What Exists? No, Really.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

We're gonna hafta start a separate thread about aunt Harriette. Maybe one with asbestos walls??

Hmmm works for me, I think we all have a Harriet in our teenage years, mine was a redheaded biology teacher

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Thanks everybody!

"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

As does the code of DNA strand in the more ancient cyclical algorithms of evolution.
These chaotic systems all in fact deal with chotic self-organization "arbitrary complexity" and provide us a unifying view of the universe at different levels of organization from morphology to the unconscious mind to the conscious self to societies.

"Autopoieses " developed by (Mantarana; Varela,) States that an organism can be defined as a cycle of relationships unified into a circle of self creation, that contains component parts, which make parts, that in turn make those parts, in a recursive cycle of self-making.

[Pyrotex]

That pretty much sums the whole shebang up.
Way to go, T-Bird.
The Universe may, in some arcane and esoteric way, be an infinitely recursive set of these self-organizing chaotic cycles. Wheels within wheels. Mortal at any specific cycle, but over all the cycles of cycles, immortal and autoregenerating.

:-/

Nah!!! Do I look like a Hindu???
Besides, it makes too much sense.

[Rade]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

... Experienced within the Map by the point of consciousness, the "I" within the Map, which is itself just another item within the Map...

You have made excellent posts on the topic. Clearly as you indicate the Territory is existence itself and it would seem that the OP question is thus answered. But I have a question about relationship of the Map and Consciousness.

You indicate that Consciousness also exists as a thing within the mind, same as elements of the Territory exist as things outside the mind. So I wonder, is it possible that the Unconsciousness is the Map but is not a thing that exists--it does all the things you mention that occur within the Map. Thus is it possible that the Consciousness as a thing that exists is 'outside' the Map, in the same way the ontological elements of the Territory are things that exist outside the Map ?

In other words, in the same way ontological elements of Territory interact with senses, which then send quantum data signals to the Map about the ontological elements (here I think of how hydrogen has a unique spectral signal--the three colored lines), is it possible that the Map (as the unconscious) is nothing more than the sum total of these quantum data signals as information and are then given to something outside of this matrix of information--namely the Consciousness, a thing that exists within the mind having identity separate from the Map ? What the Consciousness then does with these quantum data is what it evolved to do--to form concepts to increase probability of survival. Thus it is not the Map (the Unconsciousness) that provides interpretation of electo-chemical signals, it is the Consciousness (which is outside the Map) that provides interpretation, which leads to explanation, which leads to knowledge. I would view simple forms of living things as functioning only at the Map level of organization--at the level of action-reaction of that which is perceived by an Uncounscious mind--by a data matrix lacking power of interpretation.

Thus, is it possible the 'Mind' uses the Map (the Unconsciousness signal matrix) to create a mirror reality (concepts) of the Territory that is out-there (what we can call a veiled reality) that exists outside the Map but within the mind (within the Consciousness) ? If true then two different Territories must exist and this brings a second layer of meaning to the statement 'the Map is not the Territory'. Not only would the Map of Unconsciousness not be the Territory of existence out-there (outside the mind), it also would not be the Territory of existence within Consciousness (within the mind). I wonder if Korzybski addresses this logical possibility ?

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Rade

... is it possible that the Consciousness is a thing that exists is 'outside' the Map, in the same way the ontological elements of the Territory are things that exist outside the Map ?...

[EDIT] I am reversing the use of "exists" and "is real" in order for them to be consistent with the statement that "The Territory exists" and "existence exists". [/EDIT]

Okay, what Korzybski (and I) was trying to do was make sense of the world, in the simplest possible way with the fewest assumptions. He assumed there was no mystic solution, no supernatural solution. Your explanation is quite complicated and gives definitions to Map and Territory that Korzybski did not intend.

...In other words, in the same way ontological elements of Territory interact with senses, which then send ...data signals to the Map about the ontological elements... is it possible that the Map ... is nothing more than the sum total of these ...data signals as information and are then given to something outside of this matrix of information--namely the Consciousness, a thing that exists within the mind having identity separate from the Map ?......then two different Territories must exist...

See? All these extra layers and entities are not necessary. Additionally, I haven't said much about the Mind, except to say that it occurs within the brain -- as dynamic patterns -- that from one POV are electro-chemical signals, and from another POV is a self-organizing semantic structure.

"Quantum" doesn't come into this at all.

