[FRIAM] words RE: words

[Nick Thompson]

David, 

 

I am only frustrated because I think FRIAMMERS hold the keys to the universe won't explicate them in metaphors that I can understand.   So, imagine yourself talking to a group of boy (girl-) scouts.   You have just demonstrated to them the phenomenon of Cellular Automaton #30 (or whatever) bursting into seething dog vomit at iteration 10,601 (or whatever) (or bursting out of seething dog vomit into grand pyramids of pyramids, ad infinitum, whatEVER!).  One of the scouts asks, “Professor Dave, why did that happen then?”  And once you have explained that to them, please explain to them how that explanation is not an adequate explanation of consciousness. 

 

The last time I pressed this question on the list, Lee answered with the following Kaon

 

God:creation::fish:water

 

which I took to mean, that you are all Gods who do not know (and therefore cannot explicate) your own powers. I.e.,  

 

God:creation::fish:water:computer_scientists::emergence

 

After you answer those questions,  I promise not to be frustrated, ever again.  

 

Deal? 

 

Nick 

 

Shhhhhh! Nick has finally gone bonkers.  

 

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 Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2019 9:04 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] words RE: words

 

Just finished Thomas K. Disch's, Camp Concentration, first published in 1968 . Very dystopian future. My pleasure reading ti came from the dozens, perhaps as many as 100, words encountered for the first time. Unusual, obscure, sometimes archaic, (e.g. orthoepy) and yet the author put these words into the mouth of the narrator in a seamless, organic, manner — the words were necessary to convey the precise, nuanced, narrative.

 

Hours later I was reading the words," toilette spoelt automatique," above a urinal. I was wondering if "spoelt" might derive from a root common to the English word, 'spill'. it does not - spoelt = flushes. (Spill = morsen.) Before I made myself aware of the facts, I spent some time idly wondering about the circumstances and contexts in which the two words "spill/flush" might be used as synonyms despite the fact that the former word is usually far less lethargic than the latter. I mentally pictured a Venn diagram with significant overlap but with definite areas/contexts where only one word or the other could possibly convey desired precision or nuance.

 

On the heels of that musing, a recent FRIAM discussion about vocabulary came to mind. The question was raised about whether or not "big" words were used simply to demonstrate how erudite one was. (I first encountered that word in the 1950s on "Make Room for Daddy" aka The Danny Thomas Show; to describe a learned uncle and I decided I want to be that.) My own observations of the list would suggest that such mean spirited use of vocabulary is quite rare.

 

Vocabulary is a vehicle for conveying exact meaning — to the extent that meaning can be either 'exact' or 'communicated'. And yet there is a very definite 'Yin-Yang' stylistic difference observable in the conversation.

 

Most participants seem to be grounded in the Yang style inherited from the rationalism of Descartes and scientism of Bacon and use vocabulary as a means for finding precision and accuracy. Others [yes you Nick, despite how you cringe at the characterization] reflect the Yin of  hermeneuticism with a soupcon of post-modernism.

 

And this, perhaps, explains Nick's simultaneous fascination and frustration with FRIAM  — a well meaning group willing to explore a lot of different topics and the means to communicate a shared understanding of those topics, using the 'best' vocabulary to do so.

 

Alas, too often, communication and understanding falter between the accuracy bias of Charybdis and the metaphor bias of Scylla.

 

davewest

 

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