The Map and The Terrain

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

If someone drew map of the American continent and passed it out to everyone such that the majority of the people on Earth believed the map to be accurate, would it necessarily be accurate? More importantly, is the map itself “the American continent”? If the map is redrawn and most people believe the update, did the American continent actually change with the update?

To most people, that would seem to be a seriously silly question to ask. Yet it seems that there are “philosophers” who believe that the only reality is what the mind believes. Generally, it is called “solipsism” but not everyone who believes such things calls it that. Instead, they simply say, “everyone has their own reality” or “reality is subjective”. Or sometimes they simply deny objectivity, “Truth doesn’t really exist”.

That is what Quantum Physics teaches: “The rules of the universe depend upon who’s watching”. The art of magic depends on such things, getting the mind to accept that its misperception is truth, the only truth. It is taught as “Science”. But can you get any more cultish than that? Is there any religious doctrine that is any more magical or mystical than the acceptance that what one believes to be true is the only actual truth, that there is no actual terrain, only the map/belief, that belief is completely all their is, period?

What kind of person really accepts that sort of story? Has the average intelligence become SO low that people really are showing up who seriously believe that the map itself (their beliefs) is the only reality that exists? Or are there merely a lot of people still trying to convince others of such a thing, not really being so mindless themselves?

Perhaps there is some fundamental need for people to believe in irrational magic. And I don’t mean that there are a lot of people who themselves need to believe it, but rather that there is a need for a society to believe in magic in order to maintain that society. Magicians certainly need an audience. Is that what this nonsense is all about? Do societies actually require belief in magic?

Granted in order to manipulate a lot of people, a lot of people must be easily fooled and willing to believe things that any reasonably intelligent person would not begin to believe. But who believes that such manipulation really is necessary and not merely the desire of some lustfully greedy people getting wealthy off of the ignorance and gullibility of others?

Is there truly a need, a true wisdom, for societies to believe in the magic of “mind over matter” or that the “mind is the only matter”, that there is no terrain and nothing but the map, nothing exists but the imagined belief? Other than greed, why would anyone promote such a notion?

2

reality is subjective and truth doesn’t exist. What is objective reality?
You say someone draws a map and it becomes reality but it really doesn’t work that way.
This is just another variation of Plato’s cave. the creation of a false dualism that doesn’t exist.
One person may say reality is x and another person may say reality is y and both are right because
reality is subjective. My reality is the stable middle class, middle age, wife and daughter life in the
suburbs driving an SUV. Whereas another may say reality is young, nights out on the town, doing
the whole drugs, sex and rock and roll thing (which was my reality 30 years ago) and another
may say being black in Ferguson in which the police are actively at war with me and all three
realities are correct. Now which truth is absolutely the TRUTH? I can’t think of any. We all die,
that is an assumption because we haven’t the record of every single human who has lived and someone
or more than one may have lived since the dawn of time, we don’t know. The law of physics being absolute?
Well once again an assumption because we haven’t even left the earth yet and there may be places where
the laws of physics and time don’t operate the way we think they do. You brought up quantum physics
but quantum physics are rules for the very small and we have our rules for the very large,
Einstein and Newton, but we don’t have a union between the very small and the very large.
(which is the next or where the third revolution in science going to be) You can talk about quantum physics
but the fact is we don’t really understand the rules of the very small and I suspect quantum physics will
have a major and radical revision coming at some point which will allow it to have a union with the large.
So to recap, reality is subjective and the truth is relative for each of us. So your truth is your reality
and my truth is my reality and someone reading this has their truth and their reality.

Kropotkin

3

So your answer is that the depth of your philosophy is merely the sophomoric notion that whatever you either have to or choose to put up with in your particular situation in life is the entirety of “reality”. Your focus is so self-centered that to you all of Reality is only about Your own perception and nothing else exists.

= “nothing exists but the map in your head.”
An open door for serious deception, such as;

Since “my” map is truth also. The “fact is” that we DO really understand the rules on the very small. And we are both right … well, until someone “opens our little Schopenhauer box and observes us”. :icon-rolleyes:

I guess that would explain very much of the endless arguing that makes rich people richer, the socialist’s Utopia.

