date:20170612


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 linking to Hoel's response to Scott's response ... 
and so on ... and so on. 8^)


On 06/11/2017 10:43 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I just read through the article and was equally intrigued and disappointed... 
> intrigued by some of the ideas presented and disappointed by the (mostly) 
> superficial treatment in the article... of course, it is at the right level 
> for the audience I think, so no harm, no foul...  I just need to take the 
> time/focus to go dig out the references to the source material not provided 
> and start with THAT.  I'll be curious to hear if anyone else digs any deeper.
> 
> The whiteboard behind Hoel reminds me a lot too much of the whiteboards the 
> UNM team I worked with in 2012-13 on "Faceted Ontologies" rooted in Category 
> Theory (Caudell, Luger, Taha, et al).  I took photos of those white boards... 
> somewhere deep in my archives.
> 
> FWIW, It also reminds me very vaguely/obliquely of Quantum Coherence in Water 
> and the work of many including Dr. Mae Won Ho, who Guerin turned me onto.
> 
> http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Quantum_Coherent_Water_Life.php
> 
> 
> On 6/11/17 7:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> https://www.wired.com/story/new-math-untangles-the-mysterious-nature-of-causality-consciousness/
>>
>> I think you all will like this.  I actually think I disapprove, but it’s 
>> late and I cannot remember why.

-- 
☣ glen


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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 
love of mystery, what is wrong with that definition? 

 

Nick 

 

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 3:46 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 Babble (Talk/Science/Math/???).  I think he meant only to try to 
distinguish the two from one another and explicate their differences 
irrespective of the near dead horse we were working over at the time.  I think 
this might be the totality of the misunderstanding.
2.  I'm always looking for form/function dualities.  In the onion, the form 
(layers) follows a certain functional/behavioural path (cyclical growth).   I 
don't even know how to find "levels" in the a *hierarchical* sense or otherwise 
in an onion... maybe if we look at the cross section (as Glen suggested) and 
see *strata* (from the source (domain) of geological deposition and erosive or 
shearing exposure?) and then consider drilling a mine shaft into said strata 
which is more suggestive of the term "levels"?   

Mumble,

 - Steve

 

On 6/12/17 1:28 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

 
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 "natural") than looking at it 
in terms of levels.
 
 
 
On 06/12/2017 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

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 discussion is 
going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   But I am NOT 
ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good LORD!   Try, 
whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to assume that I am 
basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in getting somewhere. 
 AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get anywhere, 
everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to change. 
 
 
 
OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion 
was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think the 
slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section plays an 
important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes anybody's 
consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that person's 
behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to which I 
respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says something about 
BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section differs not only 
from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced. 
 
 
 
Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which 
invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect it 
will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that 
includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a 
definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on my 
account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, each 
wrapped around another.  

 

 


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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 inside a cross section isn't as important as the fact 
that a cross section is _different_ from a hemispherical peeling.  But the 
important thing ... the MOST important thing is that a level is just a specific 
type of layer, whereas there are plenty of layers that are not levels.  I.e. 
layer is more generically applicable than level.

-- 
☣ glen

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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 [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 3:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 conception – a “grasping-together”.   
<==nst] 

I wish I could stop splitting hairs with you, but it seems built into this 
discussion (another metaphor, really?)!  I understand "domain" to modify 
"source" and "target" to make it clear that what is being 
discussed/considered/reasoned/intuited upon may be bigger than a single 
"thing".  Perhaps the over-used onion needn't be referred to as more than a 
source (or target) but if I were invoking a garden or landscape  *source* it is 
important that I'm talking about the whole ensemble of likely/possible gardens 
or landscapes. 

