Dave -
Thanks for weighing in here, my own studies have not been so formal nor
probably as deep. I have to admit to not knowing that cognitive
anthropology was a subject, just as Nick introduced me to evolutionary
psychology as it's own field!
I appreciate your introduction of /epiphor/, /paraphor/ and /dead
metaphor/. I began a discursion here (which I fortunately deleted)
which lead me to read some MacCormac and more to the point Philip
Wheelwright on the modern, technical usage of /epiphor/ and /diaphor/,
from the Greek/Aristotelian /epiphoria/ and /diaphoria. /I particularly
find your coining of /paraphor/, as I think this is as common in our
modern discourse/thinking as "confirmation bias".
I also like your point that the "Scientific Method" is more metaphor
than reality, or more to the point, a narrative device to show how a
discovery "might have been made" when more often than not, it was backed
into while bumping around looking for something entirely different, and
often involving a "flash of insight" before then being laboriously wrung
out and demonstrated using the somewhat more "engineering" oriented
methods of the "Scientific Method" to move from motivated hypothesis to
strongly validated theory.
I don't know if you regularly attend WedTech, but this depth/topic of
discussion might motivate me to make the long trek into town...
- Steve
On 6/10/17 9:36 AM, Prof David West wrote:
long long ago, my master's thesis in computer science and my phd
dissertation in cognitive anthropology dealt extensively with the
issue of metaphor and model, specifically in the area of artificial
intelligence and cognitive models of "mind." the very first academic
papers I published dealt with this issue (They were in AI MAgazine,
the 'journal of record' in the field at the time.
My own musings were deeply informed by the work of Earl R. MacCormac:
/A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor/ and /Metaphor and Myth in Science and
Religion./
MacCormac argues that metaphor 'evolves' from "epiphor" the first
suggestion that something is like something else to either "dead
metaphor" or "lexical term" depending on the extent to which referents
suggested by the first 'something' are confirmed to correlate to
similar referents in the second "something." E.G. an atom is like a
solar system suggests that a nucleus is like the sun and electrons are
like planets plus orbits are at specific intervals and electrons can
be moved from one orbit to another by adding energy (acceleration)
just like any other satellite. As referents like this were confirmed
the epiphor became a productive metaphor and a model, i.e. the Bohr
model. Eventually, our increasing knowledge of atoms and
particle/waves made it clear that the model/metaphor was 'wrong' in
nearly every respect and the metaphor died. Its use in beginning
chemistry suggests that it is still a useful tool for metaphorical
thinking; modified to "what might you infer/reason, if you looked at
an atom _as if_ it were a tiny solar system."
In the case of AI, the joint epiphors — the computer is like a mind,
the mind is like a computer — should have rapidly become dead
metaphors. Instead they became models "physical symbol system" and
most in the community insisted that they were lexical terms (notably
Pylyshyn, Newell, and Simon). To explain this, I added the idea of a
"paraphor" to MacCormac's evolutionary sequence — a metaphor so
ingrained in a paradigm that those thinking with that paradigm cannot
perceive the obvious failures of the metaphor.
MacCormac's second book argues for the pervasiveness of the use and
misuse of metaphor and its relationship to models (mathematical and
iillustrative) in both science and religion. The "Scientific Method,"
the process of doing science, is itself a metaphor (at best) that
should have become a dead metaphor as there is abundant evidence that
'science' is not done 'that way' but only after the fact as if it had
been done that way. In an Ouroborosian twist, even MacCormac;s theory
of metaphor is itself a metaphor.
If this thread attracts interest, I think the work of MacCormac would
provide a rich mine of potential ideas and a framework for the
discussion. Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be behind pay walls —
the books and JSTOR or its ilk.
dave west
On Fri, Jun 9, 2017, at 03:11 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I meant to spawn a fresh proto-thread here, sorry.
Given that we have been splitting hairs on terminology, I wanted to
at least OPEN the topic that has been grazed over and over, and that
is the distinction between Model, Metaphor, and Analogy.
I specifically mean
1. Mathematical Model
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model>
2. Conceptual Metaphor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor>
3. Formal Analogy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy>
I don't know if this narrows it down enough to discuss but I think
these three terms have been bandied about loosely and widely enough
lately to deserve a little more explication?
I could rattle on for pages about my own usage/opinions/distinctions
but trust that would just pollute a thread before it had a chance to
start, if start it can.
A brief Google Search gave me THIS reference which looks promising,
but as usual, I'm not willing to go past a paywall or beg a
colleague/institution for access (I know LANL's reference library
will probably get this for me if I go in there!).
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631221081_chunk_g97806312210818
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