Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds

✯ a–n–a–l–i–t–i–c–a 3 comitato scientifico Mauro Mariani, Carlo Marletti Enrico Moriconi Analitica propone una serie di testi – classici, monografie, strumenti antologici e manuali – dedicati ai più importanti temi della ricerca filosofica, con particolare riferimento alla logica, all’epistemologia e alla filosofia del linguaggio. Destinati allo studio, alla documentazione e all’aggiornamento critico, i volumi di Analitica intendono toccare sia i temi istituzionali dei vari campi di indagine, sia le questioni emergenti collocate nei punti di intersezione fra le varie aree di ricerca. First Pisa Colloquium in Logic, Language and Epistemology Edited by Carlo Marletti Edizioni ETS www.edizioniets.com Pubblicato con un contributo dei fondi PRIN cofinanziati dal MIUR e dal Dipartimento di Filosofia dell’Università di Pisa © Copyright 2010 EDIZIONI ETS Piazza Carrara, 16-19, I-56126 Pisa info@edizioniets.com www.edizioniets.com Distribuzione PDE, Via Tevere 54, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino [Firenze] ISBN 978-884672677-3 First Pisa Colloquium in Logic, Language and Epistemology Contents Foreword Carlo Marletti xi A conceptualistic alternative in the philosophy of mathematics Luca Bellotti 1 Kill Will Maurizio Candiotto 10 A preferential model for contextual reasoning Giovanni Casini 35 Attention and terminological reference: introductory analysis of the role of consciousness Andrea Fornai 61 Imre Lakatos, the man who would be a philosopher-king Stefano Gattei 70 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds Luca Mori 90 The Kerry-Frege debate about object and concept. Some remarks on Kerry’s position 105 Carlo Proietti Some not so obvious remarks about the cut rule Laura Tesconi 116 Refutation: a proof-theoretic account Luca Tranchini 133 Towards causal modalities: a non-monotonic path Giacomo Turbanti 153 Foreword xi Foreword The remote source of the present volume is a workshop on Concepts, which was held at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Pisa in September 2003. The motivation of the meeting, which was participated by people from various countries, was the publication of the Italian translation of Ruth Garrett Millikan’s book On Clear and Confused Ideas. An Essay about Substance Concepts (edited by Carlo Marletti, ETS, Pisa 2003). Various obstacles, including difficulties in gathering the papers read at the workshop, have postponed the publication of the proceedings to such a point that only a trace of the original material has survived. It is important, however, to remind that remote origin, because the meeting was very lively, and the aim of this volume is in fact to carry on the discussion started there. The reader will find here a collection of papers on different topics in various branches of philosophy in the analytical tradition. What they have in common is, essentially, the analytical style which characterizes all of them, although they tackle widely different problems. They cover different disciplines: logic (both mathematical and philosophical), epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, ethics, and also linguistics and the cognitive sciences. The variety of topics and the lively exposition characterizing the essays are such that we hope that readers with widely different concerns could find something of interest in at least some of them. Finally, we wish to thank the Department of Philosophy for financial support, and all the people whose work made it possible to publish this volume. C. M. Pisa, April 2010 90 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds ▼❛♣s ❛♥❞ ♣❡r❝❡♣t✉❛❧ t❡rr✐t♦r✐❡s ♦❢ ❡♠❜♦❞✐❡❞ ♠✐♥❞s ▲✉❝❛ ▼♦r✐ ✶ ✏❙t❡❧❧❛ ♥♦✈❛✑ ❛♥❞ ♠❛♣ r❡✈✐s✐♦♥ In October, 1604, not very far away from the point of the heavenly vault where the astronomers of the time thought there would have been a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars, a new star was seen (it was a supernova star), which was to disappear in one year’s time and which was characterised by a variable-in-time light intensity. At the time Galileo was living in Padua and held some public lectures about this topic. There he probably talked about the parallax method to measure distances, and discussed the collocation of this new star with reference to the Moon: in this case, Aristotle’s principle according to which a change would be possible only in a sublunary world could be invalidated by a mathematically equipped observation. It was not only a question of physics, since the confrontation also dealt with theological and metaphysical traditions. The 1604 “stella nova” case and the post-1609 Galilean thesis about the use of telescopes help to focus our attention on the debate about the link between “perceptual experience” and “logical space of reasons”, using the same words John McDowell[10] used in his the essay Mind and World, where he set the question going back to Kant and