[FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

[glen ☣]

On 06/12/2017 10:24 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'.  I'll think about "premature" a little more...

Cf Brian Cantwell Smith in: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/philosophy-of-mental-representation-9780198250524?cc=us&lang=en&

> I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of my professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all the steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my apprehension anyway).    They eventually quit giving me F's for that antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not HAVING to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the blanks conceptually if one tried.

Yes, and I accept all the fault.  My academic friends are always on me about my non sequiturs.  Even one old boss of mine (forcefully) suggested it is the speaker's responsibility to speak so that the listener can understand.  I did and do think that's bvllsh!t.  It is the listener's responsibility to make some effort to listen with empathy, rather than _leap_ to whatever conclusion is most convenient for them.  But, hey, I got poor grades and still struggle to make a living.  So what do I know?

> and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction of levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next or the many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers (each one coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer and/or the remaining (sub) whole?

If we first admit there's a difference in the result, then we can move on to whether there is an analysis method that is more _natural_ to the object being analyzed.  EricS, in particular, used the phrase

     DES> there is a natural sense of a system’s own delimitation

An onion is an example where layer is a more natural procedure of separation than level.  And if we can ever get around to agreement on that point, then we can move on to analogies between things that are more natural to layer than level.


On 06/12/2017 10:10 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:> BTW
> Can you (Glen) state your position on the utility or place of metaphor in your world-view?  We might (once again) be bashing around in different wings of  Borges' "Library of Babel" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel )

I was very put off by the reliance on "metaphors everywhere" in both Philosophy in the Flesh and Where Mathematics Comes From.  I think it leads to exactly the type of muddled thinking we've seen in this thread.

That said, being a simulant, I rely fundamentally on the spectrum of weak ⇔ strong analogy (both quant. and qual.).  So, I'm down with any power metaphors might bring us.  But as with everything, I'm a skeptic.


-- 
☣ glen