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There may as well be no territory, the only thing relevant is the map and how it reacts to probing.

• stcredzero 8y ago
  the only thing relevant is the map and how it reacts to probing Sounds like Postmodernism to me. If you think it's not, then let me point out that you can just substitute "text" for "map" and you're pretty much there. There must be something underlying the maps, because so many of those maps have turned out to be wildly wrong, completely barking up the wrong tree. It's not even that they didn't answer the questions correctly -- they were so wrong, they were asking nonsense questions in the first place. There is a nice little allegory by Raymond Smullyan, where some ancient philosophers are debating what keeps the world from "falling down." I think it's in "5000 BC," and is the story by that name. https://www.amazon.ca/5000-B-C-Other-Philosophical-Fantasies/dp/0312295170 https://www.amazon.ca/5000-B-C-Other-Philosophical-Fantasies...
  • kolpa 8y ago
    Scientific maps are wrong when they are shown to be inconsistent or incomplete. Of course people can make mistakes.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      I was responding to, "There may as well be no territory, the only thing relevant is the map and how it reacts to probing." If there are only maps, then when map A is wrong, I can just make my own map B for which map A is a good map. In that case, no map is falsifiable, and all maps are equally valid. It's Postmodernism!