Sometimes the map is the terrain (or to be more precise but less pithy, sometimes maps are encoded in the terrain and are therefore part of the terrain). The b

Sometimes the map is the terrain (or to be more precise but less pithy, sometimes maps are encoded in the terrain and are therefore part of the terrain). The brain evolved precisely because operating at a higher level of abstraction is valuable. If you understand the brain in terms only of neural firings and not in terms of the concepts they encode, you will never properly understand what the brain is doing. If the subject under discussion is something symbolic, or symbol using (e.g. a map) then trying to understand it in terms of its physical instantiation (atoms of paper and ink) is likely going to lead you astray.