4

K: Which reality is THE REALITY? You tell me? You say there is an objective reality, ok,
please feel free to show us this reality. Tell me about this objective reality of yours and
my only question is going to be according to whom is this reality objective?
I am simply following David Hume in this matter. You know a real philosopher.
I cannot speak about another reality because I don’t have access to another reality.
You say, X, Y, Z are the only known reality and yet I can say A, B, C are the only reality
and who is right? Which platform allows us to know the answer to which reality is TRUE?

This is the reason for the ongoing discussion about which political reality is the right one because
every reality is correct and leaving room for the GOP, right wing to say reality is X, Y, Z and leaving
the left to say, A, B, C, and who is right? Not knowing which reality is the right one is the reason for
the ongoing battle between the left and right.

So where does this leave us? The left has been front and center about toleration being a key factor
in personal and public lives. If we cannot choose which reality to pick, than clearly one must
have toleration for the many views and realities that exist to allow each reality a voice.
You say that is the path to anarchism and disorganization and how is that any different than what we have
today? The existing battle matches the universe long battle between organization and entropy.
The political, social, economic battle we are having today, is simply another pitch battle
between organization and entropy. a battle that has been going on for 13.8 billion years and one
that will be going on long, long, long after we are dead and buried.

Kropotkin

5

So you really seriously propose that if I can’t tell you which map is more accurate, then there is no terrain at all?

And my only question is whether you are bright enough to understand what I had said when I explained it. You are suggesting that if you are not personally bright enough to verify a map, then there is no terrain for a map to be verified against.

“I don’t know what color the object is, therefore I know that it has no color at all.”
“I don’t know John Powers, therefore I know that John Powers doesn’t exist.”

Yes, I “know a real philosopher”. The question is, do you? And it seems that if you do not, then you know that real philosophers don’t exist at all.

6

K: the terrain looks different to everyone. For me the terrain is hilly, (I live on the san Francisco peninsula
it is quite hilly here, whereas my family lives in northern ILL. where it is quite flat, who terrain is “more real”,
why both terrains reflect reality to the individual. So my family can claim, rightfully so, the world is flat and
I can claim the world is hilly and rightfully so.

I was born with a handicap, (severe hearing loss) so if you ask me if high pitch noise exists, I can tell you
no, because I cannot hear high pitches, such as violins, whistles, many women’s voices, quite a few telephones.
Now high pitch noises may exist but not for me, that is not my reality, without my hearing aid I cannot hear
high pitches. so reality for me is different than reality for you because you take such noises for granted
whereas I cannot hear them (without my hearing aid). A hearing aid changes my reality because it allows me to
hear noises I cannot normally hear.

this is not a question of intelligence, are you smart enough to understand me, but a question of
realizing reality, matter, the world, whatever you like to name, is different for everyone.

there is no set, objective truth to hang your hat on. You cannot say "this truth is the truth yesterday,
the truth today and the truth tomorrow. there is simply nothing you can say that suggest this because
we are by definition, limited in our access to knowledge, limited in access to our terrain, limited
in what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. there may well be a objective terrain as
you suggest but we can never know it so it really doesn’t matter if there is an objective terrain,
we can never know it. So we must operate with the known facts which say, reality is subjective,
truth is subjective because we cannot know any better.

Kropotkin

7

Why do you assume that either of you can claim anything about the whole world based upon only what you can personally see? No one is in a position to personally see that the Earth is spherical. So by your reasoning, no one can claim it to be and therefore it isn’t. What is wrong with someone saying that “at your different location the world is different than at mine, yet there is only one whole world”?

Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the things that you cannot see affect and cause the things that you DO see?

You are claiming that about 6 billion people don’t exist merely because you don’t know them. You are extrapolating your very, very limited perception to a very, very presumptions (even hubris) extreme of declaring what the whole world is, not merely that your tiny portion is what you experience.

