Maps of Meaning – Lecture 1 Notes

Two Ways of Seeing

Two fundamental perspectives are contrasted: the material world versus action. The material or action distinction emphasizes that what exists in the world is filtered and made meaningful by what we do and attend to. In Peterson’s framework, action defines perception: what you do shapes what you see, rather than perceiving a fully neutral, pre-given reality.

Action Defines Perception

Perception is not passive or merely given; it is shaped by action. What you do defines what you perceive, because your behaviors generate the context, scope, and focus of your awareness.

Perception Requires Directed Attention

There is no passive perception. Seeing is an active process that requires directed attention. To perceive something is to engage attention toward it in a purposeful way.

The Mind Focuses on Relevance

Attention targets what is relevant to the agent, framing perception by what commands center stage. Relevance, rather than neutrality, guides what becomes conscious.

The Infinite in the Ordinary

Full attention to ordinary surfaces reveals infinite detail; there is too much to grasp all at once. This abundance highlights how meaning emerges from selective focus rather than exhaustive description.

How We Should Act: What Is vs What Should Be

There is a recurring contrast between what is (the current state) and what should be (the ideal or goal). Our action is oriented toward bridging this gap, moving from current states toward aspirational ones.

Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) developed cybernetics—the idea that feedback loops underlie intelligent behavior—while working on WWII missile guidance systems. This underpins the view that cognition is organized around regulatory loops that adapt based on outcomes.

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) founded phenomenology and challenged reductionist science. He sought to restore meaning in lived experience, arguing that conscious experience contains intentional structure and significance that science alone may overlook.

Phenomenon

From the Greek phainesthai ("to shine forth"), a phenomenon is something that compels attention and presents itself in experience. Phenomena are what demand interpretation and meaning in perception.

Emotion as a Guide: Cybernetics of Feelings

Positive emotion signals movement toward goals; negative emotion flags deviation or failure. Emotions function as feedback about progress and alignment with aims.

Seeing Through Action

Perception requires movement. Knowledge emerges as we act and explore; perception is inseparable from action.

The Fovea and Focus

The fovea highlights key details while the periphery fades. This mirrors how stories direct attention to what matters and deprioritize other elements, shaping what we notice.

Subjective Reality Matters

Enlightenment thought emphasized objective reality, but phenomenologists aimed to resolve a crisis by restoring subjective experience. Meaning arises from how beings experience and interpret the world.

Value Shapes Perception

Perception of the objective world depends on action, goals, and values; this undermines the idea of a purely objective world without a perceiver. Value and purpose color what is witnessed.

Architecture of Focus

Attention has a structure that organizes what counts as relevant and how experience is framed. The architecture of focus determines what gets processed and how meaning is built.

The Eyes Reveal Intention

Gaze and ocular cues disclose intention, suggesting that perception is not just about sensing light but about inferring motive and purpose.

All Perception is Intentional: Husserl7s Core Insight

Perception is always directed toward a goal, grounded in action moving from what is to what should be. This intentional structure grounds perception in purpose and process.

How We Should Act: What IS vs What SHOULD BE

A repeated framing emphasizes the tension and guidance between current states and aspirational directions, shaping our approach to action.

Uphill Toward Meaning

Movement toward a goal implies an upward trajectory: the goal is perceived as better than the present state, driving progress through aspiration.

Goal Setting: Distance, Energy, and Value

Goals are defined by how far we must travel (distance), the energy available or required, and the value or meaning attributed to the goal.

Perception Has a Narrative

Perception is not merely a snapshot; it is framed by an ongoing narrative. Our experience is shaped by stories about progress and trajectories toward aims.

The Story Framework: GOAL-DIRECTED PERCEPTION AND MEANING

Meaning arises when perception is embedded in a goal-directed narrative. Frames of interpretation guide attention, interpretation, and action toward desired outcomes.

Fiction as Frame: Stories Shape Perception

Fiction provides a safe laboratory for testing new frames of perception, evoking emotions without real-world consequences. It offers frames that can reorganize perception and meaning.

