Escaping Illusion
— Bruce Lee1
Reconstructing Reality
We think using ideas.
The only way we can get a handle on the complexities of the world is to find ideas that fit the reality that we perceive. When we do, ideas can play in our heads as we try to make sense of how one aspect of the world corresponds with another.
Even if our ideas are a good fit for the aspect of life we are considering, however, we’re not in direct communion with the reality of the world when we think. Instead we’re inhabiting our reconstructions of reality. Our thoughts about the world are projected out to form a substitute reality — a substitute that from within feels more solid and real than the ungraspable stream of being itself.
It is as if the world was wallpapered with ideas. We see the wallpaper, not the world.
A Common Confusion
Since our ideas can feel so substantial, it’s easy to take them to be identical to reality itself. But they are purely mental constructions — ‘ideal forms’ — and they are different in kind to the ‘forms of life‘ that exist out in the universe’s flow of event.
We all have detailed mental maps of the world made up of ideal forms. They help us to navigate the structures of actuality and possibility that make up reality. But to mistake the map for the territory is to commit a map-territory fallacy.
People commit this fallacy:
- When they discuss things in terms of fixed ideas and end up in labyrinths that only exist in the abstract. This is common in political and philosophical debates.
- When they believe a scientific or religious thesis to be the absolute truth rather than a (perhaps powerful) model of a deeper but ungraspable truth.
- When they take categories, such as genres of music, to be real in themselves instead of just being handy ways to guide our attention to a reality that can’t be properly captured in any set of categories.
- When they judge individuals or cultures based on stereotypes, or take labels to be more than just convenient categories.
- When they focus purely on stated goals and lose sight of the actual progress that the goals are meant to facilitate.
Seeing the Fallacy
We can escape the map-territory fallacy simply by seeing when we fall into it.
Whenever we become aware that we’ve been treating our ideas as if they were the true reality, and not just partial maps, there is a shift in focus. The existence of the stream of life behind all ideas re-emerges into our consciousness and the fallacy dissolves.
The more often we make this shift, the easier it becomes. Escaping the map-territory fallacy is a habit that we can build. We stop taking our ideas — or ourselves — too seriously.
Letting Go of Old Ideas
The other lesson that an understanding of philosophy’s first-family problems teaches is the importance of letting go of ideas that no longer serve us well.
In science, conjectures are probed and tested to see if their predictions match reality. Whenever a mismatch is revealed, a puzzle appears. How can the scientific maps be redrawn so that the ideas correspond with the observations?
We can do the same in everyday life, though this is hard for old ideas are comfortable. Our understanding is often hard fought for. It takes an investment of effort to question our own ideas and, where they’re found wanting, to come up with replacements.
Again, an attitude of scepticism towards our own beliefs can help. We can maintain an awareness that even the most powerful ideas we have are just fragments of map. And when we realise that our ideas are beginning to let us down, we can acknowledge to ourselves that there’s need for new thinking and begin the process of discovery.