[FRIAM] description - explanation - metaphor - model

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

Thanks for the JoyousX and acknowledgement of "signs of spring".... I'm
a bit more allegorical/parable-ic about my narcissus bulb growth than
just "signs of Spring" but definitely that...   it is a reminder for me
of *many* things:  1) That the sun (despite it's recent habit) *will*
return.  I just spent 2 weeks in Sweden/Denmark/Holland and experienced
(really for the first time) what happens in those latitudes, and perhaps
more to the point in the presence of (warmish?) waters...   The sun rose
(obscured by a continual mild cloud-cover) as late as 10++AM and
disappeared near 3--PM each day (while in Stockholm and nearby) but the
"twilight" hours were long and drawn out...   something I experience
here at our (32?) latitude, but to a much greater extent;   2) In the
starvation time of deep hibernation (my Genetic Test says that my genes
are somewhat split between Scandinavian, Ursus, and Sasquatchii), it is
amazing to watch something like a bulb with it's stored energy launch a
set of photosynthetic probes up toward the light (away from the wet
roots?) which begin to gather energy and convert the water from it's
roots and the CO2 from the air into cellulose and actually bulk up, even
divide (though they are better at that in real soil)... something animal
life just can't quite muster (taking *our* energy from the carbon
complexes built up BY other life via the combustion process)... making
us (almost) entirely dependent on plant life (at the base); 3) Spring is
a time of rebirth/return, of the cycle of life requiring a "rest" and
perhaps even some "challenge" to renew it's desire/unction/necessity to
relurch upward and outward.  

    /"I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live"/

    — Albert Schweitzer

Opposite/Apposite to your mistrust of relativism, I agree with the
"pragmatic" value of having an absolute grounding to support the
relativism/contextualism of everyday real-world situations.   The
"Turtles all the way down'" aphorism still seems apt, however...   *IS*
it possible that a world supported by "turtles all the way down" can be
just as (apparently?) stable as one seated in bedrock (which itself is
seated where?).

Slap-Happy Holidays!

