The Metaphor of the Maps and Understanding the Mind

The British philosopher Mary Midgley has used the metaphor of the maps recently in arguing for an approach to consciousness which is neither reductionist nor dualist.She argues that different sorts of mental phenomena - and aspects of humanity dependent on our consciousness, such as society - can be described using the analogy of different maps - political, demographic, climatic, etc - of the (one) world.

Midgley insists that consciousness, and indeed society and politics and the like, are not any less real than the atoms of which they are made, and the maps drawn of them should not be regarded as inferior. ‘Neither houses nor quarks... are more real than mental items’

The relation between scientific and theological descriptions of mental states and religious experience is discussed by Fraser Watts in God, Humanity and the Cosmos, Ch.5.

Email link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos  (T&T Clark, 1999)