having a confrontation with Sellars’s and Davidson’s ideas. As for it, McDowell thinks the two opposite ideas of Davidson’s coherentism and of the “Myth of the Given” are not satisfactory: according to the former approach, «experience must be outside the space of reason» and «[experience] is casually relevant to a subject’s beliefs and judgements, but it has no bearing on their status as justified or warranted»; the consequence is that «experience cannot count as a reason for holding a belief»1 ; as for the «vain appeal to the Given, in the sense of bare presences that are supposed to constitute the ultimate grounds of empirical judgements»2 , in Science, Perception and Reality, Sellars [13] already maintained that a 1 2 McDowell [10]: 14; it.:15. McDowell [10]: 24; it.: 25. Luca Mori 91 mental episode doesn’t become cognitive because we can explain it or even produce a corresponding immediate datum3 . Quine [11], instead, maintained that scientific concepts, considered outside enunciative contexts, are cultural myths «epistemologically comparable» to Homer’s Gods, thus affirming that material objects and forces are our postulates. Donald Davidson [3] went even further than Quine: he stated there is no fact, no stimulus of nerve endings which can make a statement true. In the following pages I’ll try to re-formulate some critical points in the postanalytic debate about “logical space of reasons” and “perceptual experience”, taking into consideration the map-territory problem of studies on complexity, with their references to minds as complex and embodied observing systems. Let’s go back to our initial case study. The star observed in 1604 cast doubt on a largely shared cosmological theory. But which observation made the difference? Aristotelian theologians and philosophers of the time did not deny that a never-seenbefore luminous spot was actually visible. However, they could see it inside their “logical space of reasons”, trying to confirm it; instead, Galileo’s observation was developing from the very beginning in a different “space of reasons”, also articulated from a mathematical point of view. With the measurement of star distances, he paved the way to a “logical space of reasons” either-or to the dominant one. New beliefs about the cosmos had to come out of a new combination between perceptual experience and “theory laden” observations; at the same time, a new method to assess the believability of reasons and beliefs was developing. A first solution suggested by Aristotelian theologians and philosophers denied that what had been observed was actually an anomaly with reference to the traditional “space of reasons”, and to the existing maps too. In fact, the dispute with Galileo was about the collocation of a new light with reference to the Moon and to the fixed star sky. Given the traditional method of drawing maps (M), and an Aristotelian map (Marist ), the initial and auxiliary sky observation conditions (Ci) and the “stella nova”, the problem could be summarised like that: • if M is effective (derivation of maps from observations according to Aristotelian principles of physics and metaphysics); • if it must be a real Marist coherent with Aristotelian physics and metaphysics (with a literary interpretation of some passages from the Bible, with a reference Summa theologica); 3 Sellars introduces an inferential pragmatism form, because a mind episode is considered cognitive as it produces argumentations and motivations, without looking for causes or previous “immediate data”. Cfr. [5]. 92 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds • if the Ci conditions must correspond to Marist (condition of adaequatio rei et intellectus) how should S be interpreted? Interpreting the new light as a sublunary phenomenon, S meant an accidental variation with reference to the usual conditions (Ci) and was in contrast neither to method M nor to a cosmological Marist map. Showing that star S was to be much farther away from the Earth than the Moon, in the so-called fixed star sky, Galileo called off the validity of any method-M-derived Marist , with its metaphysical postulates, just like the thesis according to which no generation and corruption could take place beyond the Moon. The Aristotelian “space of reasons” inhibited the perceptual experience of the “stella nova”, as much as the articulation of a “space of reasons” which can account for it, after taking into consideration the friction between new perceptual experiences and their conceptual content. It was a problem of substituting maps, which cropped up because the perceptual experiences the map provided for did not coincide with the actually perceptible ones. What could the new beliefs invoked by Galileo be based on? The sensation of a never-seen light in the sky was, in that context, a conditio sine qua non, or at least a point of initial friction, to elaborate a new “space of reasons”; but, in this matter, “perceptual