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

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I would *like* to work on a more formal breakdown of how we "understand
by analogy" and develop "complex mappings" from direct experiences to
abstract conceptions.   When all is said and done with such an exercise,
I think it will do a lot to formalize how metaphor *is used* and how
*good* and *bad* metaphors are constructed.  It could *also* provide a
rich language that does not appeal to the catchall, overused, broadly
misapplied term "metaphor".   Praise Jaisusss!

I think we've (I have?) muddied the water by pounding you with metaphors
over the last half-dozen thread incarnations.  

I'm looking forward to the possibility that this August Body already has
a good collective apprehension of a proper, more formal language for
describing the way we understand complex/abstract concepts through the
composition of our understanding of  simpler and/or more familiar
concepts.  

I don't know how long "euclidean space" has been a familiar concept to
humans... it is very likely that people who have not been schooled in
the idea of a rectilinear/cartesian grid for measurement and location
actually perceive space that way (gridded city dwellers and midwest
farm-road-gridded folk probably do as well).   It maps well to measured
experiences when applied to cartography...   how many steps from here to
there, or how many cigarettes smoked while at a walking pace on
horseback, or how many paddle strokes in my canoe, or how many knots on
a standard ropeline allowed to drift in the water alongside my moving
ship, all lead to linear measurement.   Theodolites and sextants give us
a measure of angles that we can then calculate distances from (with
trigonometry tables), and if we use straight edges and pens/pencils on
paper, we can make marks to "map out" the space, and if we are not
working at huge scales, euclidean space seems fairly intuitive.  
Everyone here likely takes it for granted, whilst sailors (how many do
we have here?) or airplane pilots (one or two?) have the opportunity and
need to think/measure/metrize in radial, spherical (or even
ellipsoidal?) coordinates.     Cartographic projections are used to take
us from the "real world" of great circle routes, with earth-curvature to
our familiar 2D cartesian space easily drawn on paper, each
projection/mapping preserving different interesting/useful properties
(angles, distances, great-circle-as-straight line)...  These are all
"simple" geometric mappings.   If we go to perspective projection (which
maps more to how we *see* than how we perambulate/navigate) we still
have a geometric projection, just a slightly more complicated/abstract
(4D?) one.   Platonists mapped the motions of bodies in the sky with
circles and epicycles and Kepler  shifted that to ellipses before Newton
posed it as kinematics which reduced to elliptical/hyperbolic/parabolic
orbits for 2-body systems.  

I'm just digging a hole here in one tiny bit of the domain(s) of Science
and hope someone else can actually build something with the same tools
better than I am here.

Mumble,

 - Steve



On 5/28/20 9:48 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> Argh! You people! >8^D
>
>
> On 5/28/20 8:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) apprehension contradicts Glen's partially...  as I think HE puts "Strawman" up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position.   I think my apprehension has your element of /reductio ad absurdum/ in it, in that said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real construction to replace it with.  Or as I said, having only the barest hint of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more proper construction.
> That the class defined defined here has multiple members, that can be mapped one to the other -- i.e. metaphors for each other, does not imply that "metaphor" is a good way to talk about the relationships between those members of that class. Of course! Of course you, SteveS, can define a class that contains both my referent of "strawman" and Frank's referent of "strawman" into the same class. And of course you can then distinguish between the 2 referents. (cf the discussion Jon started re: intensional vs. extensional)
>
> But none of this ability to re-comprehend, rebundle referents *requires* the use of the word "metaphor". That you guys loooovvvvveeeee that string of characters, m e t a p h o r, is just plain weird. Nowhere else do people use that string so often, to mean so much.
>
> I feel like I'm talking to fundamentalist Christians where every other sentence is punctuated with Praise Jesus!  Hey Steve! Praise Jesus! Where do you want to eat lunch? That's a metaphor! You're right! And that's a metaphor! Praise Jesus!
>
> We need to create a website, with some mysterious sounding voice actor and some really inspirational (or creepy) images and video clips ... videos that you can't pause or get by until you've watched the whole thing. Then Bam! We sell you a Secrets to the Universe book ... or some magic itch cream. Everything's a metaphor!
>
> Please choose a different word once in awhile... "mapping", "analogy", ... something, anything. Then maybe once in awhile distinguish why you used "mapping" in this case and "metaphor" in that case, "analogy" in this case and "mapping" in that case. Then and only then, will I begin to understand whatever religious concept it is you guys worship.
>