- Steve


On 12/24/19 1:01 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Steve, 
>
> I take you as a colleague in the enterprise to see signs of spring, even as winter is pressing in.  Just as a matter of climatology, Santa Fe, unlike Massachusetts, is a place where the average coldest day of the year occurs almost as soon as the sun angle starts to rise (first week of January, I think).  In the East, the momentum of all that nearby cold water carries the average temperature down all the way to the forth week of January.   But the EARLIEST sign of spring is already behind us by two weeks.  On December 7 the AFTERNOONS started to get longer.  For those of us who are... um .... late risers, the time from noon to sunset is the only cue to day length we ever get, so WE think that the days have been getting longer ever since Pearl Harbor Day.  
>
> I won't have time to respond to this thread in earnest until  the Rellies leave.  Dave's remarks are going to be tremendously useful, but I need time to work them over.  Until then, let me just say to you that, as you know, I am no fan of relativism.  First, whether truth exists or not, I think plays a tremendously important role in human life.  So, if we are to talk to anybody about anything, we have to take descriptions for granted.  Thus, we cannot talk about Santa Clause, you and I, without a description, at least partially shared, about he looks like, or does, or is, or whatever.  This is the Pragmatist position.  I think, in addition, that truth EXISTS.  The evidence for this proposition is that, in some regards, our experience as a species does tend to converge.   This is the PragmatiCIst view of my man, Peirce.  It is a statistical notion.  (Peirce had a lot to do with the stuff we learned in elementary statistics courses.)  He starts by asserting that events in experience are essentially random: i.e., there are not reliable rules of experience that connect them. However, SOME types of events are TRULY connected to other types of events.  How do we tell the difference between "true" coincidences and coincidental ones?   The more frequently two events coincide the more likely they have been drawn from a population of events that "really" coincide, rather than from populations o spurious ones.  Like the evidence for the fairness of a coin, this sort of progress toward an asyntote is NEVER conclusive.  No matter how often we flip the coin heads, it still COULD BE a fair coin.  But after a run of heads sufficiently long, the betting folks amongst us will start to distrust the coin, and we PragmatiCIsts are betting folks.  Species and organisms are the sort of entities that make such bets, and species evolution and individual learning are evidence for the utililty of, and perhaps even the truth of, such bets. 
>
> So truth is not only tremendously useful (even Fox agrees with that) but it actually exists, even though we can see it only in the asymptotes of our sucessful guesses.  
>
> Joyous X, Steve, for whatever value of X you care to adopt. 
>
> Nick 
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2019 11:09 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] description - explanation - metaphor - model
>
> Dave (et al) -
>
> I haven't had the bandwidth/focus to follow this line of discussion closely nor well, much less stick my fat foot in the middle of it, however your synopsis/redux/refactor here is very well presented and while I have some pause with some of your assertions/conclusions, overall rings "true" (Oupsie!)... 
>
> In any case, I've started the force on my annual solstice narcissus bulbs and lit my solstice ("magical luck reversing") candle (ritually purchased at pojoaque village market in lieu of one of the many saints I could choose from) and am trying to refocus my "self" toward a future (path through the multiverse of adjacent possibles?) which simultaneously embraces the unknowable whilst maintaining enough of a rationalization of the path of (apparently adjacent) events strung out behind me in my (imaginary) rear-view mirror, stretching back to some aft-horizon roughly correlated with the degree of my neurological senescence or perhaps the degree of reinforcement from my extended context (retelling all my old stories at holiday meals?).  All this to frame the issue of "objective reality" and "truth" in terms of my own decisions in the light of my beliefs (models?) and memories.
>
> I am (willfully?) unable to either confirm or deny your assertion that there is no qualitative distinction between description and explanation.   Or more to the point, I feel a need to embrace both, to whatever extent such is possible.   I find the distinction incredibly useful for relating to others...  it is incredibly convenient to share a sense of an objective reality which allows for a style of relating through the (illusory?) shared physical (by agreement?) reality... in fact, it is downright "convenient" to treat other people as if they have an objective reality and their nature is immutable and more than simply "my interpretation" of the various sensory inputs that impinge on me "from" their behaviour.
>
> On the other hand, of course, I understand both practically and philosophically that for everything I think I *know* to be "true", that there is at the very least a fuzzy haze - a distribution of alternative explanations for my perceptions.  I also recognize that the models (or
> metaphors) I live by are inherited from A) my physiology (ala Lakoff and
> Nunez) and B) my cultural embedding (nuclear family, regional distinctions, ethnosocial subcultural embedding, etc.   I feel blessed to be somewhat aware of this "duality" (in a different sense than we have bandied about here methinks?) through a lot of my life... and therefore am like the Red Queen, able and willing to "think six impossible thoughts before breakfast", and yet apparently/conveniently able to proceed as if there were a (shared with others) objective reality.
>
> But (BUT) what I think I find disturbing about the truism (oupsie!) that "everything is interpretation" is so often used as the sophists entree into a manipulation, into a switcharoo where the "everything is interpretation" suddenly becomes "let me give you my interpretation in a compelling way that has you acting as if it is somehow 'more true' than the one you started with".   My oldest friend by most measures carried this acutely as a young man...   always pretty sure of the things he thought he believed in as if he had strong evidence for believing them (and denying other's beliefs) but when confronted with fairly damning evidence against his pet-ideas had the pat phrase "you never know!"
> which he could never muster nor allow when *others* had pet-beliefs that opposed his.   I last saw him in person after his wife (also a friend from HS) died and I went to the funeral... his young-adult daughter (who I had not seen since she was a baby) referred to him (fondly?) as her "fox news-father" because A) anything you might have an idea or opinion about he had an answer to which had the tone and in fact likely specific scripting straight from Fox-News; and B) he never turned off his TV...
