The Finger Pointing At the Map
A description is a way of dividing the world into at least two parts: the phenomenon to be described, and the phenomenon used to do the describing. If we describe a rose as red, we implicitly divide the world into the rose on one side and everything else (such as concept of redness) — on the other. For a description to be useful, it must convey information that the listener doesn’t already possess. Saying “this rose is rosy”, is redundant. We can label the two parts of a description the target (the phenomenon to be described) and the descriptor set (the set of concepts used for describing).