From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Maps and territories
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:32:55 GMT

In article <memo.842718@cix.compulink.co.uk> shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>I decided to start a (hopefully interesting) thread, because I felt 
>that some of the issues arising from the Buddhism thread were of 
>interest, and yet not really relevant to the original thread.
>
>I became increasingly frustrated with what seemed to be an 
>insurmountable communication barrier: Every time I tried to indicate 
>that the actuality of existence was a very different thing from the 
>language that we use to think about it and talk about, I ran into a 
>wall of incomprehension.

I'm well aware that the actuality of existence is a different thing
from the language we use to talk about it.  I'm a logician, remember?
I also maintain that successful language has reference to reality.

>
>To Randall for example electrons simply ARE real. There is no 
>question about it, no possibility of error. somewhere in his world 
>view these tiny things are ineradicably etched.

I suppose there is a theoretical possibility of error (via Descartes's
demon?), but yes, I think they're real.  The theorists didn't put them
there, either; they were there all along.  I suppose, in addition,
that they may not have _precisely_ the properties that we think they
do.  But they are there.

>
>
>But it seems to me, that there is experience, and there are models of 
>it. The experience of an electron is the blue flash from an HT coil, 
>the movement of the Gold leaf of an electroscope. Electron is a 
>concept that explains these expereinces in a more simple way, and 
>yields predictive power. That IMO is the limit of apllicability of th 
>econcept.

Sure, and the easiest way to explain the explanatory power of a
concept is to agree that it has a referent.  There is a concept of
electron, there are experiences of electrons, AND THERE ARE ELECTRONS
(almost certainly).  These are indeed three different things.

>
>Scientific man started from the world of 'normal' 'common sense' 
>objects - objects like apples and planes, and deduced laws and 
>fundamental particles. 
>
>Modern scientific man STARTS from the laws and fundamental particles, 
>and deduces normal objects! 

Neither statement is precisely accurate; there is a good deal of give
and take.


>
>Buddhism, and some other traditions, start from Mind, and deduces 
>experience.

But it does not!  "There is no mind either, but only the void", is an
accurate Buddhist rejoinder to this kind of statement.  Buddhism
starts from experience and concludes that our leap of faith to Mind is
unjustified.


>
>It seems to me that where you end up depends on where you start from, 
>not what actually IS.

Where you start from is something that actually IS, too, and there is
no reason to believe that it does not afford information about what
actually IS, and considerable practical reason to believe that it
does.


>
>My large scale maps help me walk the countryside, but they don't help 
>me connect through the internet. That reality - of computer 
>connectivity - is handled by a completely non-geographical series of 
>'net-maps'

The fact that one and the same thing can be described in many different
ways is not evidence that it is not, in the last analysis, one thing.


>
>Why cannot scientists see that the scientific worldview is a limited 
>applicability map, not reality?

The worldview is a map, sure.  But it is only a map of reality if it
refers to reality, and it can only be expected to be of any use of it
corresponds (more or less well) with reality.  In particular, I
entirely fail to see how one could accept the applicability of the
modern scientific map and really doubt that there are electrons.

>
>Leo 
>
>

I distinguish very carefully in my thinking between language and its
referents.  But it seems to me that your position is to maintain that
any sufficiently involved theory is nothing but language, with no
reference at all.  I suppose the success of science must seem like a
sort of magic from this kind of standpoint.  



-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu