Note: he's not me, even though our names both start with "ma" :P
I meant that even though we cannot put into words the exact nature of reality, our words, which are about our maps, can still tell other people things about the territory. For example, if I say "it's raining," you could go through "well, P(raining|he said that) is about 0.9, so I'll grab an umbrella."
So my opinion is that the territory isn't especially unspeakable - nothing's perfect.
Thx for the clarification of identity; i was confused. :(
Yes, your example does seem to illustrate the transfer of information about the territory between minds by use of language.
But when you ask "Where did that number 0.9 come from?" things get more complicated.
In my view, 0.9 is a statistic representing a correlation between your map and my map. Territory doesn't even come into it - at least not directly. Suppose I have come up with that 0.9 estimate by keeping track of how often our statements "It is raining" or "It is not ra...
An article at The Edge has scientific experts in various fields give their favorite examples of theories that were wrong in their fields. Most relevantly to Less Wrong, many of those scientists discuss what their disciplines did that was wrong which resulted in the misconceptions. For example, Irene Pepperberg not surprisingly discusses the failure for scientists to appreciate avian intelligence. She emphasizes that this failure resulted from a combination of different factors, including the lack of appreciation that high level cognition could occur without the mammalian cortex, and that many early studies used pigeons which just aren't that bright.