Copyright © 1997 José Klingbeil. The author hereby grants permission to use this article in electronic form only, in part or in whole, to any person or institution for educational purposes, provided no charge is made for such use.

In the latter, the term "identification" is used with the meaning of recognise (a person, an object, etc.). It is clear that there is no special problem in this meaning: we recognise every day persons and objects around us (except if we are a victim of Alzheimer's disease). We do that nearly all the time and unconsciously, with a speed that upset every scientists in Artificial Intelligence, who work at trying to imitate this function with computers. Our brain's structure is specially adapted to this fundamental function, with its parallel-tasking abilities. It is also clear that general semantics does not advocate that we eliminate this function of our brains: this would lead us directly to a 'mental' hospital ahead of schedule, if there were a schedule for that.

What does Korzybski states, then, when he writes in Science and Sanity:

• p. 196: "'Identity', as we have seen, is invariably false to facts; and so identification produces, and must produce, non-survival s.r, and, therefore, must be considered pathological for modern man.",
• p. 198: "A -system depends on a complete elimination of identification which affects beneficially all our s.r, as experience and experiments show.",
• p. 202: "Experience shows that such identification of symbols with the un-speakable levels works very well with animals. With man, it leads only to the misuse of the human nervous system, semantic disturbances of evaluation, and the prevailing animalistic systems in practically all fields, resulting in the general chaos in human affairs.",
• p. 304: "The key problem is to eliminate, first, the semantic disturbance called identification or the confusion of orders of abstractions, and similar disturbances of evaluation.",
• p. 408: "In training, it is of utmost importance to eliminate identification entirely, which invariably appears as a delusional semantic factor." ?

What can the term "identification" mean, for Korzybski ? An answer to this question is given by a thorough reading of Science and Sanity.

Actually, in a nearly systematic manner, Korzybski links the word "identification" with the expression "confusion of orders of abstractions". It is difficult to quote all occurrences of these terms in Science and Sanity—they are among the most widely used in this book—but here are some examples anyway::

• p. 36: "...the animalistic identification or confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 105: "...confusion of orders of abstractions resulting from identifications..."
• p. 133: "This is due, first, to a confusion of orders of abstractions and to identification..."
• p. 170: "...is involved in identification or the confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 184: "Any identification of inherently different levels, or confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 185: "...all semantic disturbances represent nothing else but a confusion of orders of abstractions, or identifications..."
• p. 187: "Identification, or the confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 263: "...which simply vanish when we stop identification or the confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 276: "...called 'identification', or 'the confusion of orders of abstractions' in general..."
• p. 278: "Any semantic disturbance, be it a confusion of orders of abstractions, or identification,..."
• p. 294: "...such as identification or confusion of orders of abstractions,..."
• p. 304: "...the semantic disturbance called identification or the confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 306: "...disturbances of evaluation called identification or confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 338: "...identifications or confusions of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 372: "Thus the mechanism of identification or confusion of orders of abstractions..."
• p. 396: "...based on non-identification or the differentiation between orders of abstractions..."
• p. 399: "...due to identification or lack of differentiation."
• p. 417: "The consciousness of abstracting eliminates automatically identification or 'confusion of the orders of abstractions'..."
• p. 423: "All of them involve the semantic identification or confusions of the orders of abstractions..."
• p. 446: "... for the prevention or elimination of identification or confusion of orders of abstractions."
• p. 448: "...feeling when identification, or the confusion of orders of abstractions becomes particularly dangerous."
• p. 456: "Identification, or confusion of orders of abstractions, consists of erroneous evaluation..."
• p. 502: "...or in identification or the confusion of orders of abstractions..."

It seems reasonable for me to state that Korzybski indifferently uses the two expressions "identification" and "confusion of orders of abstractions" and reminds it all the way through a more-than-800-pages book. In one case, he gives a name to a neuro-semantic disturbance ("identification"), basis of many 'mental' disturbances, and in the other, he describes an underlying process, systematic to this disturbance ("confusion of orders of abstractions").

It is easy to change from one expression to the other in the following way: when I confuse, at the object level (first level of abstraction) pencil₁ with pencil₂, for example, I neglect the fact that the events are different, that the atoms they are made of are different, etc. In other words, I confuse the event level with the object level. It is then a confusion of orders of abstractions. This formulation is valid for any level and consequently, identification always implies a confusion of orders of abstractions.

Conversely, if I confuse the event level with the object level, every time I shall not be able to perceive a difference between two objects (at first level of abstracting), I will identify them: the two objects will be the 'same' to me and I will react to the second as if it was the other: in other words, I shall identify. There, again, this formulation is independent of the level of abstracting.

The use of the Structural Differential allows a simple visualisation of this, I thus recommend that you use it.

To get back to the common meanings of "identification", we see that there are some similarities with the technical general semantics term, but also many differences. To such a point that I consider that the neuro-semantic disturbance revealed in gs is not a pathological distortion of the usual function but a relic of an infantile semantic reaction, which could not be completely eliminated in adulthood. For that reason, I recommend using rather the expression "confusion of orders of abstractions", instead of "identification", which can be confusing for people untrained in gs.