Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

THIS MAY BE MOOT, BY NOW; GOT STUCK IN MY OUTBOX. Glen, I like the idea of turning these discussions into publications, although I doubt that I have the firepower. Let's just keep that as a thought. Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is for me a serious and important art. It starts, I

[FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

Glen - I always appreciate your corrections. You are naturally the only one who really knows what you meant when you brought it up. I thought I remembered that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to explain your distinction between levels and layers and the utility of the same in

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

BTW I am (mostly) of the opinion (school of thought) that follows Lakoff and Johnson's premises from "Metaphors we Live by" (1980) where most language and thought involves metaphor. I think Lakoff revisits this strongly from another direction with Nunez in "Where Mathematics Comes From/the

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

FWIW In my parlance (I think well informed by formal usage), A /conceptual metaphor/ has a /source/ and a /target/ domain. The /target/ domain is the domain one is trying to understand/explain by comparison to the /source/ domain. The /source/ domain is considered the/image donor/. We use

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

Glen - It is nice to see another person admit to their premature registration! Thanks. I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'. I'll think about "premature" a little more... I brought up an onion as an example of a thing that, when analyzed with levels produces a different result than

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did. I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target. That completely misses my point. An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods. No metaphor involved. This tendency to see

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

And as I tried to imply in my note about "lamina" being a biased term, DLA is a schematic analog, meaning using the term "DLA" unadorned with context, leaves many variables unbound, one of which is whether it's a parallel or serial implementation. On 06/12/2017 08:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote: > So,

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Thanks for asking. Well, I still don't know what y'all mean when you say "metaphor" because the meaning seems to vary. E.g. you say "a metaphor like 'layer'", indicating that 'layer' is the metaphor. Yet you also say things like "onion metaphor", indicating that onions are the metaphor.

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

It is nice to see another person admit to their premature registration! Thanks. I brought up an onion as an example of a thing that, when analyzed with levels produces a different result than when analyzed with layers. You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results than

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Hm. I guess I'll say it at least one more time. I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity. You're using Goebbles on me, aren't you? Here: I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity. I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity. I did NOT offer an onion as a model of

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

Yes, an onion _does_ submit to a partial order if you use polar coordinates. On 06/12/2017 10:52 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > At the risk of being dumb, I would say that when we peal an onion we get > layers; when we slice an onion, we get cross-sections; is there any way we > can get a "level"

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Steve, This is helpful. See below. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Sorry. I didn't mean anything nefarious with the "repeat a lie often enough" thing. I introduced an onion as an example of a thing, in the real world, that you can look at in terms of levels or layers. And looking at it in terms of layers produces something different (and presumably more

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

/*NST -*/ */[NST==>I like “source” and “target”. Let’s use these terms here on out. “Domain” is probably unnecessary, and might lead to hand-waving. I still hate “conceptual metaphor” as introducing potential for confusion. Anytime you say “This thing is a That” you are invoking a

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

Glen, At the risk of being dumb, I would say that when we peal an onion we get layers; when we slice an onion, we get cross-sections; is there any way we can get a "level" out of an onion? N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Nick - To try to offer my own understanding of Glen's position/assertion... I (like you) believe that his mere *invocation* of an onion in this context had a metaphorical quality to it, but his *emphasis* was in investigating the natural delimiters (?EricS term?) of a specific example of an

Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

On 06/12/2017 10:24 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'. I'll think about "premature" a > little more... Cf Brian Cantwell Smith in: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/philosophy-of-mental-representation-9780198250524?cc=us=en; > I think I get your point.

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it? How did it become relevant? A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those. You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one. Is there

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Look, Glen. I may be old. I may be stupid. I may be distracted. I am certainly out of my depth. This discussion, which fascinates me, is happening at a very inopportune time for me, so I am admittedly not able to invest as much attention on it as it deserves and I would like. And the

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Steve, You wrote: I think there is a significant difference between figurative speech inside and outside of scientific thought. Perhaps there could/should be a more rigorous boundary put between the two... the former being more what is colloquially thought of as metaphor and the

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

So, Glen, What you are calling "levels" I am calling "cross sections"? And it is the partial arbitrariness of what one sees in a cross section that makes it less valuable than a layer. Have I got that, so far? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

We are NOT splitting hairs. We are getting clear. See below. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Steve, What do you want to call “levels of inclusion”? What sorts of levels are trophic levels? What is preventing us from agreeing that complexity is just the inclusion of one system within another? I know it takes a way the magic to be so straightforward, but other than you

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

On 06/12/2017 02:03 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > What you are calling "levels" I am calling "cross sections"? Yes, a cross section would be 1 level. > And it is the partial arbitrariness of what one sees in a cross section that > makes it less valuable than a layer. Not quite. What you see

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Right. My only point was to distinguish the two procedures for examining a thing, because one's choice of procedure can bias one's results. (obviously) With EricS' very detailed throwdown in favor of hierarchical accumulation AND Russ' chosen _target_ of urban systems, I think it's critical

Re: [FRIAM] IS:New Math Untangles the Mysterious Nature of Causality | WIRED WAS: Layers, not broilers

My 1988 dissertation included a proposal for a model of cognition: vTAO — virtual Topographic Adaptive Organism — derived in part from Hopfield's 'neural net as water flowing over a landscape' metaphor. My model, in a militantly non-mathematical manner, offered an account for how

Re: [FRIAM] IS:New Math Untangles the Mysterious Nature of Causality | WIRED WAS: Layers, not broilers

And, just in case y'all missed it in all the noise, here's ScottA's response I posted in the Graph/Network discursion: On 06/09/2017 03:14 PM, gepr ⛧ wrote: > > Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t) > http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3294 And in there is an update

Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

At the risk of another discursion: I think I just realized what I've been (almost) seeing of value in all this back and forth: 1. I (and Nick) heard Glen's invocation of the Onion as an attempt to explicate a useful difference between levels and layers in the understanding of Complexity