experiences”, “logical space of reasons” and beliefs concerning the Perceived build each other in a mutual way, with no “direct apprehension” of the unexpected fact (of the “stella nova”) to be considered itself as the foundation of a new belief. On the other hand, in Galileo’s Dialogo dei massimi sistemi, we find an opposite case: according to Simplicio, there is no “direct apprehension” nor perceptual experience in the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, and Galileo had to explain how his “space of reasons” could foresee such a movement without any perceptual crosscheck. As everybody knows, telescopes furthered and decisively modified the initial observation condition (Ci) of cosmology, enlarging visible territory. In this sense, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius is the sign of a new sky map, but also of the possibility to watch the territory with a differentiated range of details. In 1609 the sky was no longer the former perceptual territory: now, the increase of perceptual experience allowed by the telescope makes the formerly observed sky look like a limited section of relevant visible things. What was since 1609 treated as territory has appeared as a largely incomplete map, drawn by a perceptual system limited in its selective skills. The observer, as “embodied mind”, sees his way with reference to a world made of maps and perceptual territories: even perception creates its own maps, through se- Luca Mori 93 lections of consistencies and perceptual outlines. Perceptual territories are sui generis maps: an eight-magnification telescope shows a different landscape from a thirtymagnification one, and the territory is on the average only accessible through selections of something relevant and visible. Like maps, also territories must be thought of in the plural. In this epistemological frame, sensations and perceptual territories can become a point of friction for maps built in the “space of reasons”, without being considered as entries to a territory-collection of neutral “data”. Instead, there is a complex circular cross-reference between moments of sensation, of perceptual experience and of the construction of reasons concerning conceptual contents. As embodied mind, the human observer mixes perceptual experiences and conceptual contents in reasons. Going back to the relation between “logical space of reasons” and perceptual experience, in Sidereus Nuncius Galileo clarifies that the possibility of “scrutinizing in such a sensible way” the Milky Way, thanks to a telescope, allows to solve a certain quantity of disputes based only on words (a verbosis disputationibus) with a perceptual certainty based on sight (ab oculata certitudine). In fact, observing with a telescope enabled to state that the Galaxy is “nothing but a congery of never-ending stars”. This passage contains a crucial epistemological point. With its claim of certainty, perceptual experience contributes to form beliefs, but it is mutually formed and in-formed by them. The oculata certitudo can contribute to annul or to build maps, for the friction to which it forces the space of reasons and the credibility of beliefs. The opposite is also true, as you can see from the confrontation between Simplicio, Salviati and Sagredo about Earth movements: the friction about the oculata certitudo can be created in the space of reasons. The oculata certitudo without a telescope is different from the one offered by a telescope: but in both cases there is something which can be defined as oculata certitudo. This is because, first of all, the territory does not coincide with the set of sensory data we have at the moment. The territory varies together with perceptual capacity and “way of seeing”. Quoting Gregory Bateson, [2]: 21, we can say that the recognition that «a map is not the territory» is the first step towards a discussion about how maps differ from territories; anyway, we must say that territories are in their turn straight away accessible as collections of sensory data. Bateson also compares the territory to the Kantian Ding an sich, inaccessible background to perception and knowledge, subject to never-ending gradation and procedures of “objectivation”. 94 ✷ Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds ❚❤❡ s❝✐❡♥t✐st✬s ✏✐♠❛❣✐♥❛t✐♦♥✑ Scientific revolutions are aesthetic revolutions too, as they involve new perceptions of relations and new relations between perceptions; more in general, every form of learning, dislearning or deutero-learning can give a new configuration to the relations between perceptual experience and space of reasons. Someone maintained, for example Mach in his Knowledge and Error, [9], that scientific investigation asks for a certain kind of imagination, even if different from the artists’ imagination: both of them can «fix the uncommon», both of them can turn to a «mental experiment». But Mach identified a trait typical of sciences: it has to pass from sensations