[FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

[Gillian Densmore]

I'm totes most my moods and it ain't that deep!
Today I was tanked out from adulting.
Now I'm recharged more.
It's fucking awesome out. So I am happyer do to fucking bad ass weather.
Spring I am nesaulgic.
I have a poor sense of social skill.
I am often sore after a jog or a work out bat the gym.
Seems to me just not that deep. In my opinion.

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019, 9:29 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Steve,
>
>
>
> We were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my “HORSEFEATHERS!” below.
>
>
>
> 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 *Steven A
> Smith
> *Sent:* Friday, March 29, 2019 9:39 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we
> behave?)
>
>
>
>
>
> On 3/28/19 1:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> Steve, ‘n all,
>
>
>
> Just to be cranky, I want to remind everybody that ALL language use,
> except perhaps tautological expressions, is metaphorical.
>
> I ascribe to this idea as well, following Lakoff and Johnson in their 1980
> _Metaphors we Live by_ .
>
>   So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what kind of a
> metaphor is it and is it pernicious.
>
> I believe that ultimately conceptual metaphor is no more nor less than the
> intuitive application of a model, and as is often mentioned "all models are
> wrong, some are useful".    You use the term pernicious which suggests
> *harmful*, I presume either intentionally so or more from sloppiness or
> ignorance.
>
> My own view is that in any “tense” conversation – one in which the parties
> feel the words really matter – it behooves a metaphor-user to define the
> limits of the metaphor.
>
> I agree that "tense" conversations are different than "casual" ones if
> that is your distinction.  Unfortunately, outside of Science/Engineering
> contexts, I find that "tense" conversations are at their root political or
> at least rhetorical.   One or both sides are really *serious* about being
> believed.   If not believed in fact ("I believe what you just said") then
> in principle ("I believe that you believe what you just said").
>
> I think that political/rhetorical dialog would *benefit*  by careful
> disclosure of all metaphors being used, but one mode of such dialog is for
> one or both sides to attempt to interject equivocal meanings... to use a
> term (or in this case set of terms belonging to a metaphorical domain) to
> weave an *apparently* logical argument, which is only superficially logical
> but falls apart when the "correct" meaning of the term(s) are applied.
>
> So, for instance, much mischief has arisen in evolutionary biology from a
> failure of theorists to define the limits of their use of such metaphors as
> “natural selection” and “ adaptation”.  When limits are defined, the
> surplus meaning of a metaphor is separated into two parts, initially, that
> which the metaphor-user embraces and that which s/he disclaims.  The
> embraced part goes on to become the positive heuristic of the metaphor, the
> “wet edge” along which science develops.
>
> From this line of discussion, I take you to be on the branch of the
> fault-tree I implied above as a Scientific dialog where *both* sides of the
> discussion are honestly trying to come to mutual understanding and perhaps
> advance understanding by combining differing perspectives on the same
> phenomena.
>
> The disclaimed part, must be further divided into that which was
> legitimately [logically] disclaimed and that which was disclaimed
> fraudulently.  For instance, when sociobiologists use the notion of selfish
> gene, they may legitimately disclaim the idea that genes consciously choose
> between self-regarding and other-regarding options, but they cannot
> legitimately disclaim the idea that a gene has the power to make any choice
> but the self-regarding one.
>
> When Dawkins coined "Selfish Gene",  I felt that the *value* of the
> metaphor invoked was in the challenge it presents:
>
>   And that idea is patently false.  Genes do not make choices
>
> Patently Genes do not make choices in the sense that we usually mean "make
> choices", yet the strong implication is that the phenomena functions *as
> if* they do, in "all other ways".   There may be (useful) hairsplitting
> between "all other ways" and "many other ways" which is an important aspect
> of analogical thinking.
>
> , they ARE choices and the choice is made at the level of the phenotype or
> at the level of the population, depending on how one thinks about the
> matter.  So the metaphor ‘selfish gene’ is pernicious in evolutionary
> biology, because it creates confusion on the very point that it purports to
> clarify – the level at which differential replication operates to generate
> long term phenotypic change in a population.
>
> I would challenge this as I think my verbage above outlines.   I do not
> believe that the metaphor *purports* to clarify what you say it does.
>
