Xref: utzoo sci.misc:1172 talk.philosophy.misc:953
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From: jsb@actnyc.UUCP (The Invisible Man)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The nature of reality.
Keywords: reality credibility validity
Message-ID: <755@actnyc.UUCP>
Date: 26 Mar 88 18:34:05 GMT
References: <343@thirdi.UUCP> <732@actnyc.UUCP> <356@thirdi.UUCP> <27440@linus.UUCP> <363@thirdi.UUCP> <746@actnyc.UUCP> <371@thirdi.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsb@actnyc.UUCP (The Invisible Man)
Organization: Diet Software
Lines: 50

In article <371@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
)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!

Well, I hope I don't have to.  But map this: If I did you would experience
something directly.  (if not I'd do it again till you did :-)  Now you may
argue that it isn't *really* directly since there's all this intervening
nervous system and the like but I would reply that you had it all backwards.
Perception, as an interpretation of how we relate to the world, is just an
after the fact mapping; an organization of our direct experience (which in
this case paradoxically defines it as indirect).  You say that maps are all
we've got.  But to paraphrase Buckaroo Bonzai, what ever we've got..., thats
what we've got.  Arguments that there is more than *that* are just mis-mappings.
You can't argue with tautologies!

)>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.

Yes, but the prediction doesn't make it true.  It just tells you where to look.

)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.

Where's my stick?  

And by the way, that obnoxious fellow in "newage" who responded to you has a
point.  Don't dismiss him out of hand.
)-- 
)"The map may not be the territory, but it's all we've got."
)
)Sarge Gerbode
-- 
286,000 miles per second.  It's not just a good idea, it's the law!

				jim (uunet!actnyc!jsb)