Again, from Korzybski, there is just ONE reality. He calls it the Territory. What the human brain does is to build a replica, a simulacrum of the Territory. This replica is constructed of memories and semantic structures (think of Lego structures, only the Lego blocks are "words"). This replica of reality, he calls the Map. Ideally, the Map should match the Territory, point for point. But it doesn't and it can't. The brain is just not big enough to to model the whole world, not even the parts we can see. But for our purposes, we can say that the Map corresponds to the Territory pretty damn well.

If you start putting Consciousness (self-awareness) outside the Map, then you might as well put it physically outside the brain. This leads nowhere. DeCartes made the same mistake. The Mind, all parts of the Mind, are physically in the brain, and therefore, they MUST be part of the Map. The very concept of "I", aware of itself, is not a physical object, not even an invisible physical object. The "I" in our Minds is a logical construct, a semantic construct. And the individual Lego blocks, are the atomic elements of Languaging itself. And Languaging is the concept and process of storing, retrieving, communicating, evaluating, and assigning meaning to Information. The Mind, the "I", is built out of Languaging.

So, we don't have to get supernatural here, or propose multiple Territories or multiple Maps.

We don't have to bring in the Id, the Conscious, the Subconscious, or intelligence. These are all just made-up words attempting to give labels to different aspects of the Mind.

Finally, we can speak of "exists" versus "is real". Let's define "exists" as the fundemental property of anything that has mass, physical size, energy, form or substance. Everything that exists is also real. But there are things which are "real" which do not exist.

The Territory is real and it exists. The Map is real, but it does not exist. Just as the letters "book" are NOT really a book, so is any simulacrum constructed entirely out of logical/semantic Lego blocks NOT the thing that is simulated. But the simulacrum is very real [we interact with it!!!], and it can be compared to the existence it simulates.

The Mind, imprisoned within the skull, is totally cut off from all contact with the Territory. The Mind only has access to the Map. This is where the Mind occurs, lives, loves, laughs, has sex, learns to read and write, wonders at the stars in the sky, goes to work every day, surfs the Internet, understands gravity and how to make cornbread, and carries on deep involved discussions about the Nature of Reality. Your entire subjective world is the Map. And you are an element of that Map. You are real.

Does that make more sense?

[arkain101]

Great replies thus far!

I will hopefully reply soon with some of my own input. So far I have not come across much that has not already occurred to me, and by that I mean, some questions I have, have yet to be explained or answered at a level that satisfies me.

I think there is some underlying connections between the Decartes' and Korzybski's philisophical basics. I will get to that.

[Rade]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Does that make more sense?

Yes, your comments make sense, but the question is, are they an accurate representation of the relationship of the Mind and Map to the Territory ? It would appear that Korzybski places the Mind within the Map, I take the opposite view. I hold the Map to be within the Mind. My reason is because Korzybski gives a very specific and limited function to the Map--e.g., to form a 'replica of the Territory', and it is not logical that a thing that performs a more general function (the Mind) should be a part of a thing that performs a specific function (the Map). But there is another logical reason why Korzybski's view cannot hold, for as you say,

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

The Map exists, but it is not real.

thus it is not possible for a thing that is real (the Mind) to be within a thing that is not real (the Map). So, I conclude that the Map has a limited function of information transformation and thus is not real and this process is within a larger entity, the Mind, that is real.

The Mind is not a simple place, and it is now documented experimentally that there is a difference between the Unconscious and Conscious aspects of the Mind--they are two different identities with completely different functions. For example, it is known that perception is first filtered by the Unconscious aspect of the Mind, and there is ~ 500 ms delay until the information passes to the Conscious aspect of the Mind, which is where concepts are formed. This type of delay makes sense, because it is the role of the Consciousness to integrate ALL of the sensory inputs to form concepts, and it takes the Unconscious some time to get all the information together to form the replica. So the flow of infromation is from (1) ontological elements (Territory) ---> (2) senses ----> (3) Unconsciousness (the Mapping simulation process to form replica) ---> ~500 ms delay---> (4) Consciousness (the process of taking the replica to form concepts).

Here is one short review of relevant research:
Freud: he wasn’t all wrong - The National Newspaper

The Map process (the "making the replica of reality" ) can be thought of as being within a larger room, and the room is the Mind. So, the Mind has an area off to the side where the process 'make a replica simulation of reality' exists (what Korzybski calls the Map making area). But on the other side of the room is the area where the process 'regulate the beat of the heart' exists, and so on with more processes than we know. Where Korzybski appears to error is that he assumes that the all the functions of the Mind are related to Mapping, to forming simulations of existence, but this clearly is not so, the Mind is much more complex, it has many functions not related to simulation.

