[FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy

Sun Jun 11 07:10:30 EDT 2017

I think I'm starting to see a pattern here.

-- rec --

On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 11:56 PM, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote:

> Dave West writes: "... An example, "the future is in front of us."
>
> Unless you're a member of some Andean tribe whose name I've forgotten.
> Then the past is in front of use because we know what it is, we can see
> it.  And the future is behind us because we know not what it is.  (Source:
> a recent SAR lecture that isn't online yet.)
>
> TJ
>
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
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>
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 8:53 PM, Jenny Quillien <jquillien at cybermesa.com>
> wrote:
>
>> If there is a WedTech on this thread I would also certainly attend. So I
>> vote that Dave gets busy and leads us toward the light.
>>
>> Jenny Quillien
>>
>> On 6/10/2017 8:24 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>>
>> Hi Nick, hope you are enjoying the east.
>>
>> The contrast class for "conceptual metaphor" is "embedded metaphor" ala
>> Lakoff, et. al. An example, "the future is in front of us." Unless, of
>> course you speak Aymaran in which case "the future is behind us."
>>
>> Steve, I do not regularly attend WedTech, but if this thread becomes a
>> featured topic, I certainly would be there.
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 10, 2017, at 07:35 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> Hi, Dave,
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for taking the time to lay this out.  I wonder what you call the
>> present status of “natural selection” as a metaphor. In this case, the
>> analogues between the natural situation and the pigeon coop remain strong,
>> but most users of the theory have become ignorant about the salient
>> features of the breeding situation.  So the metaphor hasn’t died, exactly;
>> it’s been sucked dry of its meaning by the ignorance of its practitioners.
>>
>>
>>
>> I balk at the idea of a “conceptual metaphor”.  It’s one of those terms
>> that smothers its object with love.  What is the contrast class?  How could
>> a metaphor be other than conceptual?  I think the term  subtly makes a case
>> for vague metaphors.  In my own ‘umble view, metaphors should be as
>> specific as possible.  Brain/mind is a case two things that we know almost
>> nothing about are used as metaphors for one another resulting in the vast
>> promulgation of gibberish. Metaphors should sort knowledge into three
>> categories, stuff we know that is consistent with the metaphor, stuff we
>> know that is IN consistent with the metaphor, and stuff we don’t know,
>> which is implied by the metaphor.  This last is the heuristic “wet edge” of
>> the metaphor.  The vaguer a metaphor, the more difficult it is to
>> distinguish between these three categories, and the less useful the
>> metaphor is.  Dawkins “selfish gene” metaphor, with all its phony
>> reductionist panache, would not have survived thirty seconds if anybody had
>> bothered to think carefully about what selfishness is and how it works.
>> See, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311767990_On_the_us
>> e_of_mental_terms_in_behavioral_ecology_and_sociobiologyThTh
>>
>>
>>
>> This is why it is so important to have something quite specific in mind
>> when one talks of layers.   Only if you are specific will you know when you
>> are wrong.
>>
>>
>>
>> I once got into a wonderful tangle with some meteorologists concerning
>> “Elevated Mixed Layers”  Meteorologists insisted that  air masses, of
>> different characteristics, DO NOT MIX.   It turns out that we had wildly
>> different models of “mixing”.  They were thinking of it as a spontaneous
>> process, as when sugar dissolves into water; I was thinking of it as
>> including active processes, as when one substance is stirred into another.
>> They would say, “Oil and water don’t mix.”  I would say, “bloody hell, they
>> do, too, mix.  They mix every time I make pancakes.”  The argument drove me
>> nuts for several years because any fool, watching hard edged thunderheads
>> rise over the Jemez, can plainly see both that the atmosphere is being
>> stirred AND that the most air in the thunderhead is not readily diffusing
>> into the dryer descending air around it.  From my point of view, convection
>> is something the atmosphere does, like mixing; from their point of view,
>> convection is something that is DONE TO the atmosphere, like stirring.  You
>> get to that distinction only by thinking of very specific examples of
>> mixing as you deploy the metaphor.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>] *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