to concepts. Mach’s hint at two types of imagination, linked and yet different one from the other, for scientists and artists, asks for further deepening into the “aesthetic” aspect of scientific revolutions and into the possibility of referring to “conceptual hallucinations” in the scientist’s way of building maps. In fact, quoting examples such as those fallen-into-disgrace notions like “caloric fluid”, “phlogiston” or “aether”, we could deal with them as if they were conceptual hallucinations belonging to past ages introduced just to solve problems in coherence or map building. Yet, a recent case allows us to face this question in a still open debate. In his book The Trouble with Physics, the physician Lee Smolin (2006) affirms that, aiming at combining quantum mechanics and relativity into the same unitary formulation, String theorists ended up working only on mathematical models, introducing new dimensions and symmetries while losing any possibility to compare their own elaborations with empirically observable references. According to Smolin, more in general, «from the beginning of physics, there have been those who imagined they would be the last generation to face the unknown. Physics has always seemed to its practitioners to be almost complete. This complacency is shattered only during revolutions, when honest people are forced to admit that they don’t know the basics» (Smolin [16]: 3). One of the present problems involves that Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity mutually denounce their own incompleteness: «These two discoveries, of relativity and of the quantum, each required us to break definitively with Newtonian physics. However, in spite of great progress over the century, they remain incomplete. Each has defects that point to the existence of a deeper theory. But the main reason each is incomplete is the existence of the other. The mind calls out for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason. Nature is an obvious sense “unified» (Smolin [16]: 4). Here they refer to a “logical space of reasons” not at all unified, where Quantum mechanics seems to definitively exclude that the perceptual experience background is a nature divided into two parts, with the system to be observed on one side, and the Luca Mori 95 observers on the other (Smolin [16]: 7). Brian Greene [6], one of the promoter scientists of the String Theory, highlights a consequence of such a theory: up to now we have observed a small portion of reality, and much of what predicted by this theory is not accessible as a matter of principle to perceptual experience. According to the String Theory, in fact, particles like quarks and electrons, are only epiphenomena of vibration of thin filaments of energy, smaller than an atomic nucleus in the order of 10-20, that is much smaller than we can now measure. Different features observed in subatomic particles may depend on different vibrations of strings. According to the so-called M-theory, maps predict the existence of ten space dimensions and of a time dimension: not all these (fore)seen in the map may be observable, since the photons could be confined in our space-time in four dimensions4 . The oculata certitudo wouldn’t have a hold over all the dimensions predicted by that theory: on the other hand, the credibility of a belief is defined according to more complex inference plays, and the certitudo doesn’t rely on something immediately given. We glimpse more reality in maps than we can see in the territory; in the inbetween space of perceptual and conceptual inferences and thanks to their frictions our beliefs rise, consolidate or die out, much more than in referring to a mythical territory immediately given as a totality of facts. Anyway, as Green himself says, the history of sciences includes lots of cases where mathematical predictions (working on maps), even contradicting intuition and experience, have allowed to make hypothesis about relations and objects whose existence has been later on discovered by a crossing of perceptual experiences, measurements, mapping (e.g.: entanglement, black holes, antimatter). Another example is the story of Lakatos’s small planet: «The story is about an imaginary case of planetary misbehavior. A physicist of the pre-Einsteinian era takes Newton’s mechanics and his law of gravitation, (N), the accepted initial condition, I, and calculates, with their help, the path of a newly discovered small planet, p. But the planet deviates from the calculated path. Does our Newtonian physicist consider that the deviation was forbidden by Newton’s theory and therefore that, once established, it refutes the theory N? No. He suggest that there must be a hitherto unknown planet p’ which perturbs the path of p. He calculates the mass, orbit, etc., of this hypothetical planet and then asks an experimental astronomer to test his hypothesis. The planet p’ is so small that even the biggest available telescopes