Creation and evolution are each representative of a broad epistemology. Framing the issue of the origins and diversity of life as a contest or debate between creation and evolution disguises the point. The real issue is whether a naturalistic epistemology or a supernaturalistic epistemology is correct.

Evolution is a theory that is part of a naturalistic epistemology. Its knowledge is natural. It owes its existence (like every successful scientific theory) to a single virtue: it is the best explanation of nature. Nature imposes itself on it, and it unites and simplifies natural evidence. Accepting (or rejecting) a naturalistic theory requires only empirical observation and analysis — evidence that can be accepted on its own merits. Therefore, naturalistic theories are persuasive on their own merits. They use known data to explain unknown processes. In other words, naturalistic theories attempt to explain the unknown by the known.

Creation is a theory that is part of a supernaturalistic epistemology. Its knowledge transcends nature. Its knowledge is not obtained from the natural world. It is imposed on nature, thus making it more complicated. Accepting it requires faith because there is not any evidence that makes it persuasive. Only natural evidence does not require faith and can be accepted on its own merits. Therefore, supernaturalistic theories are not persuasive on their own merits. Nor can they be fully understood. In other words, supernaturalistic theories attempt to explain the unknown by the unknowable.

The issue is not which theory is superior. The issue is which epistemology is superior. To decide, we must use reason. “Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox.” Reason supports only a naturalistic epistemology. Simply because it is not a naturalistic theory, creation must be rejected.

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General semantics, as any other symbolic environment, has its benefits and its difficulties.

The major focus of many self-avowed general semanticists today seems to me to be aimed at applying a relatively few static extractions related to prescriptions for how to behave. Unfortunately, this emphasis seems to be at the expense of an adequate understanding of the reasoning behind the prescriptions for these behaviors. As a result, the “practice” of general semantics falls largely into the category of self-improvement programs…

As a theory, general semantics “is” a forerunner of genetic epistemology. It predates genetic epistemology and could be called “neo-”logical positivism. (Charlotte Read pointed out that while general semantics is similar to logical positivism, it also differs in some respects.) Stuart Mayper identified Popper’s Philosophy of Science as best illustrating the methodological approach espoused by general semantics.

In up-to-date terms, general semantics is the study of and practical application of a particular epistemology - namely a theory of knowledge based upon a particular model of the multi-level structure and functioning of human information processing, including neurological levels through linguistic levels, in its context - people living in a society in a world (organism-in-its-environment-as-a-whole). In this model the primary process is abstracting from one level to another with an awareness of the process (consciousness of abstracting).

Korzybski’s answer to the question, “how do we know what we know” is rather straight forward and simple. We know what we know through the process of abstracting using our brains and nervous systems.

The product of that process, within nervous systems and as extended into linguistic and verbal levels, is knowledge. At a low level of description the only commonality to all levels is “structure”, albeit different “structure” at each level. This definition of knowledge is a completely new “dictionary definition” that is not to be confused with any others that went before, and is not to be confused with such terms as “truth” (which can be defined a la Tarski), beliefs, ideas, etc.. In general, the products of the abstraction processes are maps. Internal non-verbal maps, external verbal maps, abstract theories (also maps), etc..

Traditional uses of the term “knowledge” tends to imply “valid” maps of territories. Korzybski reserved this criteria to mathematics, which he described as similar in structure to its territory…

The traditional concept of “true” is not operative in the general semantics paradigm. Each of us abstracts to our own maps, and we use those maps as predictors of what we expect to find. When our predictions fail enough, we revise the associated map, but we can never expect that a map can reach a point where we expect that it will never need revision again. At verbal levels external to us, we agree on (and argue about) various maps. Some of us are accepted as authorities, to which the others defer, on particular maps. Such maps we evaluate as having structure “similar to” a hypothesized “structure of reality”.

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The expression “the map is not the territory” first appeared in print in a paper that Alfred Korzybski gave at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1931: [1]

* A) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory…

* B) A map is not the territory.

It is used as a premise in Korzybski’s General Semantics, and in neuro-linguistic programming.

The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte illustrated the concept of “perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves”[2] in a number of paintings including a famous work entitled The Treachery Of Images, which consists of a drawing of a pipe with the caption, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (”This is not a pipe”).

This concept occurs in the discussion of exoteric and esoteric religions. Exoteric concepts are concepts which can be fully conveyed using descriptors and language constructs, such as mathematics. Esoteric concepts are concepts which cannot be fully conveyed except by direct experience. For example, a person who has never tasted an apple will never fully understand through language what the taste of an apple is. Only through direct experience (eating an apple) can that experience be fully understood.

Lewis Carroll, in Sylvie and Bruno (1889), made the point humorously with his description of a fictional map that had “the scale of a mile to the mile.” A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that “we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

In a sort of counterpoint to Lewis Carroll, the University of Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1962) emphasized the disutility of 1:1 maps and other overly detailed models: “A model which took account of all the variegation of reality would be of no more use than a map at the scale of one to one.”

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If you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation… Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.

There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world. The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run. But there are a couple of alternative hypotheses, as Dr. Bostrom points out. One is that civilization never attains the technology to run simulations (perhaps because it self-destructs before reaching that stage). The other hypothesis is that posthumans decide not to run the simulations.

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Alan Watts meets South Park.