Horror Stories

Even unsettling or fear-inducing stories enable safe exposure to difficult emotions, motivating engagement through controlled fear. They train attention and emotional regulation within safe boundaries.

The Story is Primary

Stories are not secondary to material truth; they structure perception, attention, and meaning from the start. Narrative frameworks shape how we interpret data and experiences.

The Toddler's Journey: A Micro Hero Narrating

A micro-hero narrative provides a compact template for personal growth, illustrating how a small, developmental story frames perception and action.

Story of Transformation: A Meta Story

When a narrative captures the breaking and reforming of frameworks, it shifts into a meta-story about transformation itself, redefining the frame through which experience is understood.

What Should Be, What Is, and The Unbearable Present

A planned sequence of behavior can be organized around three states: What Should Be (the ideal future), What Is (the current state toward that future), and the Unbearable Present (the motivational pressure to move).

Imaginative Action

Imagination and dreams explore futures, letting the mind test goals and emotional outcomes before acting, thereby shaping intention and readiness for action.

Bees and Belief: Enthusiasm Reveals Worth

Just as bees dance to signal nectar value, enthusiasm signals belief in a destination’s worth. Emotional investment reveals intrinsic meaning and guides pursuit.

Enthusiasm as Guidance: Emotion and Meaning

Enthusiasm acts as a compass, guiding action by revealing what holds intrinsic meaning and is worth pursuing.

Tuning the Frame: Shift Goals, Watch Emotion

Adjusting frames and goals should be monitored by emotional responses, ensuring that goal direction aligns with meaningful engagement and affective feedback.

The Right Kind of Hard: Meaningful Goals

Meaningful goals are transformative, deepening the capacity to pursue greater challenges through risk and growth.

Play as Transformation: Games as Frames of Growth

Play functions as a frame for growth, enabling experimentation with behaviors and meanings in a low-stakes environment.

Biology Validates Meaning

If deep meaning is selected by evolution, then meaning is not mere fantasy; it is biologically real and rooted in adaptive neural processes.

From Abstract to Real: Goals Become Real Through Action

Goals begin as abstract ideas but become real when acted upon; movement incarnates abstract values into tangible outcomes.

Inferring the Frame: What Action Reveals

Observing action reveals the underlying frame that organizes perception and behavior.

Tracing the Why

By repeatedly asking why, one uncovers a chain of motivations that often ends at the edge of conscious understanding.

Drive Theory

Behaviorists viewed motivation as chains of reflexes, such as drawing back from a hot stove, a simplistic model of movement toward or away from stimuli.

Reflex Isne2e9t Enough

Behaviorism falls short because motivation is not just reflexive; it is flexible, layered, and context-dependent.

Hunger Tells a Story

Hunger initiates not just a reflex but a narrative that competes for attention and guides behavior, illustrating how basic needs are embedded in larger storylines.

Ancient Motivations: Instincts and Learned Behaviors

Motivation originates from ancient neural predispositions (instincts) and from learned patterns shaped by experience.

Basic States

Fundamental motivations such as hunger, pain, and play arise from ancient neural systems, mediated by the hypothalamus. This anchors early motivational architecture in biology.

The Roots of Exploration: Dopamine and the Frame

Exploration is among the oldest motivational states, tied to the dopaminergic system and to emotions that shape the frame of meaning around goals and opportunities.

When Anger Takes Over: Motivation Possesses Perception

A dominant emotion like anger can seize control of memory, attention, and personality, warping how we perceive others and the world.

Nietzsche
9s Three Outcomes: After the Death of God

Nietzsche predicted that losing moral grounding would lead to nihilism, totalitarian ideologies, or the creation of individual personal values.

Possession by Spirit: Drives as Subpersonalities

Motivations can behave like independent characters with histories and mythic forms; they are archetypes that possess our behavior rather than being simple drives.

