Thanks everybody!
I'm glad you found that interesting if not enlightening.
The NOR (Nature of Reality) is a fascinating subject and has been discussed since the Dawn of Recorded History. Unfortunately, the attempt to combine discussions of NOR with theology brought progress pretty much to its knees for 1,000 years. Then DeCartes started the conversation again, and that eventually led us to Kant and Korzybski.
The NOR cannot be addressed without first discriminating the Human Mind, the organ that is attempting to understand the NOR. In fact, the Mind and the NOR have a kind of background/foreground relationship with each other. It's an Escher sort of thing, really.
DeCartes actually pointed us in the wrong direction by suggesting that the Mind was separate from Body. But at least he got us moving. Mind is indeed an aspect of Body, or at least the brain within the Body, making the Mind a subset of the NOR. Infinite regression, anyone?
The bottom line (from Korzybski's POV) is that the Mind does not observe the WOT (World Out There). It does not interact with Absolute Reality. The Mind is sequestered deep within a living blob of pink Jello, sealed inside a rock hard shell of bone. Nothing, but nothing gets to the Mind -- except for a very few neurological channels. And they do not carry substance or images. They carry data. Light hammers the retina, a jackhammer hammers the ear, a hammer hammer hammers the thumb. Cells react by sending unintelligible electrical signals.
Unintelligible to all except the brain. We haven't a clue what the code is.
The brain does not interpret this data. Surprised? There is no "interpreter" in the brain. The data is dumped (in real time) into a bubbling cauldron of signals and memories and cellular chemistry. That's from an "external" POV. But from the Mind's POV, what is happening is that experiences with the WOT are being recreated in the Map. Added to the Map. Experienced within the Map by the point of consciousness, the "I" within the Map, which is itself just another item within the Map.
All animal brains have stored temporal sequences of sensory memories/images. But only humans (??) also build a Map out of semantic structures. These are the "Lego Blocks" of the Mind and of the Map. Think of them as symbols, or even proto-symbols. They are at their most primitive just electro-chemical patterns. But they code. Not for sensations or emotions, but for relationships -- purported relationships -- among the purported "things" that make up the WOT, the Territory. And these codes are usable in a way vaguely analogous to the letters of our alphabet. Alone, they mean little. Arranged in the proper way, and they tell you that the object you are about to sit on is a "piece of furniture" -- also a "sofa" -- also "the sofa your mother bought on her first anniversary in Lansing, Michagan" -- also "the sofa that aunt Harriette is sitting on".
Don't think of semantic structures as just words. They are languaging. No. They are Languaging, the very atoms out of which Language (in all its forms) is derived. The human brain learned how to take hard-wired memories, with a one-to-one correspondence with some event, break them loose from their moorings, and use them like Guttenberg used movable type. It takes many, many of these atomic structures to make a "word", linking that word to sequences of tongue movements, certain marks we make on paper, linking it to past events, to concepts and ideas, to other words used in similar ways, or in similar circumstances -- an infinite spider-web of linkages extending all the way to the event horizon of our Mind. And these webs connect events and concepts to form something new and wonderful:
Meanings.
From Korzybski's POV, the Mind is a Meaning Generator.
And at any given time, our Mind (from yet another POV) sits like an million-legged spider on a million such crisscrossing spider-webs (all made of semantic structures) where each leg keeps track of the Mind's "place" on that particular web.
From its own POV, the Mind is merely experiencing Reality. The WOT. The Territory. You're sitting on the sofa next to aunt Harriette, who still remembers the crush you had on her when you were fourteen.
Sound like the Matrix? It's no accident. The Kowalski Brothers read Korzybski.
It is the Matrix. It is the Mind. It is the Map. It is all constructed of temporal sequences of sensory memories/images, and of semantic structures. The sofa is a semantic structure. So is aunt Harriette. So is that memory of you spying on her in the bathtub when you were fourteen. So is the sunshine coming through the window. So is your entire life and all you hold most precious.
It is a simulacrum. A fantastic, dizzying, real-as-real
reconstruction of the WOT, the Territory. There is nothing to be alarmed at. There is nothing wrong with this. It is how the brain works. You do not "have" a Map -- the Map "has" you. You live in the Map.
The only danger, as Korzybski warns us again and again, is constructing a Map that does not correspond adequately with the Territory. If you believe the cliff edge is half a mile in front of you when it is only one step past that hedge of prairie grass in front of you, then you have a real problem. If you are a Victorian lady of 17 who has been seduced, the resulting horror and guilt may lead you to suicide or a nunnery. Because you have "Meanings" that demand no less. If you are a 19th Century Samoan lady of 17 who has been seduced, you're probably running to brag to your parents and younger siblings. Different "Meanings". Different webs of semantic structures. Different Maps to live in.
Who says words make no difference. They make ALL the difference. The Territory may supply us the physical events that generate the sensory inputs to our brain. But our Mind gives those inputs Meaning at every level: the instantive experiential level, the associative level, the labeling level, the significance assignment level, the Meaning level. All done with semantic structures.
"What do I care for your pain and suffering? Pain is just input data from the senses. Learn to control your inputs, and you will become master of the output." Chairman Chiang,
Alpha Centauri
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Take an algorithm of arbitrary complexity. Feed it sense data. Take the output, square it, and feed it back into the algorithm, along with another set of sense data. What do you have? The basic operating principal of the human mind." Acadamecian Zakharov,
Alpha Centauri
