There are at least three interesting things going on in the metaphor discussion. The least interesting aspect of it is squabbling over what does or does not count as a metaphor (vice simile, model, analogy, etc.). Not that that isn't a perfectly good discussion, it just that it's *just* a vocabulary discussion, not an ideas discussion.
1) What is an explicit metaphor, and to what extent do the constant implicit metaphors that permeate our language resemble them? Nick has a particular way of thinking about metaphors, based on the intent of the person invoking the metaphor. Metaphors always assert that two things are alike, not that they are identical, so that implies that all metaphors are imperfect, and that that is intentional, and does not invalidate a metaphor. Metaphors can thus be divided into intended implications and not-intended implication, etc., etc. .... and Nick is fairly obsessed with these, especially in scientific contexts where people seem to be using the metaphors in different ways and that leads to a deep underlying confusion in a seemingly functional field, e.g., Darwinian evolution by means of "natural" selection.... and then sometimes you're in a conversation and someone says "My ex-wife was a real fascist, you know?!?" And presumably we can play the same game there, because we can presume their wife was not in a position to alter the government of a country such that the state owns the corporations and mobilizes the masses via a political religion. Presumably, the "fascist" metaphor in that case can be analyzed just like the explicit ones in Nick's scientific contexts. Of course, sometimes that is an incredibly useful exercise, and other times it is exactly Glen's problem of looking at the lenses of your glasses instead of through them. For example, were you in the bar when the prior announcement was made, the correct response is to say something like, "Yeah man, she was a real bitch," and then take a drink. 2) What are thoughts made of? Peirce would say that all thought is in the form of signs. And I have been trying to convince Nick for well over a decade now that his thinking about "metaphors" should map to Peirce's thinking about "signs." So, one might reasonably argue that all thoughts were in the form of metaphors, as Nick understands them: All thoughts involve things standing in for each other, to a particular mind, imperfectly. I don't know if that conversation goes anywhere, because all-x-are-y conversations often don't seem to. You also run the risk of being stuck in some sort of "no true scotsman" scenario, where anything not involving signs is definitionally declared not to be thought, and vice versa, rather than having two actually separate terms being related to each other. 3) Probably of most interest to this list, based on the past threads: When can we treat flavor text as *just* flavor text, and ignore all implications of its presumptive meaning? As a refresher: "Flavor text" is a term most commonly used in gaming, to refer to everything that is not a pure game mechanic. For example, if I have you roll a six sided die, and when you role a 2 or lower, I have you subtract 1 from a number on your character sheet, that is straightforward mechanics. However, if I say that your attempt to block the goblin's arrow failed, and that you were hit in the leg, taking damage, that is "flavor text." Similarly, in The Game Of Life, you might land on a square where you need to roll greater than 3 to move, the flavor text is that you are at Graduation, and if you roll a 1 or a 2, you fail to graduate and must remain in school. Also, additional pegs in your car have effects that may remove additional papers from the pile in front of you, with the flavor text that having more kids costs more money. Nick does not believe that, for most people, you can take a rich, flavorful description, and then pretend it is *just* mechanics. I tend to agree with him on this. Though particular individuals might be able to push through to that point, most can't, and even most who can't, won't. My bias comes from people like B.F. Skinner: Skinner criticized "hypothetical constructs" in psychology along exactly these lines. He asserted that there was nothing wrong with having hypothetical constructs in a scientific system, except that by the next generation of students --- especially in the social sciences --- everyone seems to have forgotten they are hypothetical! For example, cognitive scientists in the mid-1970s, coined the term "central executive" to refer to processes that had not been studied out into a "modular" fashion yet. The people who originated the term intended it explicitly as a placeholder bucket, and believed that one day that bucket would be emptied. By the early-1990s, however, you could find researchers across the country who claimed to be studying "The Central Executive". So can, for example, if we claim that "entropy" is *just* the dissipated heat [image: image.png], can we really thereby disown any other implication of the term? Can we really be dismissive of any student or layperson who wants to work the metaphor of disorder or uncertainty beyond that? And what do we do when we find out that someone else in our circle is absolutely convinced that entropy is *really* S, such that [image: image.png]? And God forbid either of them meet an information theorist who is only willing to talk about entropy as H, such that [image: image.png]. On the one hand, we obviously *can* ditch the vocabulary entirely, and just focus on the mechanism. We can never use the word "entropy" again, and just say "I'm interested in studying X, such that.... " and list our prefered equation. On the other hand, people come to the field and become engaged in the study because of the flavor text, and the populace supports grant funding to the area because of the flavor text, etc., etc. Anyone sensible appearing before Congress to support NSF initiatives shows up with flavor text and flavor text alone. "I study entropy, but by that I don't mean anything you might reasonably think the word means" sounds pretty weird. I suspect that much of the frustration of Nick v others on this list is the instance of those others that any implications of the flavor text can be ignored once the mechanism has been mathematized, vs Nick's instance that if the flavor text is still being used it is almost certainly doing some metaphor-like work in the background of whoever is using, or hearing, the term (because otherwise, why not ditch it entirely). (P.S. As a final note: If #2 is correct, then you can never really mathematize yourself out of the flavor-text problem, you can only make the metaphors more and more obscure.... but that is a conversation no one *should *want to have... because it is a terrible conversation.) Best, Eric <[email protected]>
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