“Reality is no more than my little bubble of perception.”
And you insist that nothing more than that exists = “arrogance”.

8

try this.

We have what are called facts. We have facts such as the earth is 93 million miles from the sun,
New York has 8 million people, The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, the earth is round.
the problem with these so called facts is they aren’t true. The earth in its rotation around the sun
can drift anywhere from 92 million miles out to 94 million miles away from the sun. The figure of 93 million
miles is simply a number that gives us some idea of where the earth is, but not an absolute fact because
it changes. The true population of New York can actually never be determined. You have deaths, births,
moving in and moving out, so the figure of 8 million is just a number, not an actual fact. You can actually
never know the exact number of people in New York. Is the earth round, well actually no, It is pear shape,
to be honest, but again not exact because even the earth changes shape. We use simple facts to
to approximate reality, not the exact reality because that is impossible. neither the map or the terrain
is what it appears to be, it is just an approximation because the actual reality can never known.
Will Kropotkin die? I would guess so, but in fact, we don’t know until, if and when Kropotkin actually dies.
It is just another assumed fact, an approximation if you will. If reality itself changes and quite clearly
it does because those material items we call reality, the earth, sky, land, animals, sea, even space and time
changes, so how can we draw a map of a reality that consistently changes, evolves. I can draw a map of
the room I am sitting in typing this, but my wife (as she often does) will change the room around and now
my well drawn map of reality has changed. So any map we draw is simply a map of this second because
in the next second the map could be wrong. If the map is changing and the terrain changes, then
how do we know where we are? Quite often we don’t know. Thus the value of ideologies and ism’s.
they exist as maps of the terrain and when the terrain changes as it must, the ideology the ism must
change to meet the new reality but the ideology can never change fast enough to meet the changing
terrain and so we left with outdated ideology. Thus we have come to the point of where we are today.
the terrain has changed but our ideology hasn’t and we have a map that is out of date for the terrain
we are facing and thus now you have the answer as to why the world seems to be as fuck up as it is,
we are using outdate ideology to navigate a modern world. You are navigating without a map
of the modern world, using old ideology to navigating the modern world, and that is why you are
so often wrong. Instead of dismissing me outright, take a moment and think about it? Just stop
pause, listen, what maps are you using?

Kropotkin

9

So let me see if I got this right because what you are saying is a little hard to comprehend.
Are you saying that someone married You?
Do you think it was out of actual love? Or was he perhaps just desperate?

You say that everything is changing and not exactly true.
So have you checked your map recently?
What did you compare it against?

10

James, I think the map is the terrain, for all intents and purposes, to a certain degree. Of course you’re not going to make it in life if you don’t realize that there’s a definite structure underneath you, or if you don’t realize that not everything is a matter of opinion. But, the map has a tendency to be a bit more vague than the actual terrain. The generalization that occurs when we quantify everything can sort of leave ambiguity, or seeming ambiguity for the people who are down on the ground and holding the map. BUT, those people would be up shit creek if they threw out the map because of this. Whether or not there’s a theoretical way to calculate and map reality such that we can have a universal way to describe things is another question entirely, but I think it’s an interesting one. I believe that pretty much everything that can be will fit into some category, and because of that, somewhere in the discourse on the subject there’s an answer to the question of what’s fundamental in the world.

It may come down to something like this, “we take in data through our senses. since this happens a certain way, it cannot be happening the opposite way. since there are things that aren’t available to the senses it seems, then we are dealing with a world that is filtered through this system of perception that superimposes a kind of order onto everything that may or may not be there outside of us viewing it. Since we can’t see it any other way, we may as well assume that order is real, as for all intents and purposes it’s pretty much is, since it’s inescapable. so we might as well work within it, assuming it’s a map, or some framework for reality”.

People who think that you can think hard enough, or try hard enough and that you’ll be able to solve the problem of first cause don’t understand shit like this. They go on and on in both directions with the same flawed reasoning. The truth is that there’s shit you can know, and there’s shit you can’t know and no amount of groundbreaking observation or methodological rigor will change that. It’s built into the way we take in data. So that’s our map. The terrain will mirror it closely enough to facilitate our being able to understand and control a great deal of our environment.

