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{{Short description|Relationship between an object and a representation of that object}}
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The '''map–territory relation''' is the relationship between an object and a representation of that [[Object (philosophy)|object]], as in the relation between a geographical territory and a [[map]] of it. '''Mistaking the map for the territory''' is a [[logical fallacy]] that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. Polish-American scientist and philosopher [[Alfred Korzybski]] remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an [[abstraction]] derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse [[conceptual model]]s of reality with reality itself. These ideas are crucial to [[general semantics]], a system Korzybski originated.▼
The relationship has also been expressed in other terms, such as "the model is not the data", "[[all models are wrong]]", and [[Alan Watts]]'s "The menu is not the meal."{{efn|Widely attributed to Alan Watts, "The menu is not the meal" may be an unrecorded quote, or it may be a paraphrase derived from two recorded quotes: 1) "Money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the menu represents the dinner."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ |title=Intelligent Mindlessness |date=31 October 2022 |publisher=alanwatts.org |access-date=2024-03-12 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231003133609/https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/intelligent-mindlessness/ |archive-date=2023-10-03}}</ref> 2) "[W]e confuse the world as it is with . . . the world as it is described. . . . And when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we’re not related to ourselves at all. We are like people eating menus instead of dinners."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ |title=Not What Should Be, But What Is |date=31 October 2022 |publisher=alanwatts.org |access-date=2024-03-12 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209014704/https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ |archive-date=2023-12-09}}</ref>}} The concept is thus quite relevant throughout [[ontology]] and [[ontology (information science)|applied ontology]] regardless of any connection to [[general semantics]] per se (or absence thereof). Its avatars are thus encountered in [[semantics]], [[statistics]], [[logistics]], [[business administration]], [[semiotics]], and many other applications.
▲The '''map–territory relation''' is the relationship between an object and a representation of that [[Object (philosophy)|object]], as in the relation between a geographical territory and a [[map]] of it. Polish-American scientist and philosopher [[Alfred Korzybski]] remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an [[abstraction]] derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse [[conceptual model]]s of reality with reality itself. These ideas are crucial to [[general semantics]], a system Korzybski originated.
A frequent coda to "
==History==
▲A frequent coda to "[[all models are wrong]]" is that "all models are wrong (but some are useful)," which emphasizes the proper framing of recognizing '''map–territory differences'''—that is, how and why they are important, what to do about them, and how to live with them properly. The point is not that all maps are useless; rather, the point is simply to maintain [[critical thinking]] about the discrepancies: whether or not they are either negligible or significant in each context, how to reduce them (thus [[iterative and incremental development|iterating]] a map, or any other model, to become a better version of itself), and so on.
The
The concept has been illustrated in various cultural works. Belgian surrealist [[René Magritte]] explored the idea in his painting ''[[The Treachery of Images]]'', which depicts a pipe with the caption, ''"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"'' ("This is not a pipe").<ref>{{cite book |last=Barry |first=Ann Marie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZiTpRxkTMwUC |title=Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication |publisher=SUNY Press |year=1997 |page=15|isbn=978-0-7914-3435-2 }}</ref> [[Lewis Carroll]], in ''[[Sylvie and Bruno Concluded]]'' (1893), describes a fictional map with a scale of "a mile to the mile", which proves impractical. [[Jorge Luis Borges]] similarly references a map as large as the territory in his short story "[[On Exactitude in Science]]" (1946). In his 1964 book ''[[Understanding Media]]'', philosopher [[Marshall McLuhan]] argued that all media representations, including electronic media, are abstractions or "extensions" of reality.<ref>{{cite book |last=McLuhan |first=Marshall |title=Understanding Media |publisher=McGraw-Hill |year=1964 |isbn=9780262631594}}</ref>
