[FRIAM] The metaphor in the room

Thu Mar 19 08:32:54 EDT 2026

There’s a situation here that I don’t know how I want to handle, and it made me pause during my rant-answer to Nick in the other post, which was a reply to Kuhn as well.

Where I said I disagree with him (Kuhn, about “puzzle solving”) in some cases [sic], I tried to argue that the output of the revolution was often a set of placeholder terms.  But I wanted to argue (against Nick) that what they are doing as placeholders isn’t the same as what “entanglement” is doing as an evocative moniker.

But what kind of placeholders did I want to argue those things are, if not metaphorical ones in one or another of Glen’s sub-categories.  And here I would endorse DaveW’s list of the lifecycle of the metaphor branch of terms pretty much line by line.

It is handy that in my reply to Frank just below here, I have an example.  I was thinking about another post to make it explicit, because I neglected to do so in the first reply to Frank.

Frank has "if one changes (e.g. spin) then the other one changes.”  It is for that, that I wouldn’t use the formulation.

Yet in my pedantic gloss on the term, I did use the term “measurement”, and didn’t go back and take it out.

So how did I object to Frank?  I wasn’t willing to conflate my use of measurement with Frank’s formula of “if one changes… the other changes”.  Why?

To me, to just conflate “measurement" with “change” suggests recidivism to “collapse of the wave function” (who came up with that: Bohr?  No, AI tells me it was Heisenberg, speaking for “the Copenhagen Interpretation”.)

What do I mean when I say “measurement” then?  Formally, I am using it as a placeholder.  There is a broad set of circumstances that produce the class of behavior for which the expression “quantum measurement” was adopted as a family label (family resemblance, sensu Wittgenstein or Vygotsky).  _I_ think it will turn out to be properly formalized (semantically, as a kind of predicate) by decoherence of various correlations.  But there are plenty of writers for the Stanford Encyclopedia (and others) who think that won’t work, and that there is “something else”, with the decoherence only being a completely adequate mathematical construction that gets at everything we observe, but misses the “measurement” part.  (Does anyone else hear echos of Chalmers in such arguments?)  

I would say there is change, but the only thing I would call change in the math is generated by the time-evolution that we know as unitary evolution of quantum states.  Where there is coupling of the little sub-system (spin system) with a big system (apparatus), that evolution can move observables that are coherent at single values, to sets of observables in branches that are only coherent on various pairs of values (Stern-Gehrlach, with being-to-the-left and spin-up coexists with being-to-the-right and spin-down, etc.).  But in that language, what the only change process (unitary evolution) is doing, is not altering what the spin-state-space occupancy is, but rather “revealing” the correlations that are already in the system, by morphing them into mutually exclusive coherent sub-branches of values, out of a single coherent trunk of earlier values.  

To those who don’t think my preferred decoherence language is enough, or that it isn’t well-defined, they probably do want “measurement” to, in itself, commit some real dynamical “change” of the kind that Frank’s usage suggests, not merely to reveal correlations that were always built into the coupling and the state of the system.

So I want to stay on the fence, using the term “measurement” (which I can’t express many ideas without), but not joining Frank in supposing it is safe to conflate that with the-above-described specific sense of “change”.

What kind of thing is my placeholder, then?  I don’t think it is a metaphor, in any of the sub-senses.  It clearly is a moniker, adopted by some kind of convention to simply label a bunch of situations.  But (unless decoherence is enough and can be shown to be, to everybody who doesn’t die of old age and reject it just out of stubbornness, but not for lack of derivation), “measurement” is nonetheless a label for something that isn’t yet an idea with an adequately developed operational semantics.  If there is no one operational semantics, but perhaps several in a typology, then even using a single label could turn out to be incoherent, and it won’t even survive as a moniker.  (Maybe only as a Zombie Moniker, like “spooky action at a distance”, at story-time by the old tribe members around the evening fire.)  That possibility seems to be on the table too, for now.  So some other branch in DaveW’s lifecycle of terms, with many of the same provisions to be overcome, but I think a different one from the metaphor branch.

I find these things interesting.  Maybe later I will decide I was chasing hallucinations that don’t hold up.