> *[NST==>* *HORSEFEATHERS!** One or two generations of sociobiologists
> were directed away from group level explanations by this pernicious
> metaphor.  <==nst] *
>
> It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to establish a fairly
> strong metaphor which deserves careful dissection to understand the
> particulars of the *target domain*.   An important question in the target
> domain becomes "why does the shortcut of thinking of genes as selfish
> actually have some level of accuracy as a description of the phenomena when
> in fact the mechanisms involved do not support that directly?"
>
> *[NST==>I don’t think it does.  I think it’s a subtle and largely
> successful attempt to import Spenserian ideology in to evolutionary
> biology.  <==nst] *
>
> For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and there is NO
> utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"...
>
> Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy of hydraulic
> systems for DC circuits is misleading.   I forget the specifics of where he
> shows that the analogy breaks down, but it is well below (or above?) the
> level of "normal" DC circuit understanding and manipulation.   For the
> kinds of problems I work with using DC circuits, a "battery" is a "tank of
> water at some height", the Voltage out of the battery is the water
> Pressure, the amount of Current is the Volume of water, a Diode is a
> one-way valve,  a resistor is any hydraulic element which conserves water
> but reduces pressure through what is nominally friction, etc.    As you
> point out, there is plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as source
> domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits as target domain, and
> if one is to use the analogy effectively one must either understand those
> over/under mappings, or be operating within only the smaller apt-portion of
> the domains.   For example, I don't know what the equivalent of an
> anti-hammer stub (probably a little like a capacitor in parallel?) is but
> that is no longer describing a simple DC circuit.
>
> *[NST==>I think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst] *
>
> A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand it using the
> source domain of "draft animal" and can't go particularly wrong by doing
> things like "giving it a rest off and on to let it cool down", "planning to
> feed it well before expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the
> elements when not in use", etc.  your "excess meaning" would seem to be
> things like the farmer going out and trying to top off the fuel every day
> even when he was not using the tractor, or maybe taking it out for a spin
> every day to keep it exercised and accustomed to being driven.   The farmer
> *might* understand "changing the oil" and "cleaning the plugs" and
> "adjusting the points" vaguely like "deworming" and "cleaning the hooves"
> but the analogy is pretty wide of the mark beyond the simple idea that
> "things need attending to".
>
> *[NST==>OoooooH.  I like the above!  May I plaigiarise it some day?  Do
> you by any chance know Epamanondas from your childhood.  Very politically
> incorrect, now, I fear, but endlessly instructive on the perils of over
> using metaphors.  <==nst] *
>
>
>
> PS – Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have gotten this far
> in this post) familiar with the work of Douglas Walton?
>
> I just took a look and his work does sound interesting (and relevant).
>
> He seems perhaps to have written a lot about misunderstandings in AI
> systems … i.e., how does Siri know what we mean?
>
> By AI, it seems you mean (the subset of) Natural Language Understanding?
>
> I am also reminded by reading the Wikipedia article on his work that I
> haven't responded to Glen's question about the "theorem dependency project".
>
> I came to this work through my interest in abduction, which may be
> described as the process by which we identify (ascribe meaning to?)
> experiences.  Walton seems to suggest that you-guys are way ahead of the
> rest of us on the process of meaning ascription, and we all should go to
> school with you.  Please tell me where and when you offer the class.
>
> I assume the "you-guys" referred to here are the hard core CS/Modeling
> folks (e.g. Glen, Marcus, Dave, ...).  I do think that the challenges of
> "explaining things to a machine" do require some rigor, as does formal
> mathematics and systems like the aforementioned "theorem dependency
> project".
>
> - Steve
>
> PS.  It has been noted that my long-winded explanation of my (poorly
> adhered to) typographical conventions for around "reserved terms" and the
> like was perhaps defensive.  I didn't mean to sound defensive, I just
> wanted to be more precise and complete to (possibly) reduce
> misunderstandings.   I don't imagine many read the entireity of my
> missives, but as often as not,  when people do read and respond, I sense
> that some of my conventions are not recognized.
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