[FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

To try to offer my own understanding of Glen's position/assertion... I 
(like you) believe that his mere *invocation* of an onion in this 
context had a metaphorical quality to it, but his *emphasis* was in 
investigating the natural delimiters (?EricS term?) of a specific 
example of an object which might be analyzed in terms of "layer" or 
"level" where he claimed (and asked us to acknowledge?) that there is a 
distinct difference and the former is much more apt than the latter.   
Of course, I could be wrong (again) and Glen may well make that point if 
it is important!

Your analysis of metaphor more in figurative, romantic speech/poesy 
(Love/Rose) is good and parallels what Glen was maundering most recently 
(again, GEPR correct me if I misapprehended!) regarding the 
responsibility of the speaker and the listener.  As a poet and lover of 
poetry and poems and poesy and ring around the rosy myself,  I think it 
is good and important that in those modes, that there be multiple 
entendres galore (and what is the French for multiple apprehensions to 
complement entendres?).   The good and juicy stuff lies in the various 
(mis)interpretations of the original intent, up to and including 
subconscious intents not acknowledged by the figurative writer.

I think there is a significant difference between figurative speech 
inside and outside of scientific thought.   Perhaps there could/should 
be a more rigorous boundary put between the two... the former being more 
what is colloquially thought of as metaphor and the latter being more 
what is thought of as "formal analogy".

I based most of my career on helping literal thinkers access their 
intuitions through the use of complex metaphors.  I think that was 
important.   I also saw metaphors used very effectively for 
communicating complex scientific ideas to a lay audience.

Glen is unfortunately accurate (in my experience) that it is also easy 
to use metaphor to obscure and/or muddle discussions.   I think there 
was some of that afoot with our attempts to get at "what is complexity" 
(the root of this branching labyrinth of topics?) but I also believe 
that Glen (and many others in this group) may be a bit allergic to the 
abuses of metaphorical language.

You can beat a dead metaphor, but you can't lead it to water.

- Steve


On 6/12/17 11:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?
>
> I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.
>
> One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  "My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the question is an important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck with them.  A proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
>
> Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)
>
>
> On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.
> --
> ☣ glen
>
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