[FRIAM] Where Metaphors (and Elephants and Spatulai) go to die?

[Steve Smith]

Nick -

> I will work backwards. What is the test by which you determine whether 
> your  talc-ing of the lens has improved your vision or whether it has 
> made it worse?  That's not a rhetorical question.  Work it through in 
> your imagination. How exactly do you determine this?  This is the 
> question that lies

I think my metaphor (as they are wont to do) fell short or directed you 
wrongly.  The "talc" was meant to be a  dusted surface layer to scatter 
light rather than refract it so that the lens-grinder can more 
effectively read surface imperfections?

As a laser-scanner or photogrammetric surface capture needs 
backscattered light to actually read the shape of the surface.  I think 
your apprehension of "talc" as an aid in evaluating the quality of the 
lens (metapor or spatula as glen would prefer) fits more into the 
category of viewing a test-pattern through the lens to look for gross 
geometrical, spectral distortions as well as local defects?

>  at the bottom of EricS's complaint about TK.  We would like to think 
> it's not "just" a social test.  This is where Peirce takes off, I 
> think:  yes, it's a social test, but it's not "just" a social test.  
> In fact, the long term social test has methods, it has rigor, it has 
> precision, it has all the good things that collective human cognition 
> can have.
This is a way of saying that Social Scines is in fact a Science (I don't 
disagree even if it's rigor and style are naturally distorted by it's 
context).
>   These are scientific methods and the pursuit of such  methods will 
> lead you to have fewer surprises in your life.  The one  thing it will 
> never have is experience of entities beyond the realm of human 
> experience.  It follows that every sighting of a thing previously not 
> encountered has to be a metaphor.

"facts about the world" vs "relations between ideas".  I would add that 
our wet-noodling of "metaphor" is more broadly "wet noodling" of 
"modeling relations" with a special cat-o-nines with broken glass in the 
knots reserved for the more figurative/colorful/literary styled versions?

    /<aside> is the contrast between wet-noodle-flogging and
    rawhide-cat-o-nine-with-broken-glass useful or just
    distracting?</aside>/

As an(other) aside (footnote, subscript, marginalia) to the whole 
"metaphors/not" neverending-discussion, I think we simply have lost 
whatever hysteresis element might be appropriate to keep us from 
oscillating between (vaguely): "everything is metaphor and don't you 
forget it!" and "metaphors are dumb!" (caricature).

I was deeply moved (first reactionarily, then maybe generatively, and 
finally comfortingedly?) by glen's assertion/question about "whether we 
really communicate at all".   I'm sure i fully fail to understand what 
he meant by that, but nevertheless something like *new understanding" 
emerged in me over hearing that (repeatedly?) and mulling (like spiced 
wine stirred with a spatula?)  a great deal.  ("mulling" might be a 
plumb-dead metaphor as is would be "plumb" itself?)

I'm pleasantly puzzled at the contradictions that all this implies.  
Early on I wanted to use the paradox/contradiction to debunk glen's 
claim, but if anything, trying to do such, it wormed it's way (another 
dead-spatula) into my mind (like RFK Jr's special friend) and now it 
feels excruciatingly more like Godel's Incompleteness than anything.

I see how metaphors *obscure* and *deflect* and *overstate* and perhaps 
that is what makes them so damn good for what they do (all the time)?  
  The source of generativity?  An "absential" perhaps in Deacon's 
vocabulary?

Mumble,

  - Steve

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