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HungryTurtle comments on Rationally Irrational - Less Wrong
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If you accept that statements as much as if not more than biology are what define humans, then it become very interesting.
What's an example of a statement that defines humans more than biology? I still think that we're talking about a contradiction/paradox in the map, not the territory.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that for humans the map is the territory.
I think we've gotten down to the root of our disagreement here. Obviously you find that "for humans, the map is the territory" is a productive framework to do your analyses within. I don't know much about sociology, anthropology, or philosophy, but is this the standard theoretical framework in those fields?
The problem I have with it is that the territory is still there. It doesn't change depending on how accurate our map is. Yes, humans perceive the rest of the universe, including their own bodies, through a very narrow sensory window, and that information is then processed by messy, biased, thrown-together-by-evolution brain hardware. We can't step out of our heads and see the territory "as it really is". But we do have some information, and we can seek out more information, and we benefit from doing that, because the rest of the universe exists and will have its effects on us regardless of what we believe.
Now, I think what you might be trying to say is that what kind of map you have has an effect on what you do and think. I completely agree. Someone could state that 'humans are irrational', and if they believed it to be true, it might influence their behaviour, for example the way they treat other humans. Someone else could state that 'humans are rational', and that would affect the way they treat others, too. You could say that the map goes out and changes the territory in that particular example–the causal arrows run in both directions, rather than it being just the territory that is fed in to produce the map.
This is a useful point to make. But it's not the same as "the map is the territory." There's a lot of universe out there that no human knows about or understands, and that means it isn't on any maps yet, but you can't say that by definition it doesn't exist for humans. Hell, there are things about our own body that we don't understand and can't predict (why some respond differently to treatment than others, for example), but that doesn't mean that the atoms making up a human's tumour are confused about how to behave. The blank is on the map, i.e. our theories and understanding, and not in the territory, and it's a pretty irritating blank to have, which tons of people would like to be filled.
As a side note: I looked up the word 'paradox' on my desktop dictionary, and there are 3 different definitions offered.
I think #1 is the standard that most people keep in their head for the word, and #2 and #3 are closer to the way you were using it. Apparently they are all acceptable definitions!
I think a gap in our communication is the type of map we visualize in our use of this analogy. When we say map, what type of map are you envisioning? This is just a guess, but to me it seems like you are imagining a piece of paper with topography, landmarks, and other various symbols marked out on it. It is from this conception of a map that you make the claim "the territory is still there." I imagine you see the individual of our analogy with their nose pressed into this type of parchment moving solely based on its markings and symbols. For you this is a bad choice of navigating, because the individual is ignoring the reality that is divorced from the parchment.
Is this an accurate portrayal of your position within this analogy?
When I say, "The map is the territory." I am not talking about piece of parchment with symbols on it. I literally mean that the map is the territory. As when you navigate by the moss on trees, or the stars in the sky.
When I say "the map is the territory" as in moss or stars, I am implying that humans do not have the type of agency/power over the map that the latter analogy implies. A map as a piece of paper is completely constructed through human will. a map that is the territory is not.
You say
By saying the map is the territory I am implying that it cannot be filled in; that humans do not construct the map, they just interpret it. There is nothing to be filled in. Do you see how these are radically different interpretations of map? I see this as the point of difference between us.
To answer some of your side questions- - This theory is the core of modern anthropology, but only some sub-divisons of the other mentioned fields. In philosophy it is highly controversial, because it questions the entire western project of philosophy and its purpose. - If you look back to my original post to arran, I state that there are multiple definitions of a paradox and all are acceptable. That what is fruitful is not trying to argue about which definition is correct, but to accept the plurality and try to learn a new point of reference from the one you have been trained in.
But if you close your eyes and envision your knowledge and understanding of a particular area–I don't know, different types of trees, or different types of cancer, or something–you're not referring to the territory. Not right at that moment. You're not out in the field holding leaves from 6 different types of North American trees, comparing the shape. You're not comparing cancerous to normal cells under a microscope. You're going by memory, by concepts and mental models and words. Humans are good at a lot of things because of that capacity to keep information in our head and navigate by it, instead of needing those leaves or slides right in front of us before we can think about them. I call those mental concepts a map. Do you call them something different?
Maybe you're trying to say that humans can't arbitrarily create maps. When you create your beliefs, it's because you go out there and look at leaves and say to yourself "wow, this one has lobes and looks a bit like a ladder...I'll call it "oak"." You don't sit at home and arbitrarily decide to believe that there is a kind of tree called an oak and then draw what you think an aesthetically pleasing oak leaf would look like. (Actually, there are some areas of human "knowledge" that are depressingly like this. Theology, anyone?)
Still, if you're later reading a book about insects and you read about the 'oak gall beetle' that infests oak trees and makes them produce galls, you don't have to go back to the forest and stand looking at a tree to know what the author's talking about it. You remember what an oak tree looks like, or at least the salient details that separate all oak trees from all maple and fir and tamarack trees. I'd call that navigating by the map.
