First-Family Problems
Asking About Reality
When people start thinking philosophically, many of the questions they ask are about what reality is like, or how we can trust our knowledge of what reality is like. They might ask about the origins of the universe, or about the nature of consciousness, or of language. They might ask about how they can be confident in any of their beliefs about what things are like.
There are many similarities and connections between such questions, so we can usefully consider them to be members of a single family of questions.
When a person finds themself unable to find a satisfactory answer to a first family question that has snagged their mind, they are faced with a first family problem. They might feel that something is amiss with the world, or with the nature of knowledge. Or they might feel that there is a need for a better theory — some new way to explain the phenomena that concerns them
Mapping Reality
To dissolve a philosophical problem, we have to find a way of seeing things that doesn’t throw up a sense of the problematic. In this case, it means finding a coherent way to see how knowledge works.
The philosophically-minded physicist David Bohm offered a description of how knowledge works in science that provides a perfect starting point. “A theory is a kind of map of the universe, and like any other map it is a limited abstraction and not entirely accurate.”1
Maps work by creating a publicly-visible model of the world. There are always features that exist within the map that correspond to features that exist within the realm of reality. In physics, the theoretical elements — ideas, mathematical symbols — form patterns that closely match elements in the realm of experience, such as the exact wavelengths of light emitted by a given material when heated, or the trajectory of Saturn as it moves around the sun.
It is this correspondence that makes maps useful. We can work with the map-features and discover effective ways to deal with corresponding territory. We become able to navigate reality successfully.
Mapmaking
Scientists test their maps rigorously, looking for places where the maps fail to match reality. Every time there’s a mismatch, a puzzle appears. How can the map be adapted to fit the new observations? Is there a way to extend an existing map? Is there an alternative map that would fit reality better? Or is there a need for an entirely new type of map? If so, what would it look like?
Our common sense ideas about the world also map out reality. They suggest how things are and what would happen if a person does certain things.
Like scientific maps, our common sense maps are limited abstractions. On the whole they work well. We know that if we turn the correct key in a lock we‘ll be able to open the door. We know that if we switch an oven on, it will heat up and we’ll be able to cook our food. Our common sense maps help us navigate the world. They serve us well, on the whole, but there are two traps that it is easy to fall into.
The First Trap
The first trap is that of assuming that reality is identical to the ideas we hold about it.
As we think using ideas, we tend to see our ideas projected out into the world. Imagine a person seeing an object full of brown liquid sitting upon a wooden surface and saying to themself ‘the mug of coffee is on the table’. Their ideas would embody knowledge that could help them have the drink they’ve been craving. But there would be far more to the scene than what their ideas had captured — the qualities of the liquid in the cup, for instance, or the stability of the surface the mug is resting on.
Imagine one person using the word ‘terrorist’ to label a man that another person calls ‘a soldier’. The two words denote different categories of fighter. They are part of different maps. But the reality would be the same — someone made of flesh and blood motivated by a complex blend of loyalty, fear, hatred and aggression.
It is as if our ideas conjure up a veil that sits between us and the world – a veil of idea that attaches itself to the things of the world and shows them to us in terms of the ideas we use to map them. We see the glazed clay as a ‘mug’ and the fighter as a ‘terrorist’ or ‘soldier’.
Whenever we see aspects of the world as particular entities, the maps we project out onto the world become clear and precise. We become able to think logically about what we’re seeing. But this power carries with it a danger. The veil of idea can solidify in front of us so completely that we start believing that the reality of the world is exactly as we think it to be. We assume that the map and the reality are identical.2
The Second Trap
The second trap is holding on to ideas that no longer serve us well.
It is easy to get attached to the ideas that we’ve held for a long time. We grow comfortable with them. And it’s never comfortable admitting to ourselves that our ideas are no longer serving us well and we no longer understand the world in front of us.
But the world is constantly changing. We all enter new areas of experience. New features of reality come into play. New challenges appear. So, just as scientists must find new ways to map out the domains they research, we often need to develop new mental maps for the domains where we are guided by our common sense maps.
Nothing Philosophically Problematic
Both traps can be escaped. If we accept the limits of the map-making process, and if we keep revising and updating our ideas, our maps of reality will work just fine. We can use our ideas about the world confidently.
So there is nothing genuinely problematic about our understanding of what the world is like. There are just puzzles to be solved as we seek to improve our maps.
When we see this clearly, the first family of philosophical problems dissolves. There is nothing left to vex the philosophical mind.
- David Bohm and David Peat, Science, Order and Creativity, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 9.
- This is such a fundamental and widespread source of confusion that it deserves its own name. Since the confusion comes from identifying reality with the ideas used to describe it, and a rationalist is a person whose actions and decisions are based purely on their ideas, we can call it the ‘map-reality fallacy’.