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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