Originally Posted by Pyrotec

If you start putting Consciousness (self-awareness) outside the Map, then you might as well put it physically outside the brain

In my view Consciousness is within the brain, or at least within groups of neurons. All I am saying is that Korzybski has a much too simplistic view of the relationship of Map and Consciousness to Mind.

In summary, I find that the Consciousness is NOT within the Map, it is within the Mind, off to the side, and these are completely different things indeed, for two are real (Mind and Consciousness) and the other not (Map).

[Thunderbird]

The non physical mind is inseparable from our physical reality. The mind is like water that retains all the memories of being rain, sleet, snow,cloud, steam, These memories act as a map. An internal program that does not rely on external forces to shape it. There are in fact no external realities, only internal memories. What lies outside the mind/map ? nothing.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Okay, what Korzybski (and I) was trying to do was make sense of the world, in the simplest possible way with the fewest assumptions. He assumed there was no mystic solution, no supernatural solution. Your explanation is quite complicated and gives definitions to Map and Territory that Korzybski did not intend.
See? All these extra layers and entities are not necessary. Additionally, I haven't said much about the Mind, except to say that it exists within the brain -- as dynamic patterns -- that from one POV are electro-chemical signals, and from another POV is a self-organizing semantic structure.

"Quantum" doesn't come into this at all.

Again, from Korzybski, there is just ONE reality. He calls it the Territory. What the human brain does is to build a replica, a simulacrum of the Territory. This replica is constructed of memories and semantic structures (think of Lego structures, only the Lego blocks are "words"). This replica of reality, he calls the Map. Ideally, the Map should match the Territory, point for point. But it doesn't and it can't. The brain is just not big enough to to model the whole world, not even the parts we can see. But for our purposes, we can say that the Map corresponds to the Territory pretty damn well.

If you start putting Consciousness (self-awareness) outside the Map, then you might as well put it physically outside the brain. This leads nowhere. DeCartes made the same mistake. The Mind, all parts of the Mind, are physically in the brain, and therefore, they MUST be part of the Map. The very concept of "I", aware of itself, is not a physical object, not even an invisible physical object. The "I" in our Minds is a logical construct, a semantic construct. And the individual Lego blocks, are the atomic elements of Languaging itself. And Languaging is the concept and process of storing, retrieving, communicating, evaluating, and assigning meaning to Information. The Mind, the "I", is built out of Languaging.

So, we don't have to get supernatural here, or propose multiple Territories or multiple Maps.

We don't have to bring in the Id, the Conscious, the Subconscious, or intelligence. These are all just made-up words attempting to give labels to different aspects of the Mind.

Finally, we can speak of "exists" versus "is real". Let's define "is real" as the fundemental property of anything that has mass, physical size, energy, form or substance.

The Territory is real and it exists. The Map exists, but it is not real. Just as the letters "book" are NOT really a book, so is any simulacrum constructed entirely out of logical/semantic Lego blocks NOT the thing that is simulated. But the simulacrum exists, and it can be compared to the real thing it simulates.

The Mind, imprisoned within the skull, is totally cut off from all contact with the Territory. The Mind only has access to the Map. This is where the Mind exists, lives, loves, laughs, has sex, learns to read and write, wonders at the stars in the sky, goes to work every day, understands gravity and how to make cornbread, and carries on deep involved discussions about the Nature of Reality. Your entire subjective world is the Map. And you are an element of that Map.

Does that make more sense?

In quantum mechanics when we perceive “quanta” it's still within the realm of the mind and subject to perception and visa versa. Theses underling pulses could in fact represent the origin of consciousness. A basic binary code that all complexity is built upon. Utilizing the water analogy once more think of converging wave pulses that overlap each other curling around each other and collapsing to a point. This interaction resulting in a oscillation point, a clock constructed by time itself.

A self-organizing quantum process operating at the interface between quantum and macroscopic states, objective reduction (OR) is Penrose's (1989; 1994; 1996) quantum gravity solution to the problem of wave function collapse in quantum mechanics. According to quantum theory (and repeatedly verified experimentally), small scale quantum systems described by a wave function may be "superposed" in different states and/or places simultaneously. Large scale "macroscopic systems," however, always appear in definite "classical" states and/or places. The problem is that there is no apparent reason for this "collapse of the wave function," no obvious border between microscopic quantum and macroscopic classical conditions. The conventional explanation (the "Copenhagen interpretation") is that measurement or observation by a conscious observer collapses the wave function. To illustrate the apparent absurdity of this notion, Schrodinger (1935) described a now-famous thought experiment in which a cat is placed in a box into which poison is released when triggered by a particular quantum event. Schrodinger pointed out that according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat would be both dead and alive until the box was opened and the cat observed by a conscious human.

