Xref: utzoo sci.misc:1148 talk.philosophy.misc:946
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!thirdi!sarge
From: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The nature of reality.
Message-ID: <371@thirdi.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 88 07:48:56 GMT
References: <343@thirdi.UUCP> <732@actnyc.UUCP> <356@thirdi.UUCP> <27440@linus.UUCP> <363@thirdi.UUCP> <746@actnyc.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Organization: Institute for Research in Metapsychology
Lines: 31
Keywords: reality credibility validity
Summary: It's just maps, all the way down.

In article <746@actnyc.UUCP> jsb@actnyc.UUCP (The Invisible Man) writes:

>[T]he map is only real as 'map territory', mapable as meta-map.  Will some
>Zen master please hit Sarge with a stick?

Please don't!  I hate violence, even from a Zen master.  Besides, I *agree* that
the map is only real as map territory.  I can't conceive its being real as
anything else.  So you don't have to hit me.  Pleeeze!

>New territory cannot really be *inferred* from a map any more than the
>existence of New Jersey is implicit in the existence of Staten Island.

I don't really understand this point.  We make models of the universe all the
time and predict hitherto unobserved phenomena from them by extrapolation.
That is a principal means of discovery.

And can we ever know the territory directly?  I think not.  As has been
pointed out ad nauseum, all our sensory data comes to us pre-filtered and
per-interpreted.  So all we have, each of us, is his own map.  Certainly, as
you imply, we have different levels of maps -- maps of maps.  And for each
higher-level map, the territory is a lower-level map.  But do we ever reach a
level so low that we have reached a territory that is not a map?  I don't
think so.
-- 
"The map may not be the territory, but it's all we've got."

Sarge Gerbode
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
UUCP:  pyramid!thirdi!sarge