A Map of Meaning

"...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."

— Jorge Luis Borges, "On Exactitude in Science"

Maps are useful because they are abstract — they present the relevant elements of a territory while omitting the rest. A good map highlights structure.

We use different maps for different purposes. We can see the world as a collection of things, or as an arena for action — as matter, or as what matters. [^1]

Physics gives us a map of matter. The famous equation $e=mc^2$ relates mass and energy within spacetime.

But we do not have a map of meaning — there are no equations describing the structure of better and worse. And yet we experience reality as better and worse, as possibility, as direction.

If Quality orders better and worse, then Value is change in Quality: $V = ΔQ$.

Perhaps what we need is not a better map of matter, but a new map of meaning.

The following is a sketch of such a map. It is necessarily incomplete. But even an early map can reveal the outline of a territory worth exploring.

I. Three Sources

This map is a synthesis of three intellectual traditions — a connection noted by Robert Breedlove:

• A metaphysical tradition, which places Quality at the root of reality
• A phenomenological tradition, which describes how that structure appears in conscious experience
• A praxeological tradition, which studies action and coordination

Together, they outline a different ontology.

Metaphysical — Lila

In Lila, Robert Pirsig proposed a Metaphysics of Quality — a reversal of the usual subject-object picture of reality. Instead of treating objects as primary and Value as secondary, he suggested that Quality comes first.

Quality is not a property of things. It is not a measurable attribute. It is the ordering of better and worse.

If we shift our focus from static states to trajectories — from what is to how it unfolds — this claim becomes clearer. Quality does not reside in objects; it orders possible patterns of becoming. It is ineffable because it is not a property of what exists, but of how existence can unfold.

If Quality can be treated formally as an ordering of trajectories, then Value is change within that ordering: $V = \Delta Q$.

Quality is not “what is,” but “which way is better.”

How do we know which way is better? The next section turns to that question.

Phenomenological — Maps of Meaning

If the metaphysical claim is that reality is ordered by better and worse, the phenomenological question is how that ordering appears to a subject.

In Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson describes the world not primarily as a collection of objects, but as an arena for action. The world presents itself to us as structured possibility. We do not encounter neutral things; we encounter "entities with functional significance," already parsed in terms of their potential relative to our aim. When the aim changes, the meaning changes.

This means that the entities we encounter already carry an implicit vector: they point upward or downward relative to our orientation. A tool affords progress; an obstacle hinders progress. The world, as encountered, is already organized by an underlying ordering of better and worse.

At a deeper level, mental phenomena like calling and conscience function as meaningful pointers toward the higher path: "Calling beckons. Conscience provides disciplinary limitations." [^2]

Therefore, experience is directional. Subjects are not detached observers of static reality. They are interfaces to possibility. Their experience reflects the trajectories open before them, and their orientation determines which of those trajectories are pursued.

Peterson's framework (aim, potential, calling, conscience...) shows how the ordering of better and worse enters conscious experience. To “aim up” is to orient toward what appears as higher in that ordering — to select a trajectory judged as better. If that structure can be articulated formally, then the phenomenology of meaning may become structurally precise.

If the world is already encountered as ordered toward better and worse, then action is not an arbitrary response to neutral data. It is a directional response to a structured field. Peterson puts it succinctly:

“We don’t act based on what we expect; we act based on what we value.”

This brings us to action.

Praxeological — Human Action

Praxeology begins with a simple axiom: humans act.

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises defines action as purposeful behavior — the attempt to replace a less satisfactory state with a more satisfactory one. From this axiom, Austrian economics derives concepts such as means and ends, preference, scarcity, and price.

Within this framework, Value is implicit in action. Choice reveals preference; preference expresses what is valued. Value is therefore treated as subjective judgement inferred from behavior.

But this already presupposes something deeper. To act is to experience some futures as better than others. It is to anticipate a change from less satisfactory to more satisfactory — from lower to higher Quality.

From a phenomenological perspective, Value precedes Action. To experience anticipated Value across mutually exclusive futures is already to be oriented toward replacing one state with another. Action is the external manifestation of that orientation.

Every action excludes alternatives. To choose one trajectory is to foreclose others. In this sense, action is irreversible commitment that reshapes the space of possibilities.

This irreversibility — the foreclosure of alternatives — is the invariant praxeology relied on, even if it did not formalize it explicitly.

If the underlying structure can be formalized, then action does not need to remain an axiom. It can be derived as a consequence of a deeper ordering of better and worse — and used as a foundation for further structural reasoning.

II. A Quality-Ordered World

When these three layers are aligned, a different picture of reality emerges.

Material ontology treats reality as a collection of objective states unfolding in spacetime. A Quality-first ontology treats reality as a space of possible trajectories — ways the world could unfold — ordered by better and worse.

