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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 22, 2016 - 09:58pm PT
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The painting This is not a pipe was created for reasons quite different from most maps. The painting can be (erroneously) dismissed as trivial, it is a painting, of course, not a pipe. I see the dismissal of maps to be equally erroneous and a somewhat desperate ploy to rob them of their authority.
Like all art, maps are metaphors for actual places: they are not actual places. They are RE -presentations of reality in the same way a painting or photograph is a representation of actual experience. Actual experience is not direct experience when it is re-presented in the form of a metaphor. A painting of a pipe cannot be smoked, I see no trees, I smell no trees, I can touch no trees on a map. The idea that the senses produce only metaphors for the real world and ergo a map is equal to any sensory experience defies common sense, negates experience and is plainly ludicrous. Nobody is dismissing maps: they are valuable. But they are not first hand sensory experience of place.
Funny, I never used a climbing topo in my life. But if they offer an equal experience to actual climbing then what the hell's the point of going outside?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 22, 2016 - 11:04pm PT
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a map is not a metaphor, there is no intention in its making to create a metaphorical statement.
All the world's a stage
is a metaphor... the world is not a stage.
An map is a representation of reality, quite a different thing, some maps are more abstract representations than others. There are no doubt maps made that are metaphors by intention, but in general, the maps we are talking about here, e.g. the map of brain function, is pretty much what it is.
The actual experience of the individual who's brain is being mapped is something that that person can describe.
The nature of the correlation is a most interesting thing to ponder.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 22, 2016 - 11:16pm PT
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quacker, that's my favorite post yet
quack quack
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 23, 2016 - 06:00am PT
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Ed:
You really seem to need or want an objective reality. Maps, theories, abstractions, labels, concepts, etc. all point to a reality that can be known. I guess that is fine—I guess that works—IF there is a reality that can be known.
(I would ask you what you really know through and through, but by now that would constitute a redundant echo from me here on this thread.)
If everything is nondual (just one thing, just one reality), then correlations would be everywhere and never-ending. Everything would be correlated to some extent with everything else. Logically that would also imply that nothing would be correlated with anything else. Everything would be unique. If "X" applies to everything, then is cannot be a discrimination. X discriminates nothing.
One can begin to see how things ARE and ARE NOT this or that. This is how some spiritual masters talk. It’s confusing if a person thinks there is no excluded middle: things either exist or they don’t, by golly.
Are there really atoms? Are there really trees? Is there a piece of stone that is El Cap? Am I MikeL?
Get to the bottom of any one thing, and one will get to the bottom of everything. There is no difference between the two.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 23, 2016 - 08:15am PT
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a map is not a metaphor, there is no intention in its making to create a metaphorical statement.
Good grief, a map is a two dimensional object representing three dimensional space. It is a re-presentation of reality, nothing more and therefore a metaphor. Claiming otherwise demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of representation.
Intention has nothing to do with it. If I intend a drawing to actually be the reality it represents, well tough luck, it's not.
And the more realistic/veristic I make the illusion the more disingenuous the image becomes.
No wonder scientism is such a hard nut to crack. The lack of understanding is remarkable.
Humanities classes for scientists!!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 23, 2016 - 08:41am PT
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perhaps science classes for construction workers would be more appropriate,
and perhaps you should take that humanities for scientists class yourself, Paul...
as you read the Shakespeare quote above, it reads as wonderful literature..
...it is not such great science (nor is it intended to be).
If the difference of representation is difficult for you to grasp, I can understand your twitish responses...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 23, 2016 - 08:51am PT
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The actual experience of the individual who's brain is being mapped is something that that person can describe.
The nature of the correlation is a most interesting thing to ponder.
-
These are good points, Ed. But they still are fused to the seeking of things, of objects, of stuff you can describe that pertains to experience. Content, in other words.
No-mind meditation opens us up to another order because it is based on dropping into consciousness itself - provisionally as content-independent - where the "I" and all content falls away - the outcome of self-forgetting or letting the ego slough away. This is the order where no-thing and other seemingly bewildering terms are encountered, and where awareness of external objects shifts in quality to presence or pure being. Pretty esoteric stuff, but that's the end game IME.
In the more proscribed order, we talk about things and memories and so forth. In the so-called "unborn" order our game shifts to the timeless where duality has no hold.
