“The map is not the territory,” Alfred Korzybski is presumed to have said.\u00a0 Language–a primary subject in the field he founded called general semantics–is viewed like a map of a territory in general semantics.<\/p>\n
What\u00a0struck me yesterday\u00a0is a wonder: Might Korzybski have been more specifically referring to symbols? That is, is he saying more that symbols are like maps\u00a0as\u00a0opposed to language is like a map?<\/p>\n
Consider: We might agree that the function of a symbol is to represent something. When a symbol represents something empirical,\u00a0it cannot represent everything about that empirical thing. For instance, take the symbol “Ben Hauck,” which represents me.\u00a0 You don’t think of everything<\/em> about me when you see or hear that symbol.\u00a0 Instead, when you see or hear that symbol, you call to mind a relatively few characteristics related to me from the near infinitude of characteristics I possess.\u00a0 Given that understanding, we see that symbols, perhaps without exception, represent relatively few characteristics of an empirical thing. That is, there are a great number of characteristics\u00a0symbols don’t represent or that they leave out.<\/p>\n Now think of maps. Maps function similar to symbols. In fact, a map is composed<\/em> of symbols. Maps\u00a0might be considered “symbols par exemplar<\/em>.”\u00a0 By their nature, maps leave out details like blades of grass and trees, fish in rivers and cars rushing to work.\u00a0 They only call to attention a relatively few characteristics.<\/p>\n The usefulness of thinking of symbols as maps is that it’s a very, very visual conceptualization of symbols. By maps being so visual a concept, a person can usually easily grasp the notion of symbols.<\/p>\n Furthermore, a secondary usefulness of\u00a0the map analogy\u00a0becomes apparent: The use of symbols carries with it an ethics.\u00a0 Seeing symbols as maps circumscribes a particular ethics\u00a0around the use of symbols: A right symbol represents, and a wrong symbol misrepresents.<\/em>\u00a0 By the map analogy, symbols should represent appropriately<\/em>. <\/em>If a bad map is one that misrepresents its territory, a bad symbol is the same–it misrepresents what it was chosen to represent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Presumably fire fighters have the grammatically incorrect word “flammable” on their fire trucks because the grammatically correct “inflammable” brings to mind for many people “resistant to flame”–the exact opposite characteristic\u00a0the symbol\u00a0is meant to represent. “Inflammable” might be said to be a bad symbol in that light, despite being grammatically correct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n General semantics looks at the symbols we use, the symbols we choose, and studies their use relative to our experiences. It studies our truths and our lies, our humble statements and our exaggerations, our journalism and our propaganda. It studies many sorts of representation.\u00a0 It notes our chosen symbols and compares those symbols to our experiences. It sometimes offers criticism when there’s a considerable misrepresentation–or even just a small one.<\/p>\n As a standard of experience to measure representation, general semantics looks to science. For general semantics, science “tells\u00a0it like it is”;\u00a0science provides the best standard for what’s true about reality and our experience of it.\u00a0 If for the scientist something is unknown, then for the everyday reporter, that something is unknown, too, and the everyday reporter can’t know more.\u00a0 If\u00a0the everyday reporter\u00a0communicates in symbols that that something isn’t<\/em> unknown, that he actually knows<\/em> it,\u00a0this everyday reporter\u00a0would be misrepresenting experience, at least\u00a0relative to the barometer of science.<\/p>\n Of note, much of science is probabilistic and technically unknown or can’t be proven (only evidenced), so nearly anytime this everyday reporter or you or I speak with certainty about something empirical, we misrepresent ourselves.\u00a0 General semantics calls our attention to this, and as a result recommends operating using a general principle of uncertainty<\/em> that guides us to speak more often\u00a0probabilistically and less often with unflappable certitude.\u00a0 But of course, science also provides us with a list of “facts” and if we speak outside those facts, we potentially speak in a misrepresentational way.\u00a0 Science provides general semantics not only with a map of the territory, but also a\u00a0mindset about the territory.<\/p>\n All this mindset really is, is a list of facts about our personal experience abilities<\/em>.\u00a0 It might be a fact that we can’t 100% know something.\u00a0 Here, the territory is ourselves and our abilities; the map is “We can’t 100% know something”; this is also our mindset.\u00a0 We’ve “set our minds” on this fact and operate from this setting.<\/p>\n And I come to this blog post after having it strike me yesterday that I might\u00a0argue general semantics is the study of how we represent our experiences<\/em>.\u00a0 From that, the importance of the symbol came to mind, and the diminished importance of language followed.\u00a0 Not that language is unimportant in general semantics, it’s just that symbols strike me as a bit more important.\u00a0 Symbols include words, representational images, phrases, gestures, and so on.\u00a0 Language might be thought of as merely a combination of<\/em> symbols, used to communicate an idea more complex than a single symbol can communicate.\u00a0 That is, language is a collection of maps much like the collection of maps you see inset in driving directions.\u00a0 One symbol can represent reality; several symbols can represent a more complicated reality that a single symbol may not be able to.<\/p>\n Let’s go with this definition of general semantics and see where we go with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “The map is not the territory,” Alfred Korzybski is presumed to have said.\u00a0 Language–a primary subject in the field he founded called general semantics–is viewed like a map of a territory in general semantics. What\u00a0struck me yesterday\u00a0is a wonder: Might Korzybski have been more specifically referring to symbols? That is, is he saying more that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,78,80,81,79],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-definition","tag-general-principle-of-uncertainty","tag-maps","tag-science","tag-symbols"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}