To explain this conundrum, many physicists now believe that intermediate between tiny quantum-scale systems and "large" cat-size systems some objective factor disturbs the superposition causing collapse, or reduction to classical, definite states and locations. This putative process is called objective reduction (OR). One increasingly popular OR viewpoint (initiated by Karolyhazy in 1966 Karolyhazy, et al., 1986) suggests this "largeness" is to be gauged in terms of gravitational effects and in Einstein's general relativity, gravity is spacetime curvature. According to Penrose (1989; 1994; 1996), quantum superposition actual separation (displacement) of mass from itself causes underlying spacetime to also separate at the Planck scale due to simultaneous curvatures in opposite directions. Such separations are unstable and a critical degree of separation (related to quantum gravity) results in spontaneous self-collapse (OR) to particular states chosen non-computably.

In Penrose's OR the size of an isolated superposed system (gravitational self-energy E of a separated mass) is inversely related to the coherence time T according to the uncertainty principle E=h /T, where h (actually "hbar") is Planck's constant over 2 pi. T is the duration of time for which the mass must be superposed to reach quantum gravity threshold for self-collapse. Large systems (e.g. Schrodinger's 1 kg cat) would self-collapse (OR) very quickly, in only 10-37 seconds. An isolated superposed single atom would not OR for 106 years. Somewhere between those extremes are brain events in the range of tens to hundreds of milliseconds. A 25 millisecond brain event (i.e. occurring in coherent 40 Hz oscillations) would require nanogram (10-9 gram) amounts of superposed neural mass.

In the Penrose-Hameroff "Orch OR" model (e.g. Penrose and Hameroff, 1995; Hameroff and Penrose, 1996a; 1996b), quantum coherent superposition develops in microtubule subunit proteins ("tubulins") within brain neurons and glia. The quantum state is isolated from environmental decoherence by cycles of actin gelation, and connected among neural and glial cells by quantum tunneling across gap junctions (Hameroff, 1996). When the quantum gravity threshold is reached according to E=h/T, self-collapse (objective reduction) abruptly occurs. The pre-reduction, coherent superposition ("quantum computing") phase is equated with pre-conscious processes, and each instantaneous OR, or self-collapse, corresponds with a discrete conscious event. Sequences of events give rise to a "stream" of consciousness. Microtubule-associated-proteins "tune" the quantum oscillations and the OR is thus self-organized, or "orchestrated" ("Orch OR"). Each Orch OR event selects microtubule subunit states non-computably which classically regulate synaptic/neural functions. Because the superposed protein mass separation is also a separation in underlying spacetime geometry, each Orch OR event selects a particular "funda-mental' experience http://www.hameroff.com/penrose-hameroff/cambrian.html

[modest]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

If you start putting Consciousness (self-awareness) outside the Map, then you might as well put it physically outside the brain. This leads nowhere. DeCartes made the same mistake.

I don't believe Descartes puts consciousness or "I" off the map.

Two things are being used in Korzybaski's system: a map and a territory. The map is part of the territory in the sense that the brain is part of the physical world. And, the territory is part of the map in the sense that everything we consider physical or part of the territory is itself a construct on the map.

Considering this, the following doesn't make sense to me.

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

The very concept of "I", aware of itself, is not a physical object, not even an invisible physical object. The "I" in our Minds is a logical construct, a semantic construct. And the individual Lego blocks, are the atomic elements of Languaging itself. And Languaging is the concept and process of storing, retrieving, communicating, evaluating, and assigning meaning to Information. The Mind, the "I", is built out of Languaging...

Finally, we can speak of "exists" versus "is real". Let's define "exists" as the fundemental property of anything that has mass, physical size, energy, form or substance. Everything that exists is also real. But there are things which are "real" which do not exist.

Here "I" has been put on the map and denied any place in the territory while other parts of the map are allowed to exist in the territory. The distinction seems to be that only things with "mass, physical size, energy, form or substance" have a correlating physical existence in the territory. But, these are distinctions we make on the map and are themselves constructs of the map.

As I understand Korzybaski's system, we are not constructing the territory with these concepts on the map—we are constructing the map. To try and *prove* what physically exists (apart from (or outside) the map) in the territory seems to be exactly what Descartes is taking issue with.

In the language of Korzybaski, I believe Descartes means only that there is a map. That is the only absolute. We cannot even prove that there is a territory. Making distinctions like—the part of the map that correlates with mass or energy also are part of the territory—could be wrong. But, you cannot be mistaken in saying "the map exists". For one part of the map to question another part of the map means a priori there is a map.

~modest