▲The expression first appeared in print in "A Non-Aristotelian System and Its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics", a paper that Alfred Korzybski gave at a meeting of the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]] in [[New Orleans]], [[Louisiana]] on December 28, 1931. The paper was reprinted in ''Science and Sanity'', 1933, pp. 747–761.<ref>{{cite book |last=Korzybski |first=Alfred |author-link=Alfred Korzybski |title=Science and Sanity. An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WnEVAQAAIAAJ |year=1933 |publisher=The International Non-Aristotelian Library Pub. Co. |pages=[https://books.google.com/?id=WnEVAQAAIAAJ&q=747 747–761]}}</ref> In this book, Korzybski acknowledges his debt to mathematician [[Eric Temple Bell]], whose epigram "the map is not the thing mapped"<ref>Korzybski, Alfred (1933). p. [https://books.google.com/?id=WnEVAQAAIAAJ&q=%22E.+T.+BELL+The+map+is+not+the+thing+mapped%22 247].</ref> was published in ''Numerology''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bell |first=Eric Temple |author-link=Eric Temple Bell |title=Numerology |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VCI5AAAAIAAJ |year=1933 |publisher=[[Williams and Wilkins]] |___location=[[Baltimore]] |page=[https://books.google.com/?id=zo0IAQAAIAAJ&q=%22The+map+is+not+the+thing+mapped.%22 138]}}</ref>
The idea has influenced a number of modern works, including [[Robert M. Pirsig]]'s ''[[Lila: An Inquiry into Morals]]'' and [[Michel Houellebecq]]'s novel ''[[The Map and the Territory]]'', the latter of which won the [[Prix Goncourt]].<ref>Pirsig, Robert M. ''Lila: An Inquiry into Morals'' (1991), pp. 363–364.</ref><ref>Houellebecq, Michel. ''The Map and the Territory'' (2010).</ref> The concept is also discussed in the work of [[Robert Anton Wilson]] and [[James A. Lindsay]], who critiques the confusion of conceptual maps with reality in his book ''Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly''.<ref>Lindsay, James A. (2013). ''Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly'', Fareham: Onus Books.</ref> Historian of religion [[Jonathan Z. Smith]] named one of the books collecting his essays ''Map is Not Territory''.<ref>Smith, Jonathan Z. ''Map is Not Territory'' (1978).</ref> Similarly, a collection of writings by AI Pessimist [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] was named ''Map and Territory''.<ref>Yudkowsky, Eliezer ''Map and Territory: Rationality from AI to Zombies'' (2018).</ref>
==Commentary==
[[Gregory Bateson]], in his 1972 work ''[[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]]'', argued that understanding a territory is inherently limited by the sensory channels used to perceive it. He described the "map" of reality as an imperfect representation:
{{quote|We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map
Bateson further explored this in "The Cybernetics of 'Self': A Theory of Alcoholism" (1971), arguing that a map's usefulness lies in its structural analogy to the territory, rather than its literal truthfulness. For example, even a cultural belief in colds being caused by spirits can function effectively as a "map" for public health, analogous to germ theory.
Philosopher [[David Schmidtz]] addresses the theme of accuracy in ''Elements of Justice'' (2006), highlighting how overly detailed models can become impractical, a problem also known as [[Bonini's paradox]]. Poet [[Paul Valéry]] summarized this idea: "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable."
▲{{quote|We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. ... Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ''[[ad infinitum]]''.}}
The rise of electronic media and [[Jean Baudrillard]]'s concept of ''[[simulacra]]'' further complicates the map-territory distinction. In ''Simulacra and Simulation'', Baudrillard argues that in the modern age, simulations precede and even replace reality:
{{quote|Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory.}}
==See also==
{{div col|colwidth=22em}}
* [[Allegory of the cave]]
* [[Blind men and an elephant]]
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* [[Fallacy of misplaced concreteness]]
* [[Good regulator]]<!-- Regular–system relation analogous to map–territory: regulator must model system. -->
* [[Knowledge argument]]
* [[Ludic fallacy]]
* [[Mental model]]
* [[Mind projection fallacy]]
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* [[Philosophy of perception]]
* [[Reification (fallacy)]]
* [[Signified and signifier]]
* [[Social constructionism]]
* [[Structural differential]]
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* [[Use–mention distinction]]
* [[When a white horse is not a horse]]{{div col end}}
==Notes==
{{notelist}}
==References==
{{reflist}}
=== Further reading ===
{{Cite journal |date=2018 |editor-last=Wuppuluri |editor-first=Shyam |editor2-last=Doria |editor2-first=Francisco Antonio |title=The Map and the Territory |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-72478-2 |journal=The Frontiers Collection |language=en |publisher=Springer Nature |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-72478-2 |isbn=978-3-319-72477-5 |issn=1612-3018|url-access=subscription |arxiv=1710.09944 }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Map-Territory Relation}}
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[[Category:Consensus reality]]
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