cannot possibly observe it: the experimental astronomer applies for a research grant to 4 After also introducing the “bran” notion, Greene actually writes that we see three dimensions because, as observers, we are confined together with photons in our “bran-world”, in a 3-bran. 96 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds build yet a bigger one. In three years’ time the new telescope is ready. Were the unknown planet p’ to be discovered, it would be hailed as a new victory of Newtonian science. But it is not. Does our scientist abandon Newton’s theory and his idea of the perturbing planet? No. He suggests that a cloud of cosmic dust hides the planet from us. He calculates the location and properties of this cloud and asks for a research grant to send up a satellite to test his calculations [. . . ] This story strongly suggests that even a most respected scientific theory, like Newton’s dynamics and theory of gravitation, may fail to forbid any observable state of affairs. Indeed, some scientific theories forbid an event occurring in some specified finite spatio-temporal region (or briefly, a ‘singular event’) only on the condition that no other factor (possibly hidden in some distant and unspecified spatio-temporal corner of the universe) has any influence on it. But then such theories never alone contradict a ‘basic’ statement: they contradict at most a conjunction of a basic statement describing a spatio-temporally singular event and of a universal non-existence statement saying that no other relevant cause is at work anywhere in the universe» (Lakatos [8]: 100-101). If a pre-Einsteinian physician, after discovering a new small planet p, wanted to calculate its trajectory on the basis of Newton’s law of gravity and of some initial and auxiliary conditions, if he found that p’s real orbit and the calculated one don’t coincide, the existence of another planet p’ might be supposed, which could perturb p’s orbit, or the incidence of other conditions (initial and auxiliary), after eluding observation, or it could question the absolute validity of Newton’s law of gravity. Therefore, the existence of a perturber p’ might be “discovered” – even before the ways of Galilean oculata certitudo – because of a hypothesis about a reference incongruity between available maps and observable territories. Einstein’s equations for the gravitational field allow “to see in the pattern” orbit movements due to the perihelion precession of Mercury, already known but unexplained by Newton’s equations; moreover, with Einstein’s equations, it was possible to catch the deviation undergone by the light of a far star at the passage in the spacetime curvature of the Sun mass; Dirac’s equation, presented in 1928, which made him win the Nobel prize in 1933, allowed to predict the existence of an equal mass-particle to the electron one, but with a positive charge, i.e. of positron, which was experimentally observed – after being theoretically discovered in Dirac’s map – by Carl David Anderson, in 1932. In this way, in the models, you can refer to hypothetical particles as tachyons, faster than photons, or as gravitons, mediators of gravitational force. In some cases, what predicted by maps has been denied: for example, when they thought the luminiferous aether had to exist, because of Maxell’s theory of electro- Luca Mori 97 magnetic waves and because of the idea according to which the light is an electromagnetic wave. The present debate about the String Theory involves for the first time the idea itself of scientific method. According to Smolin, those who try to solve the so-called problem of Quantum gravity using strings look more like Ptolemaicists focused on epicycles than like Copernicus or Galileo. Today the process of map unification, known as Quantum gravity problem, raises a different problem from the “stella nova” one: in fact, it is the integration of incomplete maps making further hypothesis on initial auxiliary conditions, even referring to something which, as a matter of principle, would be removed from every perceptual experience, like non-observable dimensions; the oculata certitudo seems to be put off or substituted, in its role of reference on the “territory”, by map calculation. This is why we still debate the question about the scientist’s imagination and about the friction which should bind it: even because they have elaborated maps which, as a matter of principle, exclude the possibility of a perceptual friction addressed to some elements included in the maps themselves. Therefore, the credibility of beliefs might rise from inferential frictions comparing maps and perceptual territories. ✸ ❚❤❡ s❝✐❡♥t✐st ❛s ❛ ♣❛✐♥t❡r ♦r ❛s ❛ ❝❛st❛✇❛② Participating in a discussion about Bohr’s atomic theory, Werner Heisenberg [7] compared this famous physician to a painter. According to Heisenberg’s evidence, Bohr himself used an image which reminds of Quine’s famous “Gavagai example” (Quine [12]), speaking about scientists as about castaways who have to find some correlation on an unknown island, inhabited by natives speaking an incomprehensible language. These hints from Heisenberg and Bohr about scientists dealing with a shortage of “classical” concepts in front of “hieroglyphics” of the territory remind of Wittgenstein’s notes about a “puzzle-picture” which, at a first sight, looks meaningless and, more in general, they remind of the topic on seeing aspects and connections in “perspicuous representations” (L. Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 195-197; On Certainty, § 291, 299; Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, I, 412, 971-972; II, 507, 544, 546; Philosophical Investigations, Part II,xi). Let’s imagine a chaotic maze of lines (“puzzle-picture”), which we can hardly call “this somehow” (Sellars 1973), because “perceptual commitment” might not find a shape straight away, or a perspicuous figure like in Sellars’s pink cube. 98 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds ❋✐❣✳ ✶✿ “Puzzle-picture” Wittgenstein writes: «I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape. My visual impression has changed and now I recognize that it has not only shape and colour but also a quite particular ‘organization’. – My visual impression has changed; – what was it like before and what is it like now? – If I represent it by means of an exact copy – and isn’t that a good representation of it? – no change is shewn» (Wittgenstein [18], II.xi) Luca Mori 99 ❋✐❣✳ ✷✿ A human shape in the “puzzle-picture” Wittgenstein also stresses the crucial difference between seeing “shape” and “colour” and “seeing as” (seeing “aspect” or “organization”): «If I saw the duck-rubbit as a rabbit, then I saw: these shake and colours (I give them in detail) – and I saw besides something like this: and here I point to a number of different picture of rabbits. – This shews the difference between the concepts. ‘Seeing as. . . ’ is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like» (ivi) «Hence the flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience, half thought» (ivi). If in this maze of lines we suddenly glimpse some “definite organisation”, a recognisable figure, this occurrence of an aspect might be, according to Wittgenstein, half a seeing and half a thinking. Seeing the aspect is only partially subjected to willing: but which comes before? “Otherwise seeing” or interpreting (a figure, an aspect, an image)? There is no prius of the one or of the other as foundation: in “otherwise seeing” a sense-making process is already at work, a process which then develops through concepts in the “logical space of reasons”. We must speak about friction and about relations between sense-making processes which develop on multiple levels, themselves emerging (sensory, perceptual, symbolic-conceptual). The idea of a solid “truth” of representation – independent from the “as” of his seeing as – makes the observer rigid and prevents from seeing aspects in a different way. Following the lines of a chaotic tangle, squeezing them, trying to see a shape in them is all part of sense-making which hints at the emerging of conceptual contents 100 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds in perceptual experience. But the exclamatory urge you feel while catching, through a perspicuous representation, staring figures, seems to imply, in Wittgenstein’s conception, a momentary suspension of sense-making, a sort of translation which marks a relation but also a discontinuity between perceptual commitment and advanced conceptualization: seeing a A in the maze, you say “I can see A!” and not “I can see it as an A”. The image seen in the maze can later keep the observer as a prisoner, binding his capacity to find other configurations and blocking his otherwise seeing. Therefore, “we are satisfied” with the Earth roundness (On Certainty, § 291, 299), as Simplicio was satisfied with the motionless Earth in the centre of the Universe. The way of considering nature ought to change completely, in order to change our minds. ✹ ▼❛♣s ❛♥❞ ❢❡❛t✉r❡s ♦❢ t❤❡ ✇♦r❧❞ In the already quoted Mind and World, McDowell writes that «[w]hen we reject the Myth of the Given, we reject the idea that tracing back the round for a judgement can terminate in pointing to a bare presence. Now this can generate some discomfort. It can seem that we are depriving ourselves of a justificatory role that it must be possible to attribute to pointing, if we are to be able to assure ourselves that our conception of thinking sufficiently acknowledges the independence of reality. It must be possible for justifications of judgement to include pointing out at features of the world, from what would otherwise risk looking like a closed circle within which our exercises of spontaneity run without friction» (McDowell [10]: 39). The open question is about the way of «pointing out from the sphere of thinking» and the