Let $\Omega$ denote the space of possible trajectories. Each trajectory $\omega \in \Omega$ can be ordered according to Quality, $Q(\omega)$. Quality does not describe a static state; it orders patterns of becoming.

While we say that things have Quality, Quality is not intrinsic to their form. It lies in their participation in trajectories — in how they contribute to better or worse unfoldings. A thing has high Quality insofar as it enables higher-Quality patterns of becoming.

From this perspective, what we experience as “the present” is not merely a point in spacetime, but a field of still-open trajectories. A subject inhabits not just a state, but a region of possibility-space.

Aim structures that region. It highlights certain trajectories as salient and suppresses others. To adopt an aim is to orient within $\Omega$, to weight the field of possibilities toward what appears better.

Action reshapes that field. To choose one trajectory is to exclude others. Formally, action transforms $\Omega$ into a constrained subset $\Omega' \subset \Omega$. This exclusion is irreversible; it is what we experience as commitment and the passage of time.

Value appears in this transformation. If the accessible region of possibility shifts toward higher-Quality trajectories, the change is positive: $V = \Delta Q$. A “good” action is one that reshapes the still-open possibilities toward higher-Quality trajectories.

In this light, price acquires a deeper meaning. Price is not primarily what is paid in money. It is the set of foreclosed possibilities required by commitment.

In other words: to choose one trajectory is to give up others.

The economic concept of opportunity cost is one concrete instance of this structure: the highest-valued foregone alternative.

III. Praxeology as Proof of Concept

Praxeology was not merely “economics without mathematics.” It was a demonstration of method.

Starting from a minimal feature of consciousness — that humans act — it derived a structured understanding of a complex human system. From the logic of action follow means and ends, preference ordering, marginal utility, diminishing returns, and the intelligibility of price formation. These are not empirical regularities discovered by curve-fitting; they are structural consequences of how action works.

Its limitation was not that it was wrong, but that its foundational primitives remained implicit. Concepts like better and worse, exclusion, and Value were presupposed rather than formally articulated.

A Quality-first ontology makes those primitives explicit. Quality orders trajectories. Action excludes alternatives. Value is directional change within that ordering: $V = ∆Q$.

Phenomenology adds further structure. Aim weights the field of possibility. Emotion biases the evaluation of trajectories. Trust alters how stable we expect our accessible futures to remain under another’s action. These are not epiphenomena; they are structural features of how action arises.

If praxeology could illuminate economics through verbal reasoning grounded in action, then formalizing the underlying ontology may extend that method. Instead of treating human systems purely as statistical aggregates, we can model them as interacting structures of orientation, exclusion, and Value — agents shaping each other’s possibility spaces through action.

This does not replace empirical approaches. It complements them. Statistical models describe patterns in outcomes; a structural ontology of action describes the constraints and invariants that generate those patterns in the first place.

Economics was the first domain clarified by first-principles reasoning about action. There is no reason it must be the last.

IV. A Map of Meaning

Maps are tools. Their usefulness depends on the territory they are meant to illuminate.

A map of matter allows us to predict trajectories of objects, calculate forces, and engineer physical systems. But when we apply that same map to domains structured by Value and action, something is lost. Human systems are not composed merely of masses in motion. They are structured by aims, exclusions, commitments, and judgments of better and worse.

When we use a map designed for matter to understand systems of meaning, we tend to reduce action to behavior, intention to noise, and Value to measurable proxies. The result is not just incomplete explanation, but misunderstanding. We may describe patterns, yet fail to grasp what generates them.

A map of meaning does not replace the map of matter. It complements it. It makes explicit the ordering that already structures experience: trajectories rather than states, orientation rather than mechanism, Value rather than mere outcome.

Praxeology showed that an entire domain — economics — could be illuminated by reasoning from the structure of action itself. A Quality-first ontology extends that insight. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding human systems from the inside — not as aggregates of particles, but as coordinated fields of intention, exclusion, and Value.

The question is not whether one map is superior to another. It is whether we are using the right map for the right terrain.

If reality as encountered is structured by better and worse, then a map of meaning is necessary for understanding what is actually going on.

A map does not recreate the territory. It reveals its structure.

Note: The original intention was to introduce a concrete technological application, but I realized that without a shared ontology that discussion would lack clarity. The previous two posts — “Understand” and “Story of Your Life” — were exploratory attempts to feel out the structure of something not yet fully seen. This essay narrows the frame toward praxeology and economics, where I see these ideas finding their first applications. The audience I had in mind while writing it were the Austrian and Bitcoin communities, where questions of value, action, and coordination are already central.

[1]: From Jordan Peterson's opening to his Maps of Meaning book: "The world can be conceptualized as a place of things, or it can be conceptualized as an arena for action."