[NST==>No, I am going to hang tough on this one. The work you are describing is 
exactly the work necessary to unpack a metaphor and it cannot be done by 
handwaving to a domain.  Notice below that you did not abstract the Vidalia, 
you just chose another onion.  The same is true of science as it is in poetry – 
the best metaphors are specific metaphors.  <==nst] 

 With onions, it seems easier to imagine a singular canonical onion (unless 
your field of study is the inner life of Alliums).   in fact when the humble 
Onion was first invoked, I immediately abstracted (in my mind) to "bulb" with a 
nice big fat juicy vidalia onion as the prototype of the moment for my 
consideration, but including a wide range of bulbs, some more edible than 
others.   We could certainly use "source" and "target" as shorthand if we 
accept that the object of each is something more general/abstract than a 
specific object.[NST==>No way Jose!  I think this domain talk will lead to 
blather.<==nst]  

If I read your gripe with "conceptual metaphor" correctly, it is that 
"conception" already suggests ("grasping together") the metaphor?   I use 
"conceptual metaphor" to specifically imply that the "target" (domain) is in a 
more conceptual/abstract realm than literal/concrete.   the "source" (domain) 
may also be relatively abstract but I think for utility is in some sense 
"closer to literal, or concrete" than the target.   From Lakoff/Nunez, 
ultimately these layered/stacked metaphors ground out in human perceptions... 
things we apprehend directly with our senses...   

[NST==> Precisely what I am objecting to.  A metaphor brings one experience to 
bear upon another.  Abstrctions, whatever they are, are not experiences. 
<==nst] 



"The price of nonsense in America has risen in 2017" - Rising is from the 
conceptual domain of directionality which has affiliation with the domain of 
simple geometry, and perhaps is apprehended more directly perceptually by a 
human by our inner ear and other measures of the gravity gradient.   I don't 
know if YOU feel an empty spot in your gut when "the bottom of the stock market 
drops out", or a sense of "elation" when the local housing bubble "elevates the 
value of your family home" or not, I think many do.

[NST==>In Britain, when they hang you, they put you in a little room, they put 
a noose around your neck, and then the bottom drops out.  That’s my source for 
a stock market crash.  <==nst] 





In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the source domain in a 
metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of 
layer.  Other source domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as 
well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

[NST==>See how you suddenly got wobbly when you started using the word 
“domain”?  “Domain” is another metaphor and would require its own 
specification.  <==nst] 

"Domain" is almost certainly a "borrow word" from another  domain, that 
perhaps of political/economic/military control/influence.  But then so seems 
"source" (as in a spring is the source of a creek) and "target" (keep your eye 
on the target and your aim steady!).I think that very little of our 
language is not metaphorical, even if our awareness of it as such is numbed by 
common usage.   "numbed", "usage", "awareness" (perceptual v. conceptual?)



I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole 

[NST==>Another metaphor, often used in such discussions (eg Owen’s “Troll” 
troll. ) to disparage attempts to clarify what a group of people is actually 
talking about.  <==nst] 

Being one of those who

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 University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 3:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 "natural") than looking at it 
in terms of levels.

On 06/12/2017 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> 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 
> discussion is going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   
> But I am NOT ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good 
> LORD!   Try, whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to 
> assume that I am basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in 
> getting somewhere.  AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get 
> anywhere, everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to 
> change. 
> 
>  
> 
> OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion 
> was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think 
> the slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section 
> plays an important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes 
> anybody's consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that 
> person's behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to 
> which I respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says 
> something about BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section 
> differs not only from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced. 
> 
>  
> 
> Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which 
> invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect 
> it will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that 
> includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a 
> definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on 
> my account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, 
> each wrapped around another.  

--
☣ glen

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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 that we choose 
analysis procedures that are as agnostic as possible.

We've now discussed cognitive biases toward _direction_ (up vs. down) and 
continuity (or population density - laminar flow - AND space vs. graph) ... 
even if it has taken us days and billions of emails.  Are there other biases we 
could eliminate?  I like, but reject, Roger's assertion that "[deep neural 
nets] don't care about no stinking layers".  As with using polar coordinates on 
an onion (or monotonic "time" in Diffusion Limited Aggregation), deep learning 
requires at least a sequencing of (distinct) procedures.  So, it does require 
layers in very much the same sense as a DLA.  On the other hand, I like 
considering deep learning as a thing to be analyzed, because it does allow 
cycles of a kind.

