[FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

[Frank Wimberly]

I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a
specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position.  A kind of
reductio ad absurdum.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 8:16 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> I agree with you, and I am Nick's ally in the "everything is metaphor"
> camp. But the apparent contradiction is resolved by recognizing the role
> and life cycle of metaphor.
>
> Metaphor is useful only in the circumstance of encountering an "unknown
> thing" or attempting to express a "new" idea/concept. X is like Y — X being
> an unknown and Y a known — offers a tool/technique for coming to understand
> X.
>
> If the application of that technique fails to generate meaningful results,
> the metaphor becomes 'dead' and is abandoned.
>
> If application is completely successful the metaphor becomes a lexical
> term, just another word.
>
> Once upon a time "strawman" was a metaphor. Actually, since the lexical
> term evidently has two meanings, it was two metaphors to two different
> people in two different contexts.
>
> But that was then and this is now and "strawman" is no longer a metaphor,
> it is exactly what you state: a string bound to a thing, in this case, a
> concept.
>
> We metaphorists need to be much more careful about casting our aspersions.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2020, at 7:50 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> > I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is
> > distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is
> > a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to
> > any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to
> > "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever
> > later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the string
> > "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades.
> > "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So,
> > regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not
> > using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until
> > you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D
> >
> > For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical
> > bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've
> > never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy.
> > I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore,
> > it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to
> > that one thing.
> >
> > Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I
> > write. That's the very point of the
> > privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it
> > CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor
> > status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are
> > *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing
> > you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.
> >
> > Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the
> > author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude
> > and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that
> > string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a
> > string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a
> > marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks
> > that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red
> > Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap
> > lyrics.
> >
> > You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be
> > metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you
> > absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN
> > suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes
> > ... you have that power.
> >
> > So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using
> > the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on.
> > Please avoid the xyz fallacy.
> >
> > On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
> > >
> > > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a
> metaphor at the first state.  We did not all get the same “image” when it
> was first deployed.  That failure is instructive for me because it reminds
> me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete.
> Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument.  For
> 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X.  In other words, we must be humble in
> our use of metaphors.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
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