>> *Sent:* Saturday, June 10, 2017 11:36 AM
>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy
>>
>>
>>
>> long long ago, my master's thesis in computer science and my phd
>> dissertation in cognitive anthropology dealt extensively with the issue of
>> metaphor and model, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence and
>> cognitive models of "mind." the very first academic papers I published
>> dealt with this issue (They were in AI MAgazine, the 'journal of record' in
>> the field at the time.
>>
>>
>>
>> My own musings were deeply informed by the work of Earl R. MacCormac: *A
>> Cognitive Theory of Metaphor* and *Metaphor and Myth in Science and
>> Religion.*
>>
>>
>>
>> MacCormac argues that metaphor 'evolves' from "epiphor" the first
>> suggestion that something is like something else to either "dead metaphor"
>> or "lexical term" depending on the extent to which referents suggested by
>> the first 'something'  are confirmed to correlate to similar referents in
>> the second "something." E.G. an atom is like a solar system suggests that a
>> nucleus is like the sun and electrons are like planets plus orbits are at
>> specific intervals and electrons can be moved from one orbit to another by
>> adding energy (acceleration) just like any other satellite. As referents
>> like this were confirmed the epiphor became a productive metaphor and a
>> model, i.e. the Bohr model. Eventually, our increasing knowledge of atoms
>> and particle/waves made it clear that the model/metaphor was 'wrong' in
>> nearly every respect and the metaphor died. Its use in beginning chemistry
>> suggests that it is still a useful tool for metaphorical thinking; modified
>> to "what might you infer/reason, if you looked at an atom *as if* it
>> were a tiny solar system."
>>
>>
>>
>> In the case of AI, the joint epiphors — the computer is like a mind, the
>> mind is like a computer — should have rapidly become dead metaphors.
>> Instead they became models "physical symbol system" and most in the
>> community insisted that they were lexical terms (notably Pylyshyn, Newell,
>> and Simon). To explain this, I added the idea of a "paraphor" to
>> MacCormac's evolutionary sequence — a metaphor so ingrained in a paradigm
>> that those thinking with that paradigm cannot perceive the obvious failures
>> of the metaphor.
>>
>>
>>
>> MacCormac's second book argues for the pervasiveness of the use and
>> misuse of metaphor and its relationship to models (mathematical and
>> iillustrative) in both science and religion. The "Scientific Method," the
>> process of doing science, is itself a metaphor (at best) that should have
>> become a dead metaphor as there is abundant evidence that 'science' is not
>> done 'that way' but only after the fact as if it had been done that way. In
>> an Ouroborosian twist, even MacCormac;s theory of metaphor is itself a
>> metaphor.
>>
>>
>>
>> If this thread attracts interest, I think the work of MacCormac would
>> provide a rich mine of potential ideas and a framework for the discussion.
>> Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be behind pay walls — the books and JSTOR
>> or its ilk.
>>
>>
>>
>> dave west
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 9, 2017, at 03:11 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>
>> I meant to spawn a fresh proto-thread here, sorry.
>>
>>
>>
>> Given that we have been splitting hairs on terminology, I wanted to at
>> least OPEN the topic that has been grazed over and over, and that is the
>> distinction between Model, Metaphor, and Analogy.
>>
>>
>>
>> I specifically mean
>>
>>
>>
>>    1. Mathematical Model
>>    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model>
>>    2. Conceptual Metaphor
>>    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor>
>>    3. Formal Analogy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy>
>>
>> I don't know if this narrows it down enough to discuss but I think these
>> three terms have been bandied about loosely and widely enough lately to
>> deserve a little more explication?
>>
>> I could rattle on for pages about my own usage/opinions/distinctions but
>> trust that would just pollute a thread before it had a chance to start, if
>> start it can.
>>
>> A brief Google Search gave me THIS reference which looks promising, but
>> as usual, I'm not willing to go past a paywall or beg a
>> colleague/institution for access (I know LANL's reference library will
>> probably get this for me if I go in there!).
>>
>> http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631
>> 221081_chunk_g97806312210818
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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