You are not divorced from the territory. When you close your eyes the images and ideas you create are not magically outside of the territory they are the territory. In my analogy with the moss and stars the mental concepts are the moss and stars. Closing your eyes as opposed to seeing; reading a book as opposed to being there; these analogies setup an inside-outside dichotomy. I am saying this is a false dichotomy. The map is the territory.
What I am trying to say is that reading from a book vs. being there and closing your eyes vs looking are not opposites. They appear to be opposites due to the philosophical position engrained in our language. The map-territory divide is erroneous. The map is the territory; the territory is the map. There is no inner mental world and outer "real" world; this supposes a stratification of reality that simply does not exist. Our minds are not abstract souls or essential essences. The human brain and everything it does is a part of the territory.
Is that what you think I'm trying to say? No wonder you are disagreeing! The last thing I believe is that our minds are 'abstract souls.'
Of course, the images and thoughts and ideas in your head are not magically happening outside the universe. If someone could look at the "source code" of the universe from the outside, they would see your neurons, made out of atoms, running through all the steps of processing a mental image of, say, an oak leaf.
But that mental image isn't the same as the physical oak leaf that you're modelling it off! Your 'mental world' runs on atoms, and it obeys the laws of physics, and all the information content comes from somewhere...but if you have a memory of an oak tree in a forest 100 miles away, that's a memory, and the oak tree is an oak tree, and they aren't the same thing at all. In the universe source code, one would look like atoms arranged into plant cells with cellulose walls, and one would look like atoms arranged into neurons with tiny electrical impulses darting around. You can imagine the oak tree burning down, but that's just your mental image. You can't make the actual oak tree, 100 miles away, burn down just by imagining it. Which should make it obvious that they aren't the same thing.
If you've been understanding the phrase "the map is not the territory" to mean 'human minds are essential essences that don't need to run on physics", then you've gotten a misleading idea of what most of us belief it to mean, and I apologize for not pointing that out sooner. Most people would find our fault is in being too reductionist. I think the problem might be that what we're calling "map" and what we're calling "territory" both fit under your definition of "territory", while you consider the "map" to mean a hypothetical outside-the-universe 'essential essence.' Does that capture it?
So I don't really know what to say. Because you have definitely captured it, but it is like you don't see it in the same way I do? I don't know. You say
But to me the idea that a physical oak leaf and your mental image are not the same thing is the same thing as saying you believe in 'abstract souls' or a hypothetical outside-the-universe 'essential essence.' It is the modern adaptation of the soul. Just as the croc is the modern adaptation of the shoe. It is packaged differently, and there are some new functional elements packaged in, but ultimately it stems from the same root.
When you see an oak tree and when you think about an oak tree it triggers the same series of neural impulses in your brain. Athletes visualize their actions before doing them, and this provides real benefits to achieving those actions. For humans, there is never any "physical oak leaf" there is only ever constructs.
Okay I think I understand what you're trying to say. So let's go back to our hypothetical observer outside the universe, looking in at the source code. (Not that this is possible, but I find it clarifies my thinking and what I'm trying to say.) The human is looking at an oak tree. The observer is looking at the human's brain, and sees that certain neurons are sending signals to other neurons. The human is closing their eyes and visualizing an oak tree. There's a similar but not identical neural pattern going on–I find the subjective experience of visualizing an oak tree using my imagination isn't quite the same as the experience of looking at one, but the neural firing is probably similar.
Now the human keeps their eyes closed, and the outside-the-universe hypothetical observer looks at the oak tree, which is made out of cellulose, not neurons. The oak tree starts to fall down. In the neural representations in the human's head, the oak tree isn't falling down, because last time he looked at it, it was nice and steady. He keeps his eyes closed, and his earplugs in, and the oak tree falls on his head and he dies. Up until the moment he died, there was no falling oak tree in his mental representation. The information had no sensory channel to come in through. Does that mean it didn't exist for him, that there was never any "physical oak tree?" If so, what killed him?
I think the LessWrong overall attitude to this is comparable to a bunch of observers saying "gee, wouldn't it have been nice if he'd kept his eyes open, and noticed the tree was falling, and gotten out of the way?" The philosophy behind it is that you can influence what goes into your mental representations of the world (I'll stop calling it "map" to avoid triggering your 'modern equivalent of the soul' detector). If you keep your eyes closed when walking in the forest (or you don't get around to going to the doctor and getting a mammogram or a colonoscopy, or [insert example here]), you get hit by falling trees (or your cancer doesn't get detected until it's Stage 5, at which point you might as well go straight to palliative care).
For me there's something basically wrong with claiming that something doesn't exist if no human being knows about it. Was the core of the planet solid before any human knew it was molten? Is an asteroid going to decide not to hit the Earth after all, just because no telescopes were pointed outwards to look for it? What we don't know does hurt us. It hurts us plenty.
Granted, the 'map and territory' claim, along with many other analogies rampant on LW, was aimed more at topics where their is fairly clear evidence for a particular position (say, evolution), and people have ideological reasons not to believe it. But it goes just as well for topics where no human being knows anything yet. They're still out there.
In another comment, you said that you don't think hard science is possible. (Forgive me if i'm misquoting.) Since our entire debate has been pretty much philosophy and words, let's go for some specifics. Do you think research in hard science will stop advancing, or that is should stop advancing? If so, why?
