"The little word 'is' has its tragedies; it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger. Whenever I use the word 'is,' except in sheer tautology, I deeply misuse it; and when I discover my error, the world seems to fall asunder and the members of my family no longer know one another." George Santayana, "Skepticism and Animal Faith," 1923.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Korzybski built his non-Aristotelian system on the rejection of the 'is of identity'or, in positive terms, the principle of individuality ... that no two situations, individuals or stages of processes are the same in all details. The disregard of this principle, according to Korzybski, was the foundation of many misevaluations. His prescription for avoiding or treating the identity disease was training in differentiation. In particular, Korzybski devised a system for helping us differentiate between the different orders of abstraction. This meant training to differentiate generalizations from particulars, words from their referents, descriptions from inferences,'emotions' from the situations that evoked them ....
Korzybski noted that identity reactions can be promoted by the structure of languages. We say, for example, "the apple is red," and the result is that we confuse our response to the apple, "red," with the apple itself. In the dark, we would not see the apple as red; if we were wearing tinted glasses we would not necessarily see the apple as red; if we were 'color blind' we may not see the apple as red .... The structure of our statement, "the apple is red," can induce us to misevaluate the situation and lead to unnecessary shocks. A more structurally appropriate formulation would be "I see the apple as red." Here the observer is included in the statement, leaving open the option that other observers may abstract something different.
We say "Milt is black" and, as a result, may evaluate Milt more on the basis of what he has in common with others ("black") and less on his individuality.
Korzybski cautioned against the thoughtless use of 'is' that implies identity, especially when applied directly to objective levels ... "it is a cup." He wrote: "... the use of the is of identity, as applied to objective, un-speakable levels, appears invariably structurally false to facts and must be entirely abandoned." (S&S p751)
As a result of Korzybski's warnings, movements such as E-Prime developed to try to purge all uses of the term "is." Curiously, though, Korzybski did not practice anything that remotely resembles E-Prime. He used "is" in its varied meanings throughout S&S and in his later writings and speeches.
From the first edition of Science and Sanity (1933):
And from Korzybski's Introduction to the Second Edition of S&S (1941):
And from Korzybski's Preface to the Third Edition of S&S (1948):
These pages are quite representative of Korzybski's published writings and represent Korzybski at different stages of his gs formulations. Clearly, Korzybski did not find it necessary to avoid all uses of 'is' and its relatives. Instead, what he wanted to do was to change the meaning of 'is' and its relations inside us.
Meanings are inside of us and are not intrinsic to words. "Milton is writing" and "Milton is a Canadian" both contain "is" yet we evaluate these two "ises" quite differently because the different contexts evoke different meanings in us. Some would refer to the second use of "is" as "is of identity," but in the Korzybskian system this can be quite misleading because identity refers to a confusion of two or more entities or stages of processes within our evaluations. The naked statement "Milton is a Canadian" does not give us any evidence that the person making the statement is confusing Milton with any other Canadian. The naked statement does not tell us that we do not appreciate the individuality of Milton, only that we know something about Milt's origin or citizenship.
Because "identity" and "identification" have such specialized meanings within the Korzybskian system, I suggest we refer to uses of "is" as in "Milton is a Canadian" as the "is of classification." This labelling is much closer to the facts, and does not induce us to jump to conclusions. If we assume that a person is identifying just because he uses the is of classification, we are pre-judging ... committing the same type of mistake we are supposedly trying to teach others to avoid. And we would have to condemn Korzybski for identifying every time he left statements that contain the so-called "is of identity" within Science and Sanity.
When we uncritically condemn the use of the "is of classification" as revealing identification we are like the linguistic snobs I wrote about in The Grammar Gestapo who compulsively "correct" other people's pronunciations and meanings, thereby objectifying their own evaluations.
When Korzybski referred to the "is of identity" he meant the "is of classification used to mean identity." Unfortunately, those who understand AK's theory only superficially have missed this point with riotous consequences.