Another way of looking at it is this: In the proscribed order, we talk about mind-independent "things" and external objects (even though we use our minds to perceive said things). While at the same time we say that mind is what the brain is doing. That would mean that mind and matter are the same thing, which pretty much shoots down the idea that things are independent of mind since they are, the belief runs, the same thing.
What is actually meant is that THIS thing - the brain - is not independent of mind and conversely that mind is not independent of THIS brain. But the other stuff "out there" is independent of mind AND brain.
This refers to the order you are investigating, the particular or individual instances or manifestations of both mind and matter. The forms and relationships and so forth.
The other order is the opposite or other side of the individual, the "universal" for lack of a better word, aka the all.
Ultimately, in the Zen tradition they say that both orders are interwoven, and both are always present in reality. I don't know what the equal of this would be in physics.
The correlation between mind and matter can start in either order: Planck and others posit mind as the source; others have matter as the source. Still others posit that "source" is a meaningless word, like talking about reality before the big bang, when all the phenomenon was (to some) "created."
Ultimately I believe you are really interested in causation, which is part of the first order just mentioned. The "uncreated' or "unborn" might be something to consider. That is the essence of subjective adventures.
And again, a point I think you are missing here is that a map, no matter how accurate, cannot represent anything but the physical world. It can INDICATE experience, providing the subject has experience to draw from, but that experience is not drawn from the map itself. Here is where memory comes into play.
Interesting stuff.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 23, 2016 - 09:32am PT
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If the difference of representation is difficult for you to grasp, I can understand your twitish responses...
"Twitish" really? This isn't an argument it's simply an insult. And the fact remains that a two dimensional representation of three dimensional space is a comparison of sorts, a metaphor for that three dimensional space and not the space itself. There's a reason Magritte's painting is called the Treason of Images and there's a reason Picasso said, "Art is the lie that tells the truth." A map is an artifice the source of which is a reality experienced through the senses.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 23, 2016 - 12:48pm PT
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it was meant to be an insult...
you really didn't present an argument more refined than to say every representation is a metaphor, which is not correct.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 01:17pm PT
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Twitish:
a feeling where one is overwhelmed with excitement about anything twilight related
Very interesting word, perhaps even appropriate.
SOP for these threads to have fairly simple concepts, like that of a map, viewed from a confusing
viewpoint so that the way may be opened to excitedly advance unrelated ideas. It is as though we all
have a crowd of personal ideas vociferously demanding to be expressed. Demands that we have to
satisfy. (We don't.)
Confusion and weirdness are perfectly ok, iff( if and only if) the author among others wants to have
good analysis at some point.
Edit:
Which is worse?
Being "mindless" or being "mapless?"
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 23, 2016 - 01:32pm PT
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If we cannot agree on what a map is, we may have trouble with "mind."
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 23, 2016 - 02:08pm PT
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it was meant to be an insult...
you really didn't present an argument more refined than to say every representation is a metaphor, which is not correct.
I gave reasons for my argument and all I got back was an insult and not much of one at that. Try arguing your point. Make the point that a map is more than a metaphor. So far you haven't done that. I'm not sure you really understand what a metaphor is. Let me restate: a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object can only be a metaphor. Intent counts for nothing because, simply put, two dimensions can only be a representation of three dimensions, it can't, by definition, be three dimensions therefore it is a kind of comparison or metaphor. Can science possibly come to terms with such a profound idea? I'm beginning to think not. And yes that was meant to be twitish.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 23, 2016 - 02:20pm PT
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But we can have fun seeing what is in other peoples' minds.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 07:01pm PT
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So Paul, you never got back to me.
Do I really need a degree in theology (C theology I presume?) to critique demonology or mariology or soteriology from the Christian pov?
...to legitimately critique these, that is? in your view.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 07:53pm PT
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Everest isn't a map ever nor will it ever be a map.
It's alive .......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 08:49pm PT
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Where are you, Paul?
Give us YOUR acct of harmartiology. (As I'm sure you already know, it's another branch of C theology.)
Forget what the Pope or any of his bishops say. What do YOU think of the Fall of Adam and Original Sin doctrines (dogma)? Do you think any of it is going to last through the 21st century as a real-world, viable answer to the question posed by 21st century children: 'Papa, why do bad things happen?'
