Café Philos: an internet café

Many people -- perhaps even most people -- hold the naive belief that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality. That's an especially dangerous assumption which can, and does, cause all sorts of emotional and logical problems. For one thing, when we assume our thoughts mirror reality, we become much more inclined to narrow-mindedness. For another thing, we are much more prone to becoming attached to our thoughts and to believing our thoughts are just as important as the things they "mirror". Both of those mistakes are quite common, and they can both be traced back to the naive assumption that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality.

Instead of saying that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality, it would be far more accurate to say that it maps reality. That is, the relationship of consciousness to reality is basically the same as the relationship of a map to its terrain.

The differences between a map and a mirror are many and subtle. Yet, if you spend enough time comparing and contrasting those two metaphors, you will gain for yourself the practical insights of an introductory college course in epistemology -- and all without ever having to learn how to spell "epistemology"! Deals like that don't grow on trees.

From time to time, I will post articles here on the many and various implications of the notion that consciousness is to reality as a map is to its terrain. But in this article, I only wish to discuss one of those implications: A mirror reflects reality, but a map merely symbolizes it.

To illustrate, suppose I take out an indispensable map I recently bought which shows the locations of all the erotic dance clubs in Colorado. Looking at the map, I first notice that it does not reflect Colorado and its dance clubs like a mirror would, but instead it symbolizes Colorado and its dance clubs. For instance, the location of each dance club is symbolized by two tiny figures -- the first of a dancer, and the second of an enthusiastic patron trying to take the dancer's g-string off with his teeth. The two tiny figures do not reflect or mirror what the dance clubs look like, but they do symbolize the dance clubs.

Again looking at the map, the second thing I notice is that the map's usefulness to me in no way depends on its mirroring reality. I am able to use the map to find the dance clubs despite the fact the symbol for the dance clubs in no way reflects or mirrors the actual clubs.

Consciousness is remarkably similar to a map.

In my room is a floor lamp with a rich green shaft. According to the naive view that consciousness mirrors reality, when I look at that shaft, I am seeing "what's really there". But is that so? Physics, for one, tells me differently. When I look at that shaft, I am not seeing "what's really there", but am instead seeing photons of certain wavelengths that have bounced off the shaft. Moreover, the shaft, which appears solid to me, really is not. Instead, it is made up of atoms that are themselves mostly empty space. Yet, the notion that I am conscious of "what's really there" gets even more problematic when we turn from physics to psychology. For then I learn that as my brain processes the information coming to me from the lamp shaft, it repeatedly steps down and deletes information, so that, in the end, the information I have to think about is less than one hundredth the information that entered my eye when I looked at the shaft. In short, what I might naively think is "really there" is actually more like a symbol of what's really there. The lamp shaft I see is not the lamp shaft that exists, but rather a construct of my brain -- a symbol of what exists.

Yet, even though I can only be conscious of a symbol of what exists, that symbol is useful to me. What I see when I look at that lamp shaft is just as useful to me as what I see when I look my indispensable map of Colorado's erotic dance clubs. In both cases I can use the symbol to negotiate and cope with reality.

Both physics and psychology reveal that all consciousness is symbolic. Therefore, when discussing consciousness, it is more appropriate to think of its relationship to reality as like a map to its terrain, than it is to think of its relationship to reality as like a mirror to what the mirror reflects.