What is Mapology?

(Map 2005)

____ Akutobhayâ

1. "I" am a map-maker.
2. Sentence 1 as a visual map may become a linguistic map (etc.) within a mapmaker (e.g., “the reader of this paper”, i.e., “You”?).
3. “My whole world” is made up of maps, and of (relational-transitional, correlational, probabilistic, possible?) shifts between (and within) maps.
4. There may be a lot of different(iated) maps, which may even be linked, superposed, and hybridized (and mutually modified) with each other: visual maps, auditory maps, body maps, oculomotor maps, tactile maps, gustatory maps, vestibular maps, … linguistic maps, historical maps, juridical maps, economic maps, political maps, “sociological” maps, ethological maps, biogeochemical maps (of networks of interactions), physical maps, mathematical maps, cartographic maps, empathetic (“social”) map-maker maps, mapological maps (“theories of sciences”), etc. Thus (cf. the mapping fallacy, or: ontological fallacy…), a linguistic map (e.g., the word “apple”) may not map some ’ontological object’ or ’matter’ (i.e., apple?) at all, but may ‘only’ map (or: “refer to”) OTHER maps (e.g., some visual, gustatory, and/or tactile maps).
5. My Self consists of all activABLE (and co-controllABLE, i.e., mappABLE?) maps, i.e., my Self is the POTENTIAL (or: “Potential landscape”?) of all activABLE maps (“I am ABLE to…”). These maps may also be called playing-cards (in German: “Spielkarten”).
6. There also seem to be maps and shifts that CAN NOT be activated (nor co-controlled) within my Self. These (thus) contingent maps may be called Umwelt (or: Not-Self). This contingency (or: NON-controllABILITY) may also be one stimulation (i.e., “reason”) for a shift to religious maps, games, methods, and detours.
7. Emotions are shifts.
8. Volition is a shift or tension-tendency to a target map, i.e., a shift to an activABLE map, which may be “chosen” (selected, anticipated, expected, predicted, “tended-to”) out of several OTHER “POSSibilities” or “goals” or “targets” or maps (within a “POTENTIAL landscape” full of POSSIBLE “tendencies-tensions” and “shifts”?).
9. Some shifts (between maps, within maps, or to maps) may be discrete (i.e., more or less “abrupt”), or MORE or less continuous-contiguous (i.e., “blurred”). Thus, maps may be linked (or “associated with each other”) MORE or less continuously-contiguously-coherently. Besides, maps may be (linked) MORE or less stable (stably) or “hard-wired”…
10. Emotional shifts that are mapped may (thus) become feelings, i.e., “conscious” emotions (which may be mapped and co-controlled further by linguistic maps in turn: e.g., by words like “envy”, “jealousy”, “hate”, etc.).
11. Maps that are mapped in turn (e.g., by OTHER maps) may (thus) become conscious, too.
12. There may be activABLE maps that CAN be mapped in addition (“explicit memory”).
13. There may be activABLE maps that CAN NOT be mapped (“implicit memory”).
14. Different(iated) maps may map or co-control (or: “inhibit”?) each other mutually within a map-maker (and within some “to-be-balanced” static-dynamic “Potential landscape”?).
15. Some maps (and shifts) may become “methodical” detours, and thus co-controls (with regard to OTHER maps and shifts).
16. The POSSIBILITY of a map-maker to co-control “its own” games and maps (and shifts) by OTHER (different) maps, playing-cards, and detours (shifts) may be called Self-control (= maps mapping maps, i.e., the mutual co-control of maps within a map-maker or Self).
17. The MORE differentiated the maps within a map-maker (and thus the MORE POSSIBLE detours this map-maker may POSSESS), the MORE “sensitive” and “RICH”, and the MORE capABLE of Self-control (and perhaps also: body-control) such a map-maker may be.
18. Empathy is the “social hypothesis” (i.e., the map) according to which “other” bodies (than just “my body”) may also be ABLE to make maps, i.e., a map-maker’s hypothesis that there may be “other” map-makerS or “SelVES” (than just “I” or “my Self”). This pseudo-symmetric (mirroring) mapping of map-maker features or SelVES onto “other” (mere!) bodies (body maps), and this fatal intermingling of bodies and SelVES (i.e., the social fallacy or social bias) may be extremely dangerous within some “social practice” (e.g., in “social” feelings or idola fori like “envy”, “jealousy”, “hate”, “we”, “humans”, “our society”, “we Germans”, “the Jews”, “the Americans”, “the capitalists”, “females”, “males”, “children”, “parents”, or in “socio-politiceconomic” and “game-theoretic” maps in general). Thus, there are neither some "Jews" nor some "Aryans" nor some "Germans" nor ome “Americans”, but only bodies (of which it is rather doubtful whether they are some “Americans”, but only bodies (of which it is rather doubtful whether they are not just non-thinking zombies…) that all have to be sustained and maintained.
19. Some maps may be fictitious carrots that stimulate the GROWTH of maps (i.e., the making of ever MORE maps). For example: the “idea” (i.e., the map) of some “History” may be a fictitious carrot (or: some pretext) fuelling the growth of ever MORE maps (or: texts) by means of historical methods, including contingent “mirrors” or detours (methods) like visual maps (e.g., “paintings”, “sculptures”, “books”, “films”) or linguistic maps (e.g., “textual (re-)sources”).
20. Esthetic and technical methods may consist of Self-stimulating playings (games) with contingent and non-contingent maps (and shifts) within a map-maker.
21. Philosophical methods may consist of Self-stimulating playings (games) with (seemingly?) non-contingent maps (and shifts) within a map-maker.
22. Within neurobiological maps, the linguistic term “map-maker” may be replaced by the linguistic map “brain” or “nervous system”, and the word “map” may be replaced by “neural map” (i.e., “neural activity pattern”). However, strictly (mapologically) speaking, it is neither some “brain” nor some “State” (nor some “Society”) that CAN “feel”, but only a map-maker.
23. Within neuro-computational maps, the term “map-maker” may be replaced by “POTENTIAL landscape”, and the terms “maps” and “shifts” may be replaced by “attractors” (or: “attractor landscapes”) and “trajectories” (transients?) respectively. Out of such a dynamic “Potential landscape” (virtually containing perhaps myriads of superposed and permanently shifting “attractor landscapes”), only a few possibilities (or maps or “states”) may actually be “active” or “realized” or “retrieved” or “reached” or “attained” in this very moment (“here and now”).
24. Within evolutionary maps, there may be the “primordial idea” of “GROWTH”, i.e., the idea of a “shift to some ever MORE (and ever BETTER?)”: e.g., the shift to ever MORE neural synapses, neural maps, cancer cells, bodies (“propagation”, “replication”), riches, and money, or to ever MORE (Self-stimulating…) and ever BETTER and ever MORE differentiated maps and co-controls (i.e., ever BETTER co-controls of some Self, SelVES, body maps, and contingent “Umwelt”?)...
     
25. Not all map-makerS may be “damned” to make maps.
     
26. And those who will have the “best” maps…

(Oliver Elbs, April 2005)