It’s clear to me that this is a simple case of map-territory confusion, though I feel a bit weird explaining it to a co-founder of CFAR.
“Thingness” comes from the map. Referents of “things” can be in the territory. “Realityfluid”—terrible name by the way, lets call it “fundamentals”—is the territory. Territory exists regardless whether it’s interpreted by a subject of cognition or not, but subjects of cognition understand the territory only through a map. “Laws of physics” can be about properties of the fundamentals or about their reificated representation on the map and we need to be careful not to confuse these two.
Also, my being a cofounder of CFAR doesn’t mean I’m immune to sufficiently complex basic confusions! This might be simple to clear up. But my mind is organized right now such that just saying “map vs. territory” just moves the articulation around. It doesn’t address the core issue whatsoever from what I can tell.
The part about me being weirded out is me noticing my own confusion that someone who I expect to know and understand what I know and understand to be confused about a thing that I’m not. Which can very well mean that it’s me who is missing some crucial detail and the clarity that I experience is false. And I’m mentally preparing myself for it.
On a reread I noticed that
I feel a bit weird explaining it to a co-founder of CFAR.
can be interpreted as a status-related reproach. I don’t remember having intended it and I’m sorry it turned out to be this way.
The map/territory distinction allows you to state a range of positions, and maybe make a few claims like “just because it’s in the map, it doesn’t mean it’s in the territory. It’s not a solution to everything.
This framework helps to clear the standard confusion in some philosophical questions, typically the ones phrased with such words as ‘real’, ‘non-real’ ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’.
If you are talking about mainstream, professional philosophy, then , no, because it’s very basic in that context. If you are talking about the average person then, yes, it’s a very useful first step.
(Mainstream philosophers may not use the exact words, but that is of little significance).
Are questions regarding reality of some phenomena, for instance morality and mathematical objects continue to be open problems for mainstream, professional philosophy? If so, seems that this very basic first step can be very helpful for at least some of mainstream philosophers.
Of course there are those philosophers who understand it well, after all this idea itself was developped by philosophers.
“Realityfluid”—terrible name by the way, lets call it “fundamentals”
I don’t think that quite captures what I was pointing at. I’ll buy there are better words for it, but I don’t just mean “fundamentals”. Or at least that phrasing feels meaningfully inaccurate to me.
I picked up the phrase “magical reality fluid” from a friend who was deep into mathematical physics. He used it the same way rationalists use (or at least used to use?) “magic”: “By some magic cognitive process….” The idea being to name it in a silly & mysterious-sounding way to emphasize that there’s something non-mysterious but that we don’t yet understand.
“Magical reality fluid” is a reference to whatever it is that the Schrödinger wave equation shows is wiggling. There’s probably a technical term for this. It’s a mathematical structure, just like the electromagnetic field. Lots of physicists give up on the philosophical question and just say “We use it to compute probabilities, we don’t ask how it works, maybe ‘how it works’ is a confused question.”
Presumably there’s something in, uh, actual reality (whatever that is) that our Schrödinger-based math is somehow related to. Currently the math makes it look like it’s some kind of fluid or something that has waves in it.
I think fundamentals = realityfluid in this definition, in case that realityfluid doesn’t consist of even simpler elements which is possible but we do not need to commit to it forthe sake of this discussion.
I don’t like the term “realityfluid” being used for the most fundamental elements of the universe because 1) its made from two words which is a terrible fit for something that by definiton isn’t made from anything else; 2) it has “real” in it and “real/unreal” distinction is a confusing and strictly inferrior to “map/territory”.
I don’t mind preserving the reminder that we do not know much about actual fundamental stuff. Lets call it “mages” instead of “fundamentals” then. A short world, and the idea that wizards are the fundamental elements of reality sounds even more ridiculous than some kind of magical fluid.
Yep. The trouble is that all maps are in the territory. Even “territory” in “map vs. territory” is actually a map embedded in… something. (“The referent of ‘territory’”, although saying it this way just recurses the problem. Like reference itself is a more fundamental reality than either maps or the referent of “territory”.)
So solving this by clearing up the map/territory distinction is about creating a map within which you can have “map” separate from a “territory”. The true territory (whatever that is) doesn’t seem to me to make such a distinction.
The issue is, how do maps arise in the first place? It’s not like “map” is a natural thing-like cluster in reality independent of human minds.
I think another way of asking this is, how does reference arise?
Even “territory” in “map vs. territory” is actually a map embedded in… something. (“The referent of ‘territory’”, although saying it this way just recurses the problem.
This recursion itself is the artifact of the fact that we can comprehend territory only through maps. And it exists only in our map, not in the territory. Try reasoning on a fixed level, carefully noticing which elements are part of a map and which are part of a territory for this level. And then you can generalise this reasoning for every level of recursion.
Like reference itself is a more fundamental reality
I think you did a wrong turn here. By “reference” do you mean the ability of a map to correspond to a territory?
Territory is just a lot of fundamentals. The properties of these fundamentals turned out to allow specific configurantions of fundamentals that we call “brains” to arrange themselves in patterns that we call “having a map of a territory”. Which properties of the fundamentals exactly do allow it? - is an interesting question which we do not know the answer yet. We can speculate in terms of laws of physics that are part of our map - probably has something to do with “locality”. Likewise, we can’t exactly specify the principle of what it means to “be a brain” or “have a map representing a territory” in terms of configurations of fundamentals. But we can understand the principle that every referent of our map is some configuration of fundamentals.
