Map|Territory: Foundational Premises
Map|Territory: Foundational Premises
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Alfred Korzybski used the Map|Territory analogy to illustrate three foundational premises of his General Semantics.
The Map|Territory Analogy
1. The map is not the territory.
A map depicts only limited aspects of the territory it represents or symbolizes. For a map to be useful, it must accurately reflect the relative structure or relationships of the key features of the territory. Similarly, our language behaviors can be thought of as maps of our actual life experiences. These verbal expressions of how and what we think, feel, react, judge, assume, etc., should be in accordance with the 'territory' of our lived experiences. And on a pre-verbal level, we can use the metaphor to remember that even our lived experiences — what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste, etc. — are neurological constructs ('maps') of whatever it is in the 'real' world outside ourselves that we are seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting.
Of course, "the map is not the territory!"
It's rather easy to dismiss this statement of the obvious. Got it! Let's move on.
But let's not be so quick to take these six words for granted. Arguably, the whole of General Semantics derives from this six-word premise and the consequences which follow. So let's spend a few minutes considering the implications for Korzybski's General Semantics.
The map is not the territory. What does this mean to you? Perhaps something like ...
- The word is not the thing.
- The symbol is not the thing symbolized.
- The name is not the thing named.
- The referent is not the thing referenced.
In other words, a particular type of distinction is expressed: one thing is not the same thing as another thing which the one thing is represented by. More generally, an abstraction is not that from which the abstraction is abstracted. The map (an abstraction) is not the territory ( whatever is not an abstraction; but hold that thought until the summary of this page).
In the four examples above, the abstractions are characterized in terms easily recognizable as abstract terms — words, symbols, names, referents.
However, in Korzybski's General Semantics the pre-eminent, or foundational, map|territory distinction involves two seemingly non-abstract entities.
2. The map cannot show all of the territory.
Maps are limited in size and detail. They can only depict selected items of interest or importance. Similarly, our language behaviors — our talking, listening, writing, thinking — are limited and cannot include or comprehend all of whatever we are trying to describe or understand. And on a pre-verbal level, the maps of what we are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling account for only a fraction of what exists in the territory of the 'real' world.
So in Korzybski's term, we can think of a map as an abstraction of the territory it symbolizes; the words we use to express ourselves as an abstraction of the thoughts and feelings we experience; and even those thoughts and feelings as abstractions of whatever stimulates our sensory experiences with the 'real' world.
3. A map is self-reflexive and made by a map-maker.
Maps, like money, don't grow on trees. They don't spring forth from the earth or rain down from the heavens. Maps are constructed by their makers. A human being makes a map. An individual decides the purpose of the map, the size, the scale, the features to be included, how many copies will be made, who will use it, the colors, etc. In deciding all those details, the human map maker must also determine which features will not be included, which might be exaggerated or emphasized for importance, what descriptive annotations might be helpful. And if the map-maker were constructing a map of the territory which surrounded the map-maker herself, then a theoretically-complete map would include both the map itself and the map-maker.
In terms of our language behaviors, we can remember that whatever we "reduce to language," or whatever thoughts and feelings we abstract from our experiences, are human constructions reflecting evaluations. We are making our own maps (evaluations) of our experiences, and we can also then evaluate our evaluations. In language, since we can almost endlessly talk about our talking, we are in a sense making maps of maps of maps, etc.
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Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map, of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by [Josiah] Royce (Korzybski, 1994, p. 58). |