Curious minds want to know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartiology
by the way,
**You'd think hamartiology, insofar as it dealt with sin, if it were truly a valid and accurate acct of such a significant fundamental to how the world works, would have a bit more than a half-page at wiki. Wouldn't you?
It's ovah for jehovah
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 23, 2016 - 10:27pm PT
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what about the book "similes we live by"?
I think metaphor has stretched quite beyond its meaning when you apply in the way the link does, MikeL. There the authors are talking about representations, which I do not see as metaphor, necessarily.
If we agree that Shakespeare is using a metaphor, in which he equates the world and our existence in it as a theatre stage and our lives playing out as characters in a play, we can see the art in it. One can wonder what it would have been as a simile, "all the world is like a stage" and what is it about that phrase that seems so much weaker...
However, we could say that "all the world's a map" to a resounding thud... a metaphor you can't continue. When we say that a map is a representation of the world, we do make a cognitive link between the symbols on the map and objects in the world. We do not say that this symbols is a mountain, nor do we say that this symbol is like a mountain, we usually say that the symbol represents the location of the mountain, in the space of the map which corresponds to a place (in the instance of a geographic map).
For this map, we have a set of precise relationships between the symbols on the map and the places in the world. So to a topo of a climb (but if you have never used one, that is lost on you).
There is no confusion about this, and no metaphor.
Good maps, and diligent study of them does provide a great deal of information. Often for training such details provide the trainees experiences very close to actually being their themselves. Virtual reality (which is not reality, and also not a metaphor of reality, but a representation using visual, audio and tactile media) is used extensively in training, e.g. pilots to fly aircraft. Here they fly inside a three dimensional map subject to the environmental conditions affecting both the flight characteristics as well as human response.
This is not a metaphor... the flight simulator is not an aircraft, no one thinks it is... a flight simulator does provide an environment where the events encountered in an actual aircraft are represented by the sensory input, a model (actually an excellent one) of both the flight location and the aircraft response to both the pilot control and the represented flight environment.
While this seems so modern, it is interesting to learn that similar techniques were used by ancient people, for instance, the Polynesians and in particular those in the Marshall islands who created charts of the wave patterns reflecting and refracting around sea floor features as a form of navigation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands_stick_chart
These charts were used to teach and study, and not taken on the voyages themselves... a sort of "simulator" to familiarize the navigators and their students. The charts represented these wave patterns and allowed the navigator to determine the location of the boat by those patterns.
The charts represented the environment, they were not metaphors, no navigator would say "all the sea's a chart."
Interestingly the navigators can use the represented information as they experience the waves in "the real world" even though "the map is not the territory" somehow, the map helped them when they were in that territory.
And here is a map of places we will never go... no one I know confuses this with the "actual" universe... however, there is a lot to learn about the universe looking at it...
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 23, 2016 - 11:35pm PT
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There is no confusion about this, and no metaphor.
we do make a cognitive link between the symbols on the map and objects in the world. We do not say that this symbols is a mountain, nor do we say that this symbol is like a mountain, we usually say that the symbol represents the location of the mountain, in the space of the map which corresponds to a place (in the instance of a geographic map).
Sigh, If it's a symbol, which elements on maps are, then it is a metaphor. The symbol represents something in nature. It is a comparative relationship. Why, because a map is not the reality of what it represents. it is a symbolic structure that stands for a natural structure only as re-presentation. Again, a two dimensional map is not a three dimensional landscape. A two dimensional map is artifice pure and simple no matter how accurate it is. The symbol is "like" the mountain in the same way Magritte's pipe is like a pipe but, finally, not a pipe: it is a visual metaphor. Fascinating and revealing that you can't see this.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 24, 2016 - 06:52am PT
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Ed:
Metaphors, as I have come to understand them, constitute the basic category, of which synecdotes, puns, alliterations, ironies, similes, allegories, tropes, comparisons, parables, etc. are sub-categories. Some are conceptual, and some are nonlinguistic. Lackoff and Johnson made the claim that they are foundational to all conceptual systems. The fundamental idea of metaphors is that there is not literal language that can say or describe what anything or any process actually is, so we end up talking “about” things with language. That would make every “thing” or concept metaphorical.
Check out: "model referent symbol concept" on Google Images
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