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

Wed Jan 15 12:23:10 EST 2020

David,  

Its good to hear from you.  I was afraid the Holidays had devoured you.  Thanks for the MacCormac references.  

The meditations on metaphor which you have read go way back to the 70’s and were originally entirely home grown.  My take-off point was a famous article by Macquorquodale and Meehl, which distinguished between intervening variables and hypothetical constructs and introduced the concept “surplus meaning” to distinguish them.   Subsequently, I fell under the influence of two “students” of Mary Brenda Hesse who developed a taxonomy very similar to mine, but with slightly different language.  These folks, Pat Derr and Gillian Barker, were “real” philosophers and provided me with a lot of guidance over the years.  Finally, Fox Keller’s book, Model’s and Metaphors helped me with the distinction between the heuristic value of a Model/Metaphor and its faithfulness (however she put that) to what it represents.  She points out that the most faithful model of a process is, of course, the process itself, which, of course, provides no heuristic value what so ever.  The lesson is, if you don’t understand how your model works, you aren’t doing yourself any favors by inventing it.  This led to my war with Epstein in the pages of JSSS about the relation between explanation and prediction.  The Schelling model is a wonderful example of a good metaphor.  It is complicated enough to represent but simple enough to suggest remedies for test.  

Now to the confession.  Eric and I are working on a quite different  (and less interesting) project which we have a deadline on.  We have reached the crabby part.  (My wife always knows when I am really writing something.)  So, I would like to try to do the magic of retaining your interest in amber while we finish this damned thing and picking up the conversation this summer when the damned thing is done.  Perhaps we can send along some of the later chapters of the Darwin as Modeller book to hold you in place while we the the dtd.  

You are quite right to suggest that we think that the validation of Darwinian Theory takes place at a level way above the particulars of any one species.  I suppose that makes us Quinians or Lakatosians, or something.  I hope that doesn’t make us obscurantists. 

Thanks, thanks, again for your diligent reading. 

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 Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 6:10 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] description - explanation - metaphor - model - and reply

Eric and Nick,

Two more references for MacCormac

[MacCormac  76]  MacCormac,  Earl R.,  Metaphor and Myth  in

     Science and Religion,  Durham, N. Car.: Duke University

     Press, 1976.

[MacCormac 83] MacCormac,  Earl R., "Scientific metaphors as

     necessary  conceptual limitations of science,"  in  The

     Limits   of   Lawfulness,    Nicholas   Rescher,   ed.,

     Pitssburgh:  University  of  Pittsburgh Center for  the

     Philosophy of Science.

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020, at 1:07 PM, Prof David West wrote:

Dear Eric and Nick,

That you found value in my comments is pleasing and I thank you for your equally thoughtful response.

I would be very interested in continuing the conversation (perhaps offline from FRIAM?) and seeing your insights into evolutionary theory.

In furtherance of that objective, a couple of comments.

1)  I have a near lifelong interest in metaphors and modeling. Metaphor and model was central to my Ph.D. dissertation - which is when I first encountered MacCormac (MacCormac,Earl R., A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1985).  I have had many pleasant conversations with Nick on this topic at Friam.

2) Many of the comments I made originally will be resolved by understanding each other's interpretations of words and phrases.

3) I have a deeply viscerally negative reaction tot he concept and word of Truth/truth and that antipathy is at the foundation of my "objections" to the explanation-description-explanation stack.

Clearly, some kind of starting point is required; from which a theory can be developed. What seems, to me, to be necessary is an explanation-model-metaphor sufficiently "stable" that the energies of investigation can be focused on intended and unintended consequences with little effect on the "foundation."  (I keep having mental visions of waves eating away at the cliffs and houses sliding into the ocean versus waves crashing against rocks and leaving the structures above intact.)

I think that a means for establishing some kind of "stable" starting point is your actual objective, not some kind of "truthy" foundation.

The metaphor of a 'stable foundation' inspires the idea that stability is relative and proportional to both the structure to be erected on that foundation, and the context in which the foundation must be established.  Long ago when I was an expediter for a housing company, we built the foundation for a two-story home in 3-5 days (most of which was concrete drying and curing). To build a 100 story office tower requires a more elaborate and stable foundation that might take a few months to establish.  Just up the street from my office, they are building a small three story building and have been working on the foundation (cofferdams, pilings, piers, etc.) for nine-months now.

I am increasingly curious about the theory you intend to erect on the metaphor/model you will establish.

4) My ignorance of the details of evolution and Darwin has created the perception that evolutionary explanations are focused on discrete species. The broken-wing behavior of the killdeer evolves/is-selected-for in a kind of "isolation," as a response to pressures on the killdeer alone.

Hence my question about the gullibility of the fox and notions of co-evolution.

Is it possible to develop a theory of evolution at the complex-system (e.g. killdeer, fox, and slected aspects of their shared ecological niche) level? A complex system begins at some kind of equilibrium, is disturbed by change in any of its elements, and seeks a new equilibrium.

Comparison of the relative duration of a given equilibrium state and/or the degree to which it could accommodate discrete disruptions and still "recover" its initial equilibrium (or close approximation in the sense of a strange attractor) and other measures might be used to establish "fitness."

Bottom line, I will enjoy participating in any discussion — hopefully for mutual benefit — but even on a selfish personal learning basis.

davew

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020, at 6:11 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Dear Eric and David,

David’s reading of that work is by far the most perceptive and profound critique I have ever received of our metaphors and models theory, and I a profoundly grateful for it.  I was also profoundly grateful for Eric’s ”defense”.    I hope this correspondence helps eric and I to “unblock” and finish the book.

Thanks, Dave.  Sorry I went silent over the holidays.  I found I could respond impulsively to stuff, but could not possibly have managed such a response as Eric provided. 

Hope now that the light is coming back Amsterdam is perhaps not quite so gloomy. 

All the best,

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 <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Eric Charles

Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2020 8:41 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >

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

  [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

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 7:26 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto: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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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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