Correct.
Incorrect.
To understand the distinction, note this passage from The Simple Truth:
'belief' corresponds to 'map'; 'reality' corresponds to 'territory'.
Your position seems to be that "hard" science is impossible. I'm a big fan of Kuhn and Feyerabend, but it is possible to make accurate predictions about the future state of physical objects. If the map (my beliefs about physical objects) and the territory (physical objects) were indistinguishable, then there's no reason to ever expect accurate predictions. Given the accuracy of predictions, the overwhelmingly likely conclusion is that there is something outside and independent of our beliefs about the world.
This may help articulate the point of the map/territory metaphor. In short, the only completely accurate depiction of California is . . . the physical object California. But people tend to mistake maps of California for the thing itself. When they find an error in the map, they think something is wrong with California, not their image of California.
In an oversimplification yes.
I agree that it is possible to make accurate predictions about the future state of physical objects.
I don't follow your reasoning here. I see my beliefs as both derived from and directly impacting the "territory" they exist within. I don't see how this denies the possibility of accurate predictions.
I am familiar with this work, but the map/territory metaphor depicted here is inadequate for the purpose of what I am trying to convey. I disagree with the core ontological assumption being made here, namely a divide between the map and the territory.
I'm not sure if that metaphor is designed to be a deep philosophical truth so much as a way to remind us that we (humans) are not perfect and make mistakes and are ignorant about stuff, and that this is bad, and that the only way to fix is it to investigate the world (territory) to improve our understanding (map).
Do you disagree that studying the world is necessary to improve the state of human knowledge? Or do you disagree that we should improve the state of knowledge?
But what about all the lovely benefits of hard science? The fact that now we have computers (transistors are only possible due to the discovery of quantum mechanics as a model of reality), and airplanes (man that took centuries to happen), and intravenous antibiotics? What are all these things due to, if not hard science?
I definitely think learning and studying are important, but I guess I would disagree as to what type of knowledge it is we are trying to improve on. In the last couple centuries there has been a segregation of aesthetic and technical knowledge, and I think this is a mistake. In my opinion, the endless pursuit of technical knowledge and efficiency is not beneficial.
I recommend Thomas Khun's the structure of scientific revolutions. He suggests revolutions in scientific knowledge are by no means the product of scientific reasoning. I definitely think we are capable of transforming reality and learning more about it, I just don't think this process of transformation is in itself beneficial.
I'm starting to get a feeling that our disagreement is more ideological than factual in nature.
I'm reading between the lines a lot here, but I'm getting the feeling that you think that although: a) you can look at the world from a reductionist, the-territory-is-out-there-to-study way, and b) you can make scientific progress that way, BUT c) scientific progress isn't always desirable, THUS d) if you use your own world-view (the oak leaf in your head is the only reality), then e) we can focus more on developing aesthetic knowledge, which is desirable.
What would you say is an example of aesthetic knowledge? How would you describe a world that has too much tech knowledge compared to aesthetic knowledge? How would you describe a world that has a healthy balance of both?
Side note:
I'm a nursing student. A lot of what we learn about is, I think, what you would call 'aesthetic knowledge'. I'm not supposed to care very much about why or why not a patient's cancer responds to treatment. That's up to the medical specialists who actually know something about cancer cells and how they grow and metabolize. I'm supposed to use caring and my therapeutic presence to provide culturally sensitive support, provide for my patient's self-care needs, use therapeutic communication, etc. (You may detect a slight note of sarcasm. I don't like classes that use words like 'therapeutic communication' or 'culturally sensitive' and then don't give us any examples or teach us how.)
And yeah, a lot of medical doctors are kind of tactless and not very caring, even though they're right about the diagnostic, and that's not very nice for patients. But it's not the technological advance that causes their callousness; it's the fact that some human beings don't know how to be nice to others. Society needs to work on that. But that doesn't mean society shouldn't work on a better cure for cancer because it will make doctors arrogant.
There are lots of consequentialist reasons to think twice about rapid progress. Like: we don't always understand what we're doing until we've done it and 50 years later there's a huge hole in the ozone layer. Is that enough for me to unilaterally oppose progress? No. I was a breech baby–I'd have died at birth if I was born 100 years ago–and I kinda like being alive.
I was under the impression that, according to you, this "something" is completely inaccessible to us, as evidenced by the incommensurability of our models. But maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe with some very technical definition of "inaccessible." We know enough about what's out there to be able to make predictions, after all.
I do think that many scientists assert that certain facts are in the territory when they are actually in the map. Over and above the common errors that non-scientists make about the map/territory distinction.
As far as I understand (and I could be wrong), you believe that it's possible to construct two different models of "what's out there", both of which will yield good predictions, but which will be incommensurate. If this is true, how can you then say that we "know enough" about what's out there ? Sure, we may have a model, but chances are that there's another model out there which yields predictions that are just as accurate, and yet has nothing whatsoever to do with the first model; thus, we're no closer to understanding what's actually real than we were before. That's not "knowledge", as I understand it, but perhaps you meant something else ?