I can try, but I’m not sure exactly what’s unclear to you, so this is an estimate of what’s needed.
Pretty much all of it, but that might just be me. It is a little clearer now. Was there something in my comment in particular you were responding to? My puny human brain might just be straining at the limitations of metaphorical reasoning.
However, the map in hand isn’t the only representation the human has of the world. The human has a destination, and ideas about what will be accomplished by getting to the destination. I’m saying that the ideas about the goal are a map of how the world works.
I think we have maps for how to reach our goal but the fact that you have picked goal x instead of any other goal doesn’t appear to me to be the product of any belief.
Your last three paragraphs still confuse me. In particular, while they all sound like cool insights I’m not entirely sure what they mean exactly and I don’t understand how they relate to each other or anything else.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
The last paragraph was the best example I could find of a human being using maps as little as possible.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
Got it. And you’re right that my claim should be qualified in this way.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
I see (I think). I guess my position that is that a free-floating belief that is, one that doesn’t constrain anticipated experience, or a desire is like a map-inscription which doesn’t correspond to anything on the territory. And there is a sense in which such things aren’t really part of the map. They’re more like an overlay, than the map itself. You can take the compass rose off a map, it might make the map harder to use or less cool to stare at but it doesn’t make the map wrong. And not recognizing that this is the case is a serious error! There is no crazy four pointed island in the middle of the South Pacific. Desires and free-floating beliefs are like this. I don’t really want them gone I just want people to realize that they aren’t actually in the territory and so in some sense aren’t really part of the ideal map (even if you keep them there because it is convenient).
This is as much a response to Morendil as a response to you and Nancy.
While it is certainly true that many or most of our desires “come with” the territory, these desires are ‘base’ or ‘instinctual’ goals that at times we would like to over-ride. The desire to be free of pain, for example. So-called “ultimate goals” can be more cerebral (and perhaps more fictional) and depend much more on beliefs. For example, the desire to help humanity, avoid existential risks, populate the universe, are all desires based more upon beliefs than the territory.
So if we take the view from nowhere: there are brains with which do this thing called being a mind. The minds have things called beliefs and things called desires but all of this is just neuron activity. These minds have a metaphor for relating their neuronal activities called beliefs with the universe that that observe: the map-territory metaphor.
The map-territory distinction is only understandable from the subjective perspective. There is something “outside me” which generates sensory experiences. This is the territory. The is something that is somehow a part of me or at least more proximate to me. These are my expectations about future sensory experiences, my beliefs. This is the map. Desire is a third thing (which of course is in the same universe as everything else, apropos the view from nowhere) it neither generates sensory experiences nor constrains our expectations about future sensory experiences. It isn″t in the territory, or in the map. From the subjective perspective desires are simply given. Now of course there are actually complex causal histories for these things, but from the subjective perspective a desire just arises.
Now through reasoning with our map what are initially terminal desires throw off sub-desires (Like if I desire food I will also desire getting a job to pay for food.) Perhaps we can also have second order desires: desires about our desires. Of course like beliefs desires exist in the territory as aspects of our brain activity. But in the perspective in which the map-territory metaphor is operative desires are sui generis.
(Status: so what happened at this point is that gave up. You think that desires are a 3rd thing, which I understand, but I think desires (and beliefs) are something you choose and that you modify in order to be more rational. I didn’t realize I gave up until I realized I had stopped thinking about this.)
Pretty much all of it, but that might just be me. It is a little clearer now. Was there something in my comment in particular you were responding to? My puny human brain might just be straining at the limitations of metaphorical reasoning.
I think we have maps for how to reach our goal but the fact that you have picked goal x instead of any other goal doesn’t appear to me to be the product of any belief.
Your last three paragraphs still confuse me. In particular, while they all sound like cool insights I’m not entirely sure what they mean exactly and I don’t understand how they relate to each other or anything else.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
The last paragraph was the best example I could find of a human being using maps as little as possible.
Got it. And you’re right that my claim should be qualified in this way.
I see (I think). I guess my position that is that a free-floating belief that is, one that doesn’t constrain anticipated experience, or a desire is like a map-inscription which doesn’t correspond to anything on the territory. And there is a sense in which such things aren’t really part of the map. They’re more like an overlay, than the map itself. You can take the compass rose off a map, it might make the map harder to use or less cool to stare at but it doesn’t make the map wrong. And not recognizing that this is the case is a serious error! There is no crazy four pointed island in the middle of the South Pacific. Desires and free-floating beliefs are like this. I don’t really want them gone I just want people to realize that they aren’t actually in the territory and so in some sense aren’t really part of the ideal map (even if you keep them there because it is convenient).
This is as much a response to Morendil as a response to you and Nancy.
While it is certainly true that many or most of our desires “come with” the territory, these desires are ‘base’ or ‘instinctual’ goals that at times we would like to over-ride. The desire to be free of pain, for example. So-called “ultimate goals” can be more cerebral (and perhaps more fictional) and depend much more on beliefs. For example, the desire to help humanity, avoid existential risks, populate the universe, are all desires based more upon beliefs than the territory.
So if we take the view from nowhere: there are brains with which do this thing called being a mind. The minds have things called beliefs and things called desires but all of this is just neuron activity. These minds have a metaphor for relating their neuronal activities called beliefs with the universe that that observe: the map-territory metaphor.
The map-territory distinction is only understandable from the subjective perspective. There is something “outside me” which generates sensory experiences. This is the territory. The is something that is somehow a part of me or at least more proximate to me. These are my expectations about future sensory experiences, my beliefs. This is the map. Desire is a third thing (which of course is in the same universe as everything else, apropos the view from nowhere) it neither generates sensory experiences nor constrains our expectations about future sensory experiences. It isn″t in the territory, or in the map. From the subjective perspective desires are simply given. Now of course there are actually complex causal histories for these things, but from the subjective perspective a desire just arises.
Now through reasoning with our map what are initially terminal desires throw off sub-desires (Like if I desire food I will also desire getting a job to pay for food.) Perhaps we can also have second order desires: desires about our desires. Of course like beliefs desires exist in the territory as aspects of our brain activity. But in the perspective in which the map-territory metaphor is operative desires are sui generis.
(Status: so what happened at this point is that gave up. You think that desires are a 3rd thing, which I understand, but I think desires (and beliefs) are something you choose and that you modify in order to be more rational. I didn’t realize I gave up until I realized I had stopped thinking about this.)