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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/28/19 1:20 PM, Nick Thompson
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Steve,
‘n all, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Just
to be cranky, I want to remind everybody that ALL language
use, except perhaps tautological expressions, is
metaphorical.</span></p>
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I ascribe to this idea as well, following Lakoff and Johnson in
their 1980 _Metaphors we Live by_ .<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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So then, the question is not, “Is this a metaphor”, but what
kind of a metaphor is it and is it pernicious. <br>
</span></p>
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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.<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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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. <br>
</span></p>
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<p>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").</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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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. <br>
</span></p>
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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.<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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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.</span></p>
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When Dawkins coined "Selfish Gene", I felt that the *value* of the
metaphor invoked was in the challenge it presents:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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And that idea is patently false. Genes do not make choices</span></p>
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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. <br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">,
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. </span></p>
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<p>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. 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?"</p>
<p>For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and there is
NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"... <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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".<br>
</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">PS
– Is anybody on this list (among the handful that have
gotten this far in this post) familiar with the work of
Douglas Walton? <br>
</span></p>
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I just took a look and his work does sound interesting (and
relevant).<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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He seems perhaps to have written a lot about
misunderstandings in AI systems … i.e., how does Siri know
what we mean? </span></p>
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</blockquote>
<p>By AI, it seems you mean (the subset of) Natural Language
Understanding?</p>
<p>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".<br>
</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">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.</span></p>
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<p>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".</p>
<p>- Steve</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
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