Atheist's Guide to Reality Enjoying Life without Illusions, The

Author:Rosenberg, Alex
Format: mobi

There are several answers to this question we have to rule out. The Paris neurons aren’t about Paris in the same way, for example, that a picture postcard or a diorama or pop-up book’s three-dimensional layout is about Paris. They don’t in any way look like the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower or the Place de la Concorde. They don’t have the same shape, two-dimensionally like the postcard or three-dimensionally like an architect’s model, of some part of Paris. The Paris neurons aren’t shaped like Paris or any part of it. They won’t look like Paris from any angle.

So what? The Paris neurons don’t have to share anything in common with what they are about in order to be about Paris. Consider the stop and yield signs in Figure 8. Do they have to look like stopping or yielding to be about stopping or yielding? Of course not.

Well, why are red octagons about stopping and yellow triangles about yielding? In every country in the world, the red octagon means “Stop!” It communicates a whole imperative sentence expressible in different languages by “Halt!,” “Fermata!,” “Arrêter!,” and so on. Red octagons don’t look like any of these one-word sentences. They don’t look like the action of stopping or the command to stop. Red octagons don’t have to look like the action or the command in order to be about stopping. Same goes for the Paris neurons. They don’t have to look like Paris to be about Paris. Right?

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