[FRIAM] description - explanation - metaphor - model - and reply

[Eric Charles]

  [Eric] A much belated larded reply to David's generous comment regarding
the description-explanation issue.....

[David] 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."

[Eric] Yes, and, of course, that is asserted baldly.


  [David]   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.

[Eric] Yes, which is basically the assertion that, if you look closer, the
presumed distinction doesn’t work. That sets up the need to either assert
that there is no difference, or that there is a different difference.


  [David]   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."

[Eric] Well… hopefully that is NOT the same distinction. We are now
claiming that it is a matter of what the speaker takes for granted. That
makes it something about the person-in-relation-to-the-statement, not a
quality of the statement-relative-to-the-world.

  [David]   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;."

[Eric] Hmmmmm… well… I think there is a difference between “true” and
“assumed for the purposes of argument”, but I’m not sure I think there is a
difference between the later and “taken to be true for certain purposes in
the conversation”. Maybe there needs to be a bit of wordsmithing there, but
I’m not sure there is an error beyond that.

  [David]   I presume that this error? was intentional, as they need
descriptions and, later, models to have this "truthiness" quality.

[Eric] We need “description” to have the quality of something currently
assumed accurate. However that gets phrased.

  [David]   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.]

[Eric] We will have to look into that!

  [David]   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."

[Eric] Well…. Yes and No… there is never a “true, purely descriptive model”
except that it functions as such within a larger discourse. We need to have
assumptions to move forward, but we don’t need to act like they aren’t
assumptions. (As we go about doing science, some people will quickly come
to treat those claims as non-assumptions, but others will keep track of the
assumptions. You can do science either way, but you need to act as
*something* is true, or you can never do anything. )

  [David]   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.

[Eric] They are functional different, and identical objects can performing
both functions. (At least that is our claim.) “The pencil fell” could be a
description or it could be an explanation. It is descriptive in “Why did
the pencil fall? The pencil fell, because the cat swatted it.” If you could
say, “I think you’re initial premise is wrong, the pencil didn’t fall”,
then you would be challenging the description. The same phrase is
explanatory in “Why is the pencil on the floor? The pencil is on the floor,
because the pencil fell.” If could say, “I don’t think that’s how it got
that way, nothing fell, Jill picked the pencil up and put it on the ground”
then you would be challenging the explanation.

  [David]   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.

[Eric] I’m not sure exactly how to unpack that. We will be, eventually,
trying to explain what is happening when people do science, but more
broadly the basic claim is about what it means to engage in describing and
explain anything, under any circumstances.


  [David]   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.

[Eric] Hmmmm…. I think I would want to phrase these as:

1. Given any explanation, something is assumed to be true for the purposes
of explanation, it helps to know what that is.

2. Given anything claimed to be an explanation, scrutiny will either
unravel it into nothingness, or will find a model/metaphor being employed.

3. If it is a model/metaphor, continuing the scrutiny will reveal some
potential implications of the metaphor to be intended, and other potential
implications unintended.


  [David]   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."

[Eric] Hmmm…. I think I would want to phrase these as:

1. If the scrutiny reveals the so-called explanation to be nothing but word
salad, move on.

2. It never hurts to check the proposed description, i.e., to check that
the thing you are trying to explain is real.

3. *If* you want to test the veracity of the explanation, *then* you do so
by investigating the stuff that you don’t know to be true, but which the
explainer intended to be true, expressed in the act of offering that
explanation. And, like… if you don’t care if the explanation is correct…
then don’t… That is the only coherent approach to verifying an explanation.


  [David]   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.

[Eric] Well… we would hope that it would segregate the variety of efforts
into things that made progress and things that end in a confused muddle. We
would certainly never claim that everything everyone does is coherent.


  [David]   Absent a "true" description at its root, a theory becomes a
Jenga tower of speculation.

[Eric] YES! Now we’re talking! And, there is NEVER a firm foundation of
“true description”, never ever. No arguments from authority are allowed.
There are only descriptions assumed true, which (due to their place in a
description-explanation hierarchy) have held up under various levels of
scrutiny. There are many things that we know enough about to be dumbfounded
if they were overturned, but none we know so well as to be sure they might
not, at some later time, be found to be a special case of some larger
phenomenon. (Newtonian Physics is likely the most notable example of a
seemingly unassailable and foundational system being found to be a special
case.)

  [David]   "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.)

[Eric] Sure, but that’s a separate issue, which I think is compatible with
our argument. Forcing agreement via political means is a distinct process
from the process of confirming the implications of a hypothesis. And if you
have something you call a theory, but it has no testable implications, then
you are back to the word-salad game. (Your theory might have implications
not-yet-testable due to our limited ability to manipulate the world in a
particular way, and still fit with what we are saying, but if it has no
implications testable under any circumstances, then it is word salad.)

  [David]   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.

[Eric] YES! And that is a major source of intellectual slippage. That is
one of the many things that has gone wrong regarding how people think about
evolution, which is where we are headed.

  [David]   The "unintended" surplus implications might, more often than
not, be more important than the "intended" ones — witness epigenetics.

[Eric] Well… an unintended implication is a part of the metaphor that was
not intended by whoever offered the metaphor. “My love is like a rose” does
not intend that she wilts quickly if not kept in water. If I understand
what you are getting at (and I might not), then epigenetics isn’t
unintended implication, it is not even part of the metaphor. The discovery
that there are crucial factors not remotely connected to the central
metaphor of a field should trigger the search for new metaphor, with the
prior metaphor either being rejected altogether, or being understood as a
special/limiting case.

  [David]   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."

[Eric] Yes indeed!


  [David]   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.

[Eric] It would be surprising to find ‘broken-wing’ behavior being
maintained in the long run without Fox gullibility. If all species started
exhibiting what is now Killdeer-specific deceptive behavior, such behavior
would actually become a reliable signal that communicated to the Fox that
it should keep searching where it is searching. We may presume a Darwinian
story in which foxes that respond to broken-wing behavior still get to eat
a bird more often, on average, than those foxes which do not.


  [David]   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.

[Eric] Fair enough! You’ll just have to keep reading to find out if you
like it better or worse when we are done ;- )



[Eric] By that way, as I indicated before, this is an extremely thoughtful
evaluation of that chapter, and I greatly appreciated it. Any further
discussion would be very, very welcome, and if you were really interested,
I’m sure we could get you some of the other in-progress chapters.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>


On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 7:26 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
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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