It’s clear to me that this is a simple case of map-territory confusion, though I feel a bit weird explaining it to a co-founder of CFAR.
“Thingness” comes from the map. Referents of “things” can be in the territory. “Realityfluid”—terrible name by the way, lets call it “fundamentals”—is the territory. Territory exists regardless whether it’s interpreted by a subject of cognition or not, but subjects of cognition understand the territory only through a map. “Laws of physics” can be about properties of the fundamentals or about their reificated representation on the map and we need to be careful not to confuse these two.
Also, my being a cofounder of CFAR doesn’t mean I’m immune to sufficiently complex basic confusions! This might be simple to clear up. But my mind is organized right now such that just saying “map vs. territory” just moves the articulation around. It doesn’t address the core issue whatsoever from what I can tell.
Sure.
The part about me being weirded out is me noticing my own confusion that someone who I expect to know and understand what I know and understand to be confused about a thing that I’m not. Which can very well mean that it’s me who is missing some crucial detail and the clarity that I experience is false. And I’m mentally preparing myself for it.
On a reread I noticed that
can be interpreted as a status-related reproach. I don’t remember having intended it and I’m sorry it turned out to be this way.
that was where status came into it; evaluating the author to predict word quality
The map/territory distinction allows you to state a range of positions, and maybe make a few claims like “just because it’s in the map, it doesn’t mean it’s in the territory. It’s not a solution to everything.
Not to everything, no.
This framework helps to clear the standard confusion in some philosophical questions, typically the ones phrased with such words as ‘real’, ‘non-real’ ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’.
If you are talking about mainstream, professional philosophy, then , no, because it’s very basic in that context. If you are talking about the average person then, yes, it’s a very useful first step.
(Mainstream philosophers may not use the exact words, but that is of little significance).
Are questions regarding reality of some phenomena, for instance morality and mathematical objects continue to be open problems for mainstream, professional philosophy? If so, seems that this very basic first step can be very helpful for at least some of mainstream philosophers.
Of course there are those philosophers who understand it well, after all this idea itself was developped by philosophers.
I don’t think that quite captures what I was pointing at. I’ll buy there are better words for it, but I don’t just mean “fundamentals”. Or at least that phrasing feels meaningfully inaccurate to me.
I picked up the phrase “magical reality fluid” from a friend who was deep into mathematical physics. He used it the same way rationalists use (or at least used to use?) “magic”: “By some magic cognitive process….” The idea being to name it in a silly & mysterious-sounding way to emphasize that there’s something non-mysterious but that we don’t yet understand.
“Magical reality fluid” is a reference to whatever it is that the Schrödinger wave equation shows is wiggling. There’s probably a technical term for this. It’s a mathematical structure, just like the electromagnetic field. Lots of physicists give up on the philosophical question and just say “We use it to compute probabilities, we don’t ask how it works, maybe ‘how it works’ is a confused question.”
Presumably there’s something in, uh, actual reality (whatever that is) that our Schrödinger-based math is somehow related to. Currently the math makes it look like it’s some kind of fluid or something that has waves in it.
Hence “magical reality fluid”.
I think fundamentals = realityfluid in this definition, in case that realityfluid doesn’t consist of even simpler elements which is possible but we do not need to commit to it forthe sake of this discussion.
I don’t like the term “realityfluid” being used for the most fundamental elements of the universe because 1) its made from two words which is a terrible fit for something that by definiton isn’t made from anything else; 2) it has “real” in it and “real/unreal” distinction is a confusing and strictly inferrior to “map/territory”.
I don’t mind preserving the reminder that we do not know much about actual fundamental stuff. Lets call it “mages” instead of “fundamentals” then. A short world, and the idea that wizards are the fundamental elements of reality sounds even more ridiculous than some kind of magical fluid.
Yep. The trouble is that all maps are in the territory. Even “territory” in “map vs. territory” is actually a map embedded in… something. (“The referent of ‘territory’”, although saying it this way just recurses the problem. Like reference itself is a more fundamental reality than either maps or the referent of “territory”.)
So solving this by clearing up the map/territory distinction is about creating a map within which you can have “map” separate from a “territory”. The true territory (whatever that is) doesn’t seem to me to make such a distinction.
The issue is, how do maps arise in the first place? It’s not like “map” is a natural thing-like cluster in reality independent of human minds.
I think another way of asking this is, how does reference arise?
This recursion itself is the artifact of the fact that we can comprehend territory only through maps. And it exists only in our map, not in the territory. Try reasoning on a fixed level, carefully noticing which elements are part of a map and which are part of a territory for this level. And then you can generalise this reasoning for every level of recursion.
I think you did a wrong turn here. By “reference” do you mean the ability of a map to correspond to a territory?
Territory is just a lot of fundamentals. The properties of these fundamentals turned out to allow specific configurantions of fundamentals that we call “brains” to arrange themselves in patterns that we call “having a map of a territory”. Which properties of the fundamentals exactly do allow it? - is an interesting question which we do not know the answer yet. We can speculate in terms of laws of physics that are part of our map - probably has something to do with “locality”. Likewise, we can’t exactly specify the principle of what it means to “be a brain” or “have a map representing a territory” in terms of configurations of fundamentals. But we can understand the principle that every referent of our map is some configuration of fundamentals.