Ok, Glen, You win. You have stripped from me any capacity or interest in how metaphors mean, the limits of what they do and don't convey. I am in that state. Now, without reference or exploration of any metaphor, please help me understand what you meant by the following passage:
*But if you actually want to *understand* what some other agent is trying to say, you read *through* their text. You use it as a lens. If, every time you picked up your eyeglasses, you only looked *at* the lenses, those glasses would be useless as a tool. Every time you meet a missive focusing on the metaphors used, you are explicitly/purposefully misunderstanding the author. If metaphors are a tool, you're ignoring their tool-ness. You promote the means/tool to an end. [⛧] * It's funny, because before you stripped me of my ability to think about metaphors, I thought I understood you precisely. You want me to take life just as it presents itself. Ok. I can do that, sort of. It's what I do most of the time. As we both know, there is nothing simple about how the world presents itself. There is always a past and a future and the naive present is always an amalgam of the two. We live neither in nor for the moment. But I will hum along. What do I see in this case? Well, first I naively see anger and contempt. I could try to mitigate that experience, by examining the text, but no, I am not permitted to do that in this world of naive perception. What I see, is a man incoherent with ... rage? What I see is a creature lurking in the dark moist crevaces under a bridge shouting, "Who's that treading over my bridge?" Thats what I naively see. But none of that is helpful to me in trying to reap the benefit of your prodigious mind. So I try to NOT take what I see naively to be all that is there to be seen. I say to myself, this is a man who has given me some really great working metaphors. This is a man whose thought is respected widely by people whose thought I respect. Before he stripped my of my analytical powers, I was led to try and squeeze every bit of juice out of the dry- skinned fruit he grumpily proffered. Now, I just see an angry man living in an incoherent world. Please, please Glen give me back my powers of analysis so I can see you as I used to see you. N On Fri, Mare 20, 2026 at 7:28 AM glen <[email protected]> wrote: > Fools have more to say, and more impact, than, for example, nit-picking > grammar nazis. > > Anyway, here is the counterargument, AGAIN! OK. I grant you all 5 of your > points. As a fan of postmodernist approaches, the examination of every > layer of every narrative in the stack *can* be worthwhile and interesting, > especially for academics. I'm glad you are also a postmodernist. > > But if you actually want to *understand* what some other agent is trying > to say, you read *through* their text. You use it as a lens. If, every time > you picked up your eyeglasses, you only looked *at* the lenses, those > glasses would be useless as a tool. Every time you meet a missive focusing > on the metaphors used, you are explicitly/purposefully misunderstanding the > author. If metaphors are a tool, you're ignoring their tool-ness. You > promote the means/tool to an end. [⛧] > > People use their deeply embedded metaphors to communicate. If all you can > do is yap about their metaphors, you are blocking their ability to > communicate and your ability to understand what they mean. > > I'll turn your moral back around on you. You can choose to ignore my > counter argument, yet again. Or you can tell me why it's more important to > look at the lens than through the lens. [⛤] > > > [⛧] A good analogy, here, is that of paraphilia < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia>. You have a fetish. Rather than > a metaphor *enhancing* your ability to see the world, you've fetishized > them. You think the metaphor *is* the world. Like a fetishist, you're > aroused by the tool, not the objective. > > [⛤] I can shunt a counter-counter argument in advance. In a mostly > rhetorical world, if you merely look *through* the metaphor, you're at risk > of being a victim of purposefully designed narratives, intended to exploit > or mislead you. Therefore, a critical thinker must *also* look at the > lenses, not merely through them. But this argument fails because if you > can't even look through the lens in the first place, then you can never > critically analyze how it [mis]directs your gaze. So the *first* and > primary skill is to be able to look *through* metaphors. Looking at them is > a secondary skill. And, like the grammar nazis, a fetish for the form > preemptively excludes an understanding of the function. > > On 3/19/26 1:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > 1. Metaphors are everywhere. We can disclaim them all we like, but they > are deeply embedded in the way in which we proceed from thought to > thought. They lurk in how professionals talk to one another and also in > the manner in which professionals talk to the public. > > 2. There is a lot of evidence these days that scientists have "lost" the > public. This is a very dangerous situation. My suspicion is that this has > to do with the metaphors we use when we talk to the public about what we do. > > 3. We all seem to agree that there is truth and falsehood disguised in > every metaphor. > > 4. Given the ambiguity of metaphors, I am interested in a method for > understanding their role in thought and communication, particularly in > understanding the manner in which truth and falsehood is deployed in them. > How are we to distinguish between a better and a worse metaphor if all > contain elements of falsehood. What am I to take from your metaphor? What > are you to take from mine? > > 5. Given the entanglement of truth and falsehood in metaphor, it's worth > exploring distinctions between what implications a speaker intends by a > metaphor, what the coherence of the metaphor can logically sustain by way > of implication, and what implications hearers take from the metaphor. > -- > ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ > ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα > σώσω. > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson https://substack.com/@monist
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
