Jairo Ferreira 264 We evaluate, here, the relevance of the differentiation between maps and territories. The simulation, in this sense, can be understood as a map. The long path of media devices, from rock engravings to Artificial Intelligence programs, can be understood as maps: maps in images; sound maps; other analog maps; maps of logical operations; socio-discursive maps; maps of brain networks (AI); and so on. For each of thesemaps, there is a territory; The same territory can be the object of several maps. The importance of thinking in terms of maps is to consider the complexity of semiosis (irreducible to a discursive structure, to an imaginary, to indices of the real, but at the same time includ- ing all these “ingredients” in the form of a map). If it is true that all individuals have mental maps, only a part of the individuals of the species develop maps in material devices with the power to activate socially expanded scales of recognition. The differentiation between maps and territories is a central issue noted by Bateson: In the obscure region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap, human beings have devel- oped the ‘intendedmetaphor,’ the banner by which men will die to save, and the sacrament which is felt as more than ‘an outward expression and vis- ible sign given to us.’ Here we can recognize an attempt to deny the difference between map and territory, and to return to the absolute innocence of communication through pure signs of humor ([1955] 1972, p. 183). Keane (2018) explores this issue from the perspective of ideology. The non-awareness of the difference between map and territory is central to what the author calls semiotic ideology (non-differentiation between the sign and its object; or, in Peirce’s terms, the non-differentiation between semiotic me- dium and object). This paradox is important: on the one hand, the object is inaccessible, in itself (it will always be accessed by a sign); at the same time, if consciousness does not differentiate between the semiotic medium and the object to which it refers, it tends (here we are generalizing) to sacralize the converging medium and object as indifferent. This sacralization, carried out
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