The Map Thinker ™

Whereas Aristotle and other logicians defined specific words we will work with concepts. To give a quick recap of what is required to be logical.

The first step is simple, but usually overlooked.

Before you can talk about anything you must first define your terms. All of them. But not just to yourself. You have to reach an agreement with whomever you are in the discussion with. This is not always easy.

People think they know what they are talking about.

They think they know what a car is.

Then they discover that the dictionary may define what a car is differently than they do. They are sometimes shocked to discover the law may use a different definition: One that may include one, two, or three-wheeled vehicles.

If you do not sit down with your discussion partner and agree on all the terms of what you are discussing you cannot be logical.

This happens a lot when people discuss deafness / Deaf.

A lot of people discuss deaf and deafness and are unaware there are people who belong to Deaf Culture. That is they have a shared language and have shared values that are different from the culture the person I am speaking with.

Some people find it impossible to believe that there are Deaf people, people who Identify as Deaf and use a Capital “D” to describe themselves.

No logical discussion can take place between us because there is no way we can agree on our terms. I am not going to change my position because I have had contact with Deaf people. The chances of their changing their opinion is slight. I have never had it happen.

Does the situation change when you use Map Thinking™?

Unfortunately no. In fact sometimes it is worse.

If the person has not been exposed to Map Thinking™ before the first thing you have to do is to convince them there is a concept of deaf / Deaf that extends from the most hearing enabled creature, which is not even a human being, to anyone or any thing that cannot hear. Including a rock.

To many people, including the most erudite this approach defies all sense of reason.

People who are inured to the logical approach, “Either you are deaf or you are not deaf”, cannot fully participate in a Mapological™ discussion.

The creature with the best hearing, that I know of as of this writing, is an owl. The thing with the least hearing is a rock, as in “stone cold deaf”. Which is an expression I have heard.

If you had the best human hearing in the world and you were an owl you would be deaf compared to other owls.

Yet sound is a vibration that transmits through air, water, and solid material. A rock has the ability to recognize sound. What it doesn’t have is a sensory system, nor a brain center, to interpret what it has received.

We are talking about a Concept Line™.

One Extreme ————————Concept———————————Other Extreme

Super Hearing ——————————————————————Inability to hear

Love ————————————Indifference —————————————Hate

In Mapping you develop a Concept Line™ by looking at whatever you are discussing and establishing its extremes. That usually means its opposites. So if you are discussing morality you place the most moral behavior at one extreme and describe/define it. Then you place the most immoral behavior at the other extreme and describe/define it.

Now you are able to discuss the concept.

Thus if you discuss running you will find as an antonym, walking.

But walking is not the opposite of running. Laying still is. Therefore standing still is at one extreme, running at the other and the concept is “self propelled motion”.

One of the most enjoyable things about The Concept Line™   is that you can narrow it down to its most specific possibility or expand it as far as your imagination allows. Thus allowing for both creativity and for Logical Analysis à la Aristotle.

One of the primary, and to some extremely subtle differences between a Mapological™ discussion of something and a Logical discussion of something is this:

Mapology™ recognizes we are discussing our concept of the thing under discussion — We are not discussing the thing itself — Even though we refer to it.

Logically it is assumed we are discussing the thing itself.

We use a concept line to define the limits of the concept we are discussing and the real world thing that generates this concept.

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How to use the simplistic tools of Aristotelean logic to do real thinking.

There are two ways of spelling Aristotelean. The other is Aristotelian. I chose “lean” because I think of Aristotelean logic as being “lean”. Getting to the meat and leaving all the fat behind. If you cut too lean you cut right to the bone and leave all the meat behind as well.

To do this I am going to tackle a subject where there is no good answer — Only questions that are not even interesting enough to explore on their own — But will be explored for other reasons.

Ready?

The medium who claims to be able to read auras.

How do we go about a Mapological examination of the subject?

The best way is to start out with  — Can you guess? Aristotelelean questions separating what can be true from what can be explored.

Either Madam Aura Reader is telling the truth or she is lying.

If she is lying then she is a fake and nothing more is to be explored here.

So let us say she is telling the truth: Then: The Question, using A <-^- > P becomes “What is she telling the truth about?”

Either Madam Aura Reader sees Auras or she does not.

Just because you and I do not see Auras does not mean Auras in some form are not there.

Just because she sees them does not mean they are there.

She could just as easily be smelling something about people and seeing Auras.

So, giving her all the benefit of the doubt here, we are going to say she perceives something she experiences as Auras.

The next question is, “Are her pronouncements of the meanings of these things correct?” Are they testable? Are they con man jargon?

Now let us look at P -^-> FAR ( please note that time and triggers are not important here and are not included in the argument)

In the ^ we need to include influences, such as ridicule, which would cause her to keep quiet about her vision — And inducements such as monetary gain from people who will pay her money to tell them things that she concludes.

Because of the criticism many people who could see Auras (If anyone can) would never mention their “gift”.

Because there is a lucrative market for people who claim to be able to see Auras there will be charlatans who will brave the criticism for the cash.

A Map Thinker will be aware of all this and more.

A Map Thinker will reserve judgment about the possibility of someone reading Auras until such time as the skill can be proved or disproved scientifically. Because of the physical and psychological quirks of <-^-> this is unlikely.

A Map Thinker, even were Madam Aura Reader to be proven to have the skill, would still keep their money in their pocket until the usefulness of her pronouncements were also scientifically proven. This is an even less likely event than proving a specific individual has the skill to begin with.

Thus you can use Aristotlean Logic to lead you to reasonable conclusions by pointing out dead ends in thought.

To some people this reasonable line of thinking is much less emotionally satisfying than, “If you can’t prove it, it isn’t true.” School of thought.

So be it. To each his own. There is room in the world for people who believe my way of thinking is trash. So long as they don’t want to come over to my house for sunday Bar B Que and try to convert me.

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