[FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy

Sun Jun 11 10:57:54 EDT 2017

The pattern is that people recognize patterns.  Patterns of sensory
experience that get resolved to people, places, things, phenomena.
Patterns of gesture, utterance, markings on media which get recognized as
language.  Patterns of linguistic expression which contend to be seen as
models, or metaphors, or analogies, or similes, or congruencies, or
homologies, or patterns.

At this point, one might ask: how many layers of pattern recognition are
there between sensory experience and arguments about models and metaphors?
But our best artificial examples of pattern recognizers are deep neural
nets, and they don't care about no stinking layers.  A  "layer" in a net
might feed its conclusions to the "next layer", to itself, to its peers, to
its ancestors, to its descendants, to any of the above with a delay, or all
of the above.  The net architecture is probably written to allow as many of
these connections as are feasible and to use the back propagation of error
to prune.  And next week's architecture will have more feasible connections
than last week's.

So that's a model of why we can get in such a muddle when we talk about
patterns of patterns, we try to impose patterns of logical consistency,
coherent architecture, hierarchical structure, modularity, levels of
organization, and so on, all of which are good patterns, but they are none
of them the ruling pattern that our pattern recognizers are built on, which
is all of the above, and some other principles as yet to be recognized, in
whatever proportions works.

Pattern recognition is a form of natural selection.  The result is
bricolage rather than direct application of engineering principles.  I was
trying to find the adjectival form for bricolage.  Adventitious,
fortuitous, seredipitous -- but all of these imply a kind of luck, and
promiscuous implies undiscriminating.  I'm looking for the word for
discriminating in its selection of elements but entirely open to whatever
solution might be available.  Hmm.

All of this leaves aside the issue of whether the pattern recognized is
true or false according to the pattern of empirical falsification or the
pattern of feels right.

-- rec --

On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 8:57 AM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> R.
>
>
>
> Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-s…………….............?
>
>
>
> And the pattern is…………………?
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> 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] *On Behalf Of *Roger
> Critchlow
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 11, 2017 7:11 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy
>
>
>
> 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
> 505.577.6482 <(505)%20577-6482>(c)
> 505.473.9646 <(505)%20473-9646>(h)
> Society of Professional Journalists <http://www.spj.org>
> *Check out It's The People's Data
> <https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>*
>
> http://www.jtjohnson.com                   tom at jtjohnson.com
> ============================================
>
>
>
> 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_
> use_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=g9780631221081_chunk_
> g97806312210818
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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