of "He is a jerk," you say "He behaved in ways I found irritating yesterday." Instead of "This is a dog," you say "This resembles what we call 'dog'."

See the difference? The ghost has fled. The nailed sign has become a floating hypothesis.

Why does this resolve misunderstandings? Because most human arguments are not about territory; they are about conflicting maps, each claiming "THIS IS THE TERRITORY." When you forbid "is," you forbid the semantic arrogance that mistakes symbol for symbolized. You cannot fight about whether Jones IS a fascist; you can only discuss what Jones said, whom Jones punched, which policies Jones advocated. The argument shifts from ontology—the imaginary realm of "essences"—to experience, the only realm we actually share.

And verbal hallucinations? Korzybski, the general semanticist who inspired this, pointed out that the word "is" creates a neurological confusion between levels of abstraction. When you hallucinate, you hear voices that ARE real, you see things that ARE there. The verb declares identity between your internal neural firing and external objective events. E-Prime quietly suggests: perhaps it is not that the voices ARE real, but that I am having an experience I call "hearing voices." The hallucination loses its ontological fangs.

Thus E-Prime is a linguistic technology for undelifying our delusions. It keeps our feet in the mud of process and our heads out of the clouds of metaphysics. It is a grammatical Heimlich maneuver for a civilization choking on its own absolutes.

Na foto-konkursu, održanom u Mađarskoj, “Budapest International Foto Awards 2020 edition“, pored učesnika iz celog sveta, a u konkurenciji autora koji su fotografisali za kampanje svetskih brendova, među nagrađenima je i fotograf iz Srbije, Tijana Janković-Jevrić.

| LookerWeekly