Eric

> On Mar 18, 2026, at 20:39, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ok, guys.  I have been thoroughly BSD'ed.  Metaphorical thought plays no role in science. Bad metaphors have played no role in our current terrible misunderstandings concerning the role of science.  Successive experiences are not understood in terms of previous ones.  No good can come of examining perception as a series of abductive inferences.  I submit to your authority. I am so glad to have been purged of all my sins.  
> 
> Boy, I am glad that's over. 
> 
> Nick 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 6:53 PM Santafe <desmith at santafe.edu <mailto:desmith at santafe.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mar 17, 2026, at 17:36, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Correct me if I'm wrong.  "Entanglement" is a relationship between two electrons such that if one changes (e.g. spin) then the other one changes.
>> 
>> I hear it rendered that way, so I would say you are faithful to how people talk. 
>> 
>> On the other hand, I would never say that, and I never actually liked the term (Entanglement) (will answer Nick maybe in a bit on that, as he provides a good invitation to a rant).
>> 
>> I would say that we know some things about many-electron states, and one of those things is that lots of them are not products of single-electron states.  If you take a many-electron state, and do various projections of it (the particle I will measure in a box over here on the left, or the particle I will measure in a box over here on the right), then there are outcomes for those pairs of projections that one could name in English, but that in fact never occur for projections from actual multi-electron states, because of the configurations that are ever, or are not ever, found in those state spaces.
>> 
>> Probably excessively pedantic.  But like garlic for Vampires, it can be helpful when the metaphor monists come out at night.
>> 
>> Eric
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>> 
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:18 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> Were you to write something like: "... scientists, when they use such rich catachreses as 'entanglement', fail to take responsibility for consequences of such use", I would not object. That word, unlike metaphor, has a fairly concrete meaning, something like "fills lexical gaps in scientific terminology, providing names and concepts where none previously existed".
>>>> 
>>>> Or, were you to write something like: "... scientists, when they use such rich didactic metaphors as 'entanglement', fail to take responsibility for consequences of such use", that would be OK too. The 'didactic' qualifier helps the reader *understand* whatever the hell you might mean.
>>>> 
>>>> I don't actually care that much what the first person who used a word meant by that word. Etymology and usage history are interesting and can sometimes hint at the word's normative meaning. But what matters much much more is what the current author(s) mean when they use the word.
>>>> 
>>>> And, again, if everything's a metaphor, then the word 'metaphor' is useless... like saying everything is a thing. It feels like the Bad kind of "sophistry" to use a phrase like "the metaphor (metaphor)". It not only wastes everyone's time; it also gives me The Ick: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=the%20ick It's difficult to steel man something when that thing grosses you out.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 3/17/26 12:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>>> > Cmon, Glen, where is the Steelman of Yore?
>>>> > 
>>>> > To apply the metaphor (metaphor) to every utterance is no more "corrupt" than to mathematize every proposition.  It becomes corrupt only when it is not pursued honesty.  "Entanglement" is a metaphor.  It directs the mind.  "Natural selection" is a metaphor.  It also directs the mind.
>>>> > 
>>>> > My worry is that scientists, when they use such rich metaphors as entanglement fail to take responsibility for the consequences of such use. Let's assume that the person who first used the metaphor, entanglement, meant something by it.   We can formalize the analysis of metaphors just as we can mathematicize any proposition. And in that formalization, we can sort out the direction, and misdirection in the metaphor.  What did they intend when they used the metaphor entanglement?  What did they NOT intend?  And when the disclaimers have been completed, is there anything left of the metaphor.  If not, then, perhaps,*/scientists should stop using the metaphor/*.  In the same way that we have stopped calling porpoises "fish".
>>>> > 
>>>> > I don't know enough to even speculate what role "entanglement" as a metaphor has played in the development of quantum physics. But I claim to know enough about human behavior to assert that it has played some role, and that physicists run some risks if they altogether disclaim it.
>>>> > 
>>>> > What might we gain, SteelMan, from exploring human thought as movement from metaphor to metaphor, each new experience being understood as a version of some previous one?   My love is like a red,red rose, delicate, delighting, fragrant.  But OH! the thorns.  Did I mean the thorns.  Was there ever a rose that did not have thorns?  Metaphors are like that.
>>>> > 
>>>> > When you say that we metaphorists are liars, what are the experiences of being lied to that you bring to bear.  When we analyze metaphors (I assert), it's always best to be as particular as possible.  Describe to me a particular jarring instance of being lied to.  Now project that experience onto the experience of being metaphored to.  What are the surplus meanings of applying the metaphor;  which of those surplus meanings are disclaimed; once these disclaimers have been noted, does the metaphor retain any heuristic value.
>>>> > 
>>>> > I have to say, I don't like being called a liar.  But -- as the saying goes -- "if the foo shits", I guess I have to wear it.  So, what experience do you imagine when you imagine being lied to?  What aspects of that experience do you intend when you call metaphorists liars? What aspect do you disclaim?  What is the heuristic value of the metaphor, once the disclaimers have been made.
>>>> > 
>>>> > By the way, just as an interpersonal matter, if you call me a sinner, it doesn't help that you immediately call yourself a sinner.   Any contempt you feel for yourself, does nothing to salve the contempt you feel for me.  In fact it makes it worse.  I have to bear the contempt of an admitted /sinner!/
>>>> > 
>>>> > But I love you anyway.  I wouldn't engage you if I didnt.
>>>> > 
>>>> > Nick
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
>>>> ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
>>>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nthompson at clarku.edu <mailto:nthompson at clarku.edu>
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