The Archetype of Anger

When anger arises, we act out internalized patterns learned from myth, culture, and memory, revealing a shared psychological repertoire.

Quote: "For every drive wants to be master—and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. This line captures the aspirational pull of drives and their attempt to rationalize themselves as overarching guides.

Freude2e9s Id

Freud described the id as a storm of primal forces that often control us, illustrating the depth and power of unconscious determinants in motivation.

Evee2e9s Temptation

In Genesis, Evee2e0s fall is framed as rejecting the given moral order to establish onee2e7s own path, a narrative about autonomy and moral risk.

Collapse and Transformation

When frames collapse under moral error, chaos demands reintegration, transforming both path and self as new orders emerge from the wreckage.

Choose a Better Aim: Wisdom in Strategy

Strategic wisdom involves selecting aims that promote sustainable growth and alignment with higher purposes.

Growth Through Challenge

Growth happens at the edge of transformation where challenges are faced, expanding capacity for vision and action.

Meaning Aligns with Growth

Intrinsic meaning points to the very process that compels us to grow into more than we currently are.

Heideggere2e9s Contribution

If all experience is goal-oriented, then being itself is always being toward something; meaning is inseparable from purposeful engagement with the world.

The Original Meaning of Sin

The word sin derives from Greek meaning to miss the target; it signals misalignment between aim and meaning rather than mere transgression.

The Act of At-One-Ment: Repentance

Repentance involves replacing a flawed goal with a better one, realigning the path toward a higher purpose and restoring coherence between aims and meaning.

Self-Propagation and Affiliative Desire; Sexual Desire

A diagrammatic sequence shows fundamental motives in a framework: Self-propagation, Affiliative Desire, and Sexual Desire form a network of planned sequences from Point A to Point B; basic needs such as thermoregulation, thirst, hunger, elimination, and self-maintenance anchor the ongoing motivation structure.

Harmonizing Motivations

Fundamental motivations form a council of competing forces that require wise integration to induce positive movement rather than self-defeating conflict.

Music as Metaphor: Harmony and Integration

Music serves as a metaphor for harmonizing diverse motivations into coherent action and meaning.

Layers of Experience: Deconstructing the Frame

Experience can be analyzed in layers, peeling back the frame to expose the underlying assumptions and values that organize perception and action.

From Frame to Movement

Experience becomes concrete through action; abstract frames are grounded by translating them into strategies that move us forward.

Positive Affect as Tool; Ground and Sequence

Positive affect acts as a tool to continue a planned sequence of behavior from Point A toward Point B. Obstacles produce a negative affect, and irrelevant ground serves as a background that does not directly drive action.

Gibson, Ecological Psychology

J. J. Gibson (1979) introduced ecological psychology, emphasizing the direct relationship between perceivers and their environments and the information available in natural settings.

Jeffrey Gray and Jaak Panksepp

These two neuropsychologists are highlighted as major contributors who expanded on Gibsone2e9s ideas in the later 20th century, integrating neuropsychology with ecological perspectives on motivation and emotion.

Emotion Follows Aim

Emotion signals progress toward a goal; when progress stalls or blocks arise, frustration emerges. Emotions track the trajectory of our aims.

When Goals Collide

Conflicting goals create competition within the motivational system, requiring prioritization and integration to maintain coherent behavior.

Pathways are Primary: We See in Terms of Goals

Perception is organized around goals; we do not merely see objects, but pathways toward destinations. Targets and ends shape how the world is experienced.

Dialogue with Conscience: Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket

The evolving dialogue between Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket models the growth of conscience from a simplistic cue system toward mature moral reasoning through experience.

Transforming Cliché

The conscience begins as a cliché but deepens through engagement and practical experience, moving beyond surface-level rules to more nuanced judgments.

The Map Refreshed: Maps of Meaning

This closing section reiterates the overarching aim of the Maps of Meaning framework: to ground perception, motivation, and action in meaningful narratives that integrate ethics, responsibility, and growth.