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

Thu May 28 23:11:22 EDT 2020

Hi, eric,

Your three “roles” is an interesting distinction.  Thanks for that.  

As for your “abhorrence”.  The idea that ALL thoughts, words, theories, etc. are metaphors is not a hill I am prepared to die on.  I acceded to it in the context of an argument that IF all thought is in metaphors, then we get nowhere when we call a thought a metaphor.  On the contrary, sez I, calling something a metaphor invokes the very logical analysis that you outline: in which ways is the metaphor similar, in which ways different?  I think one can usefully raise the question of whether a given metaphor is “good” or “bad”.  From this sort of analysis of metaphors come scientific models.  Whether absolutely thought is a metaphor is not a thought I have thought about very much.  It’s awfully close to Peirce’s “All thought is in signs” , but I am still trying to understand the relation between signs and metaphors, so that doesn’t get me very far. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 6:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

I'm not sure I follow all the different sticking points this conversation has developed... but I'm gonna risk punch the tar baby anyway...

I'm not sure Glen's point about "xyz" gets us very far. Sure, you can call anything you want by any label you want. I'm not sure anyone disputes that. But after that there remain three-ish different issues, which I think Nick tends to muddle: 

1) The role of metaphor in communication.

2) The role of metaphor in thought.

3) The role of metaphor in science.

Glen's example doesn't get us very far in any of those conversations, because it is an example, and literally any example is self-defeating in these contexts. 

The role of metaphor in communication: Glen want's us to understand that there are many situation like the one he described. He doesn't literally use "xyz" in all those cases, but it is like he has done that, in crucial ways. He also isn't always referring to a "green thing in the distance", but, again, it is like he has done that, in crucial ways. In order to effectively communicate his idea, he offered a metaphor... because they   make communication much easier. 

The role of metaphor in thought: Does Glen inherently think that way? I think the analysis would be similar. 

The role of metaphor in science: I'm not sure where this aspect is in the various conversations at the moment, but a particular strength of Nick's analysis of metaphor illuminating its role in science - both for better and for worse.  Scientific theories are metaphors that are meant to be taken very seriously ("Natural selection", "A snake eating its tail", "Bent space time", "The bystander effect", "Atomism", etc., etc.). We make the metaphor because we see a similarity between two situations, and we intend that metaphor to suggest other similarities that we have not witnessed. Because it is a metaphor, we don't intend an exact match, so there are intended non-similarities as well. The intended similarities are the things to be investigated. Something goes awry if people start investigating the non-similarities. For example, it would be silly if we had demanded Glen produce an example of when he had used "xyz" in the past to refer specifically to a "green thing in the distance". Glen didn't intend that aspect of his metaphor to be held up to such scrutiny (at least I do not think he intended it to be). Good metaphors function in common conversation without the need to hammer out such details explicitly, and typically without any intent to investigate the intended implication. 

Did I punch the tar baby enough? Am I hopelessly stuck? Or did I possibly help accomplish anything?

P.S. I am very committed to Nick's understanding of how to understand metaphors, but abhor the notion that it is metaphor all the way down. There were once people who had to literally toe a literal line, and now there are people who metaphorically "toe the line", and anything that makes it seem like we will lose that distinction is highly problematic. Don't know if that's relevant, but since I've seen a few people in the thread talk about "Nick/EricC" I thought I'd mention that crucial difference.  

P.P.S. And a metaphorically "toe the line" might or might not be distinct from whatever dysfunctional thing is happening when wherein someone is said to "tow the line"... with the latter definitely being relevant to Glen's comments about the arbitrariness it all. Is it still a functional metaphor if someone writes "tow"?!? "Yes" in one sense, but obviously "no" in another. 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 4:53 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu <mailto:desmith at santafe.edu> > wrote:

Yes, I second this.  The way Glen puts the point is exactly right.

On May 28, 2020, at 11:14 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Good, Glen.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:50 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> > 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 <mailto: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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