> and it was tuned *only* to Fox-News... as if leaving it running when he was gone made what they spewed "more true" or making sure he didn't forget to turn it on when he got home again, or ????    Granted, I have plenty of friends who act vaguely the same way with PBS/NPR and in fact have a whole cohort of very liberal/progressive *younger* friends who are all but literally *allergic* to NPR/PBS because *their parents* (from my cohort) ran it 24/7 during their upbringing.
>
> Regarding the "wit to re-weave"... my elderdotter weaned herself off smoking through knitting which became a near compulsion... it was something she could do with her hands whilst reading technical papers on her kindle.. she became (as her personal blog is titled) a "yarn harlot", but at one point she realized that no matter how many skeins of yarn she bought (at the store, or yard sales), there was no such thing as "enough" yet she also had "too much".   To curb that ,she began a new obsession, that of finding high quality, but often mildly stained or damaged wool sweaters at the thrift store and un-ravelling/re-knitting them, sometimes with bits of "new" yarn for color/accent...   I very much appreciate when someone (Glen is also prone to this) backs up, unravels (or simply picks up the unraveled bits available) and re-ravels a tapestry for us that includes (some if not all of) the elements from the original(s).
>
> Sappy Solstice!
>
>  - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
> On 12/24/19 5:26 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> Lacking the wit tore- weave the  argument that has unraveled into several threads and posts; an attempt to begin afresh from one of the points of origin - the Introduction to a book by Nick and Eric.
>>
>> First a common ascription: " A description is understood as a simple statement of a fact, whereas an explanation is an interpretation. A description simply says what happened, whereas an explanation says why it happened."
>>
>> Followed by an argument that description and explanation are pretty close to the same thing:  all descriptions explain; all explanations describe, and both are in some sense, interpretations.
>>
>> Then a discussion that leads right back to the same distinction:  "Descriptions are explanations that the speaker and audience take to be true for the purpose of seeking further explanations. Conversely, explanations are descriptions that the speaker and audience hold to be unverified under the present circumstances." 
>>
>> There is, however, a (in my mind) subtle error here, in that the assertion just quoted uses the word "true" as if it was the same thing as "assumed for the purposes of argument" — the conclusion of the argument about differences — which it is not.  Similarly, "unverified" is not the same as "contested absent further information;."
>>
>> I presume that this error? was intentional, as they need descriptions and, later, models to have this "truthiness" quality.
>>
>> The discussion of explanations as models with 'basic" and "surplus" 
>> implications (surplus being divided into "intended" and "unintended") 
>> parallels and, except for vocabulary, duplicates McCormac's discussion 
>> of the evolution of metaphor from epiphor to either "lexical term" or 
>> "dead metaphor." [Unlike Glen, I have no difficulty with metaphor as a 
>> kind of philosopher's stone for sense-making in science.]
>>
>> The discussion of levels of explanations is where the need for "truthy" descriptions comes back into play.  Somewhere in our hierarchy of models is the need for a "true" purely descriptive model. Even within any given model there is a need to accept the "Basic Meaning" as being "true" and purely descriptive, so we can go about researching and verifying (or not) the intended "surplus meanings."
>>
>> Although it is evident how and why they need "truth" in order to proceed with their discussion and argument, I am unwilling to grant it. For me, both explanations and descriptions are "interpretations" with no qualitative differentiation.
>>
>> Their goal is to be "scientific" and so "truthy" models must remain and become fundamental to the evaluation of explanations. Evaluation is taken to be a two step process, with each step having three aspects.
>>
>> Specify the explanation:
>>   1. find the foundational (root of the theory) "true" description.
>>   2. expose the model - i.e. the metaphor.
>>   3. expose the intended surplus implications such that research can begin to verify/disprove them.
>> Evaluate the explanation
>>   1. discard the explanation if there are no surplus implications exposed for investigation.
>>   2. confirm the basic implications
>>   3. prove some number of the intended surplus implications to be "true."
>>
>> Nice and tidy - except it does not / cannot work this way. Just like the "scientific method" in general, this construct can serve, at best, as an after the fact rationalization of a course of investigation.
>>
>> Absent a "true" description at its root, a theory becomes a Jenga tower of speculation.
>>
>> "Confirmation" of basic implications is too often a "political" 
>> exercise — so too any "proving" of surplus implications as "true" — 
>> witness the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics. (Or, in the 
>> case of 'proving" things, the fact that string theory and many other 
>> quantum theories generate no testable intentional surplus 
>> implications.)
>>
>> It is far too easy to move inconvenient (i.e. unprovable) "intended surplus implications to the "unintended' category — witness Artificial Intelligence and the mind-is-computer-is-mind model/metaphor.
>>
>> The "unintended" surplus implications might, more often than not, be more important than the "intended" ones — witness epigenetics.
>>
>> Reliance on models, even structured models like those proposed, eliminates "context" because all models are, if not abstractions, simplifications; focusing only on what is deemed 'relevant."
>>
>> This last point makes me want to read the rest of Eric's and Nick's book, because I suspect I would find agreement with the last point of my argument. I surmise this from the all to brief mention that: "we will find that the problem Darwin’s theory does suffer from is that it is wrong.  Yes…Wrong! Darwinian Theory is wrong in a much more limited sense – empirical evidence shows that a comprehensive explanation for adaptation will require the inclusion of other explanatory principles, to complement the explanatory power of natural selection. "
>>
>> Which brings me to a concluding question: can 'broken-wing' behavior convey an evolutionary advantage to the Killdeer absent a mechanism the maintains the gullibility of the Fox? It would seem to me that Foxes whose behavior ignored the Killdeer feint would be better fed (eggs and nestlings) than those that were fooled and therefore obtain an evolutionary advantage that would, eventually make the Killdeer seek an alternative strategy.
>>
>> An off-hand BTW — I much prefer postmodern methods of deconstruction as a methodology; not to find "Truth" which does not exist, IMO, but simply to keep the investigation lively and honest.
>>
>> davew
>>  
>>
>>
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