11

K: Which reality would you have me check my map against? Your reality, my reality, bob’s reality,
Mr. reasonable reality? we all have a different reality and thus different terrain (reality and terrain
are really the same word) Maps are just ism’s and ideologies that we use to navigate the terrain.
I would suggest that ism’s and ideologies are giving you (and all two dimension people) wrong information
about the terrain and thus you are reacting to something that doesn’t match the terrain thus leading you
astray.

Kropotkin

12

Peter, I disagree that we all have different realities.

I think that there is one world, and that we’re all looking at it. Now, people can feel one way or another or want things one way or another, but the reality is that there’s one world, and that it’s the same for everyone once you strip away the opinions that are tied to the individual perceptions of it.

Can bob decide that his reality is one where Earth isn’t mostly covered in water? Can Sam decide that in his reality he can fly by flapping his arms?

Some things are necessarily true for everyone, some things are possible for some people and some things are possible for other people, and some things are possible for all people. Some things are impossible for anyone and everyone.

You can’t fly, you can’t just be wrong about how much water is on Earth. But you can decide how you feel about those facts. Reality is out there, and it’s fixed, (as far as what we can perceive is concerned). Individual perceptions may be part of the overall reality if you include everything that there is, but they don’t have much bearing on the fundamental nature of things. Sure…people can decide they want a certain political climate and change things. That’s possible. But they can’t decide to have more resources that are available on Earth. Necessity, possibility, impossibility. Those things are the same and they’re the rudimentary map that we should start with.

13

K: but people fly everyday and you can be wrong about how much water is on earth, facts are just
truths that last but a second. reality is not fixed, oh no realty, is certainly not fixed.
Reality changes every second because the terrain we live in changes every second, my reality
changed in just the time it took me to write this. See you hold to two dimensional thinking that reality
is fixed and unchangeable, but reality is whatever you call it. Maybe the world is flat or has little water.
Plato did great damage to the world when he created an arbitrary dualism in the world whereas the
the world is just not that simple, it has many dimensions we just operate in 4 and think mostly in two.

Kropotkin

14

Peter, no one flies by flapping their arms. And Earth is mostly covered in water. Degrees of specificity aside, there is a distinct reality that’s out there for everyone to view.

15

PK, besides the numerous humorous things you have asserted concerning your imagined superior perspective (wherein you imagine that we can’t see the obvious), what makes you think and believe that just because different people have different maps and no one has a perfect map, that there is no terrain for there to be a map of?

16

You are assuming that no one can fly by flapping their arms,
It is physically impossible for hummingbirds to fly according to physics and yet…
and as far as the earth being covered by water, that is how you care to look at it.
I am from the Midwest, born in Minneapolis and raised near Chicago, I didn’t see the ocean until
I was 11. As a kid, I didn’t know about oceans except what I was told by others. The idea
of an ocean was an idea, not fact for me until I actually saw an ocean and realize just what an ocean
was. I just assumed that the earth was land and not mostly made of water until I actually saw
the ocean. I have been told that the earth is mostly made of water, I actually don’t know for a
fact because facts change. The ocean is changing shape, size and form all the time. I just can’t assume
facts not in evidence.

Kropotkin

17

K: I have to work now, but I shall respond when I get back.

Kropotkin

18

I’m not sure if this was meant as a hyperbolic statement to prove a point or said in full and literal seriousness, but if the latter…

19

PK, it seems to me that it is only You doing the “black and white thinking” when you presume that we are presuming some perfect map scenario. You are presuming that others are presumptuous extremists when they are not. That makes You the “one-dimensional” extremist, “dichotomist” (guilty of your own accusation).

20

Peter, we may be missing the point about how far Earth moves away from the sun. You can be right that there’s a range, but Earth does revolve around the sun. So there’s still a fact there.