Oh, thanks EricC for breathing life into my rhetorical corpse. The whole flavor thing is new to me.
I am working on a response to EricS but i had to put it aside for several days because of worldly matters. It's a great letter and I re-commend it to you all. Nick On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 2:27 PM Eric Charles <[email protected]> wrote: > 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]> > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > 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
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