And again, I'm not proposing any of these _things_ are analogs/metaphors 
targeting "complex systems".  I'm only trying to argue for agnostic analysis 
tools.

TANSTAAFL!

On 06/12/2017 12:45 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> 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 Babble (Talk/Science/Math/???).  I think
>he meant only to try to distinguish the two from one another and
>explicate their differences irrespective of the near dead horse we
>were working over at the time.  I think this might be the totality
>of the misunderstanding.
> 2. I'm always looking for form/function dualities.  In the onion, the
>form (layers) follows a certain functional/behavioural path
>(cyclical growth).   I don't even know how to find "levels" in the a
>*hierarchical* sense or otherwise in an onion... maybe if we look at
>the cross section (as Glen suggested) and see *strata* (from the
>source (domain) of geological deposition and erosive or shearing
>exposure?) and then consider drilling a mine shaft into said strata
>which is more suggestive of the term "levels"?

-- 
☣ glen

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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 Babble (Talk/Science/Math/???).  I think
   he meant only to try to distinguish the two from one another and
   explicate their differences irrespective of the near dead horse we
   were working over at the time.  I think this might be the totality
   of the misunderstanding.
2. I'm always looking for form/function dualities.  In the onion, the
   form (layers) follows a certain functional/behavioural path
   (cyclical growth).   I don't even know how to find "levels" in the a
   *hierarchical* sense or otherwise in an onion... maybe if we look at
   the cross section (as Glen suggested) and see *strata* (from the
   source (domain) of geological deposition and erosive or shearing
   exposure?) and then consider drilling a mine shaft into said strata
   which is more suggestive of the term "levels"?

Mumble,

 - Steve


On 6/12/17 1:28 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

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 "natural") than looking at it in terms of levels.



On 06/12/2017 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

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 discussion is 
going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   But I am NOT 
ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good LORD!   Try, 
whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to assume that I am 
basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in getting somewhere. 
 AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get anywhere, 
everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to change.

  


OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion 
was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think the 
slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section plays an 
important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes anybody's 
consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that person's 
behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to which I 
respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says something about 
BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section differs not only 
from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced.

  


Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which 
invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect it will be 
almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that includes hierarchical 
levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a definition of a complex system as 
a system made up of other systems.  So, on my account, an onion IS a complex system 
because it is a system of plants, each wrapped around another.



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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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 conception – a “grasping-together”.   <==nst] /*


I wish I could stop splitting hairs with you, but it seems /built into/ 
this discussion (another metaphor, really?)!  I understand "domain" to 
modify "source" and "target" to make it clear that what is being 
discussed/considered/reasoned/intuited upon may be bigger than a single 
"thing".  Perhaps the over-used onion needn't be referred to as more 
than a source (or target) but if I were invoking a garden or landscape  
*source* it is important that I'm talking about the whole ensemble of 
likely/possible gardens or landscapes.  With onions, it seems easier to 
imagine a singular canonical onion (unless your field of study is the 
inner life of Alliums).   in fact when the humble Onion was first 
invoked, I immediately abstracted (in my mind) to "bulb" with a nice big 
fat juicy vidalia onion as the prototype of the moment for my 
consideration, but including a wide range of bulbs, some more edible 
than others.   We could certainly use "source" and "target" as shorthand 
if we accept that the object of each is something more general/abstract 
than a specific object.


If I read your gripe with "conceptual metaphor" correctly, it is that 
"conception" already suggests ("grasping together") the metaphor?   I 
use "conceptual metaphor" to specifically imply that the "target" 
(domain) is in a more conceptual/abstract realm than literal/concrete.   
the "source" (domain) may also be relatively abstract but I think for 
utility is in some sense "closer to literal, or concrete" than the 
target.   From Lakoff/Nunez, ultimately these layered/stacked metaphors 
ground out in human perceptions... things we apprehend directly with our 
senses...


"The price of nonsense in America has /risen/ in 2017" - /Rising/ is 
from the conceptual domain of /directionality /which has affiliation 
with the domain of simple geometry, and perhaps is apprehended more 
directly perceptually by a human by our inner ear and other measures of 
the gravity gradient.   I don't know if YOU feel an empty spot in your 
gut when "the bottom of the stock market drops out", or a sense of 
"elation" when the local housing bubble "elevates the value of your 
family home" or not, I think many do.


In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ 
domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and 
abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition 
layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual 
parallax on this.


*/[NST==>See how you suddenly got wobbly when you started using the 
word “domain”?  “Domain” is another metaphor and would require its own 
specification.  <==nst] /*


"Domain" is almost certainly a "borrow word" from another  domain, 
that perhaps of political/economic/military control/influence.  But then 
so seems "source" (as in a spring is the source of a creek) and "target" 
(keep your eye on the target and your aim steady!).I think that very 
little of our language is not metaphorical, even if our awareness of it 
as such is numbed by common usage.   "numbed", "usage", "awareness" 
(perceptual v. conceptual?)


I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole

*/[NST==>Another metaphor, often used in such discussions (eg Owen’s 
“Troll” troll. ) to disparage attempts to clarify what a group of 
people is actually talking about.  <==nst] /*


Being one of those who is /chasing this rabbit,/ I'm not sure I am 
intending to disparage anything... more likely give us /an out/ if we 
realize we are discussing something of lesser interest/relevance and 
/losing sight/ of the topic we were originally more interested in?   As 
you can tell I am /game for/ (overly so?) discussing the meaning and 
implications of the language we use, I'm just wondering if this is the 
branch of the /branching/ discussion we are most interested in?


*//*

we fell down when we began to try to sort levels from layers.  I think 
the distinction is critical to the discussion (which is now nearly 
lost in this forest of trees of levels and layers?) but is not the 
discussion itself.   We digress within our digressions.


Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person 
"salon" of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the 
general topic of Models, Metaphors, and Analogy. Jenny and I have 
elected Dave to try to lead this, Jenny is providing chairs and 
shade.   I'm pulsing the locals for interest in participating... I'm 
only sorry Nick and Roger and Glen are so far away right now.   Got 
any (other) locals interested in chatting face to face on these 
topics? Wimberly?  Guerin?


*/[NST==>Oh, Gosh!  That I should miss this.

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 "natural") than looking at it 
in terms of levels.



On 06/12/2017 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> 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 
> discussion is going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   
> But I am NOT ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good 
> LORD!   Try, whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to 
> assume that I am basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in 
> getting somewhere.  AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get 
> anywhere, everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to 
> change. 
> 
>  
> 
> OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion 
> was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think 
> the slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section 
> plays an important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes 
> anybody's consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that 
> person's behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to 
> which I respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says 
> something about BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section 
> differs not only from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced. 
> 
>  
> 
> Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which 
> invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect 
> it will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that 
> includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a 
> definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on 
> my account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, 
> each wrapped around another.  

-- 
☣ glen


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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 latter being more what is 
thought of as "formal analogy".

Isn’t this the very boundary we are exploring?   I would assert that, to the 
extent that we fail to explore it, we drain the life blood of science and 
deprive poetry of its precision. 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 2:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 object which might be 
analyzed in terms of "layer" or "level" where he claimed (and asked us to 
acknowledge?) that there is a 

distinct difference and the former is much more apt than the latter.   

Of course, I could be wrong (again) and Glen may well make that point if it is 
important!

Your analysis of metaphor more in figurative, romantic speech/poesy

(Love/Rose) is good and parallels what Glen was maundering most recently 
(again, GEPR correct me if I misapprehended!) regarding the responsibility of 
the speaker and the listener.  As a poet and lover of poetry and poems and 
poesy and ring around the rosy myself,  I think it is good and important that 
in those modes, that there be multiple entendres galore (and what is the French 
for multiple apprehensions to 

complement entendres?).   The good and juicy stuff lies in the various 

(mis)interpretations of the original intent, up to and including subconscious 
intents not acknowledged by the figurative writer.

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 latter being more what is 
thought of as "formal analogy".

I based most of my career on helping literal thinkers access their intuitions 
through the use of complex metaphors.  I think that was 

important.   I also saw metaphors used very effectively for 

communicating complex scientific ideas to a lay audience.

Glen is unfortunately accurate (in my experience) that it is also easy 

to use metaphor to obscure and/or muddle discussions.   I think there 

was some of that afoot with our attempts to get at "what is complexity" 

(the root of this branching labyrinth of topics?) but I also believe that Glen 
(and many others in this group) may be a bit allergic to the abuses of 
metaphorical language.

You can beat a dead metaphor, but you can't lead it to water.

- Steve

On 6/12/17 11:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> 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 
> some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from 
> complexity to onions?

> 

> I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  
> How about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our 
> understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a 
> metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker 
> understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.

> 

> One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has 
> been over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor 
> ARE.  "My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, 
> ephemeral, sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to 
> say which of these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that 
> metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the question is an 
> important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to 
> disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is 
> s/he entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker 
> has specified which entailments are essential to his understanding of his 
> metaphor, he is stuck with them.

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 discussion is 
going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   But I am NOT 
ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good LORD!   Try, 
whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to assume that I am 
basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in getting somewhere. 
 AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get anywhere, 
everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to change. 

OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion 
was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think the 
slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section plays an 
important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes anybody's 
consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that person's 
behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to which I 
respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says something about 
BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section differs not only 
from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced. 

Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which 
invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect it 
will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that 
includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a 
definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on my 
account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, each 
wrapped around another.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 1:55 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 complexity.

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

8^)

On 06/12/2017 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> 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 
> some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from 
> complexity to onions?

--

☣ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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 12:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 the familiar source to help us 
reason about the more abstract or unfamiliar target.

[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 conception – a “grasping-together”.   
<==nst] 

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the source domain in a 
metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of 
layer.  Other source domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as 
well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

[NST==>See how you suddenly got wobbly when you started using the word 
“domain”?  “Domain” is another metaphor and would require its own 
specification.  <==nst] 

I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole 

[NST==>Another metaphor, often used in such discussions (eg Owen’s “Troll” 
troll. ) to disparage attempts to clarify what a group of people is actually 
talking about.  <==nst] 

we fell down when we began to try to sort levels from layers.  I think the 
distinction is critical to the discussion (which is now nearly lost in this 
forest of trees of levels and layers?) but is not the discussion itself.   We 
digress within our digressions.

Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person "salon" 
of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the general topic of 
Models, Metaphors, and Analogy.Jenny and I have elected Dave to try to lead 
this, Jenny is providing chairs and shade.   I'm pulsing the locals for 
interest in participating... I'm only sorry Nick and Roger and Glen are so far 
away right now.   Got any (other) locals interested in chatting face to face on 
these topics?   Wimberly?  Guerin?  

[NST==>Oh, Gosh!  That I should miss this.  I would hope that at some point you 
would have a look my article 

  on the confusions arising from the application of the natural selection 
metaphor to groups.  It’s a testy, difficult argument, with an unexpected and 
interesting result.  I wouldn’t expect anybody to load it entirely, but I do 
think it’s a good example of how tidying up metaphors can lead to a better 
understanding of issues.  Given that so many potentially absent people are 
interested, I would recommend organizing the conversation around a list.  If 
you haven’t done this by the time I get back in October, I could promise to 
organize a “seminar” of the “city university of santa Fe” on “scientific 
metaphors: their uses; their perils”.  We would meet regularly for a couple of 
hours.  There would be readings.   <==nst] 

 I'm feeling the same juice as some our impromptu meetups BEFORE FriAM became a 
formal deal!   We could sure use Mike Agar about now![NST==>Of course Steve and 
Frank. They might or might not, be interested. As you know, one man’s passion 
is another man’s bullshit.Jon Zingale, for sure.  Jenny’s partner would 
contribute a lot from his understanding of Peirce’s abduction, which is closely 
but ambiguously related to metaphor making. Jim Gattiker is a great seminar 
participant … mind like a steel trap … but don’t know whether this would 
interest him.  Sean Mood is another great seminar participant.   <==nst] 

Do any of you old men (or women) of this august body have a copy of 
Wheelwright's 1962 "Metaphor and Reality" you are ready to give up?  I'm 
missing my copy... not sure where it got off to!  Did I maybe miss finding one 
in your stash when you left SFe, REC?

- Steve

On 6/12/17 9:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:

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.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I 
don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze 
using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers 
(more flexible organization).  So, the concept 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" out of an onion?  

-- 
☣ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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 object which might be analyzed in terms of "layer" or 
"level" where he claimed (and asked us to acknowledge?) that there is a 
distinct difference and the former is much more apt than the latter.   
Of course, I could be wrong (again) and Glen may well make that point if 
it is important!


Your analysis of metaphor more in figurative, romantic speech/poesy 
(Love/Rose) is good and parallels what Glen was maundering most recently 
(again, GEPR correct me if I misapprehended!) regarding the 
responsibility of the speaker and the listener.  As a poet and lover of 
poetry and poems and poesy and ring around the rosy myself,  I think it 
is good and important that in those modes, that there be multiple 
entendres galore (and what is the French for multiple apprehensions to 
complement entendres?).   The good and juicy stuff lies in the various 
(mis)interpretations of the original intent, up to and including 
subconscious intents not acknowledged by the figurative writer.


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 latter being more 
what is thought of as "formal analogy".


I based most of my career on helping literal thinkers access their 
intuitions through the use of complex metaphors.  I think that was 
important.   I also saw metaphors used very effectively for 
communicating complex scientific ideas to a lay audience.


Glen is unfortunately accurate (in my experience) that it is also easy 
to use metaphor to obscure and/or muddle discussions.   I think there 
was some of that afoot with our attempts to get at "what is complexity" 
(the root of this branching labyrinth of topics?) but I also believe 
that Glen (and many others in this group) may be a bit allergic to the 
abuses of metaphorical language.


You can beat a dead metaphor, but you can't lead it to water.

- Steve


On 6/12/17 11:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

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 some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from 
complexity to onions?

I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How 
about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our 
understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a 
metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker 
understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.

One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been over the 
question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  "My love is 
like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, sweet smelling, 
gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of these entailments applies.  
For those of us who think that metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the 
question is an important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to 
disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he 
entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which 
entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck with them.  A 
proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 metaphors everywhere is a 
strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)


On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a 
metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  
Other /source/ domains

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 complexity.
I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

8^)

On 06/12/2017 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> 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 
> some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from 
> complexity to onions?

-- 
☣ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 1:25 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 when analyzed with layers.
I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of my
professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all the
steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of
abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my 
apprehension anyway).They eventually quit giving me F's for that 
antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not HAVING
to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the blanks
conceptually if one tried.
> You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results 
> than prying off its layers one by one.  Rigth?j
and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction of
levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next or the
many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers (each one
coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer and/or the
remaining (sub) whole?

And in the immortal words of someone else here years ago "but will it
blend?" :
  http://www.willitblend.com/

Odd that some use "ideasthesia" and "conceptual blending" in similar 
ways to "conceptual metaphor". So "blending" itself is a 
metaphor...   recursion up the moibeus ourobourousian tailpipe?  Or is 
it down the rabbit hole?  Or is that more a literary allusion than a 
metaphor?   Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall!  Thank you Grace 
Slick!  I'm waiting for "Jefferson Wormhole" to form and transport us to
another universe.  Metaphorically speaking of course!

- Sneeze
>
> On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> 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 the
discussion of Complexity Science.
>>
>> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush
small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender
for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we
would have been talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a
metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion
into or