What
is this? What
is that?
"The map
is not the territory".
Unfortunately we are
stuck with words. All is cyclic in description.
We believe that "something is out there", meaning something external to ourselves.
Information reaches us via "information carriers", such as light and sound.
These information carriers enter us via our sensory organs, such as eyes and ears.
This 'information' is then processed by our brains, using words.
These words are understood by some commonality of definition.
We think that we understand that these words accurately describe information about objects.
But these are assumptions which have greater or lesser degrees of validity.
Light waves are of differing frequencies which affect our eyes and brains as colours.
We agree in our speech that these colours have names, red, yellow blue, et cetera.
But we can never know how these colours affect our interpretation by our brains.
We know what the effects are called, because we learn the names given to them.
We can never know how these affect each of us. We just assume what we are taught.
Words, names of objects (or phenomena) which we learn, are arbitrary descriptions.
The very many different languages show that words are arbitrary conventions.
"The map is not the territory". "The menu is not the meal". The words are not the reality.
The more complicated and convoluted the verbal descriptions, the greater the discrepancy.
The more we analyse verbal descriptions, the more we realise that they are cyclic.
Whilst there is certainly much use of words, they are still a series of cyclic meanings.
Just look at a dictionary.
All words are filtered through our personal experiences.
Consider how differently each of us understands the following words:
Father, mother, great, possible, unusual, extraordinary, food, drink, meaning.
Whilst there are common elements - sufficient for some communication - these are limited.
We cannot convey accurately in words, what we experience through our senses and brains.
"The map is not the territory". General semantics.
Cat