relation between thinking and what is outside its sphere. Without suggesting again the usual dualism between mind and nature, Bateson claimed that it’s the observer who gives the things their own outlines. As observers, we only know maps and maps of maps, and yet we can say that a map is not the territory, we can refer to the territory speaking about the difference we select and see on maps. In this epistemological field, the question of «pointing out from the sphere of thinking» appears in its typical form: is it the differences perceived in the territory which justify a map, or at least which make it our favourite out of other possible ones? The point is: we have access to a territory only through selections of differences, that is only staying confined to our mapping. Following Varela [17], we can then wonder about the “middle course” between objectivism, which requires a prearranged quality world to be represented, and solipsism, which completely denies any relation Luca Mori 101 with a world. Like in Varela’s approach, also in Bateson’s one, we end up admitting we just know maps and maps of maps, not without any relation with the territory. But this relation is exactly what we cannot say or represent in a map. What is, then, the meaning of relation of maps with a territory? In Galileo’s case, to see the “stella nova” was to see (1) “that somehow [light, flash, luminous spot]”. This is the first result of the difference perceived on the night sky background. But going even just one step further than (1) meant choosing between options such as: (2a) “that somehow [star beyond the Moon]” (2b) “that somehow [sublunary flash]” As Sellars wrote ([15]: 174), «it must also be noted that even within the demonstrative model a distinction must be draws between what we see, and what we see it as». It is a further phenomenological step towards what makes a distinction «between the object seen» and «what we see of the object» (Sellars [15]: 170): taking sides about the seeing as means building a belief, and it happens (just like the ontological task about what it actually is) because of the frictions between perceptual experiences and conceptualized perceptions. The “stella nova” case is just an example of how “facts” cannot be “evident” by themselves and how the credibility of beliefs cannot be based on a «direct (perceptual) apprehension of facts», with a «first-class epistemic status» (Sellars [14]: 615-616). About “that somehow” in point (1) we cannot say it is absolutely self-presenting, since it is what it is in relation to what the observer can perceptually select, and the observer can have access to different levels of objectivation. The neural organization at the base of our perceptual commitments is also at the base of our conceptual commitments. There is a pragmatic entrenchment of the rising of perceptual and conceptual shapes for the observer: as neural beings endowed with an embodied mind, generative of symbols, human observers perceive paths and patterns about which they articulate concepts and reasons. The possibility of friction between map and territory, between what is “out from the sphere of thinking” and thought, comes from the fact that the beliefs of embodied minds rise up on several levels of conceptualization, of perceptual relation and structural coupling with the environment (in studies about complexity, “structural coupling” means a structure-determined and structure-determining relation of a complex system with both other systems and with its environment). In this sense, the “out from the sphere of thinking” is at the same time inside and outside the embodied mind, considered as an observing system organized in a complex way: it is the way you can point that the embodied mind knows and elaborates beliefs in an intermediate dimension 102 Maps and perceptual territories of embodied minds between symbolic-conceptual maps and perceptual territories. It is just in this inbetween dimension where frictions are generated between the perceptual content, which symbolic-conceptual maps refer to (they can even predict what will be found in the territory), and the conceptual content which the experiences on perceptual territories refer to. moriluca@gmail.com ❘❡❢❡r❡♥❝❡s [1] Gregory Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology (1972). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. [it.: Verso un’ecologia della mente, Adelphi, Milano 1976.] [2] Gregory. Bateson and Mary C. Bateson. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1987 [it.: Dove gli angeli esitano. Verso un’epistemologia del sacro, Milano: Adelphi, 1989.] [3] Donald Davidson. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme (1974). In Id. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. New York: Oxford U. P., 1984; [it.: Verità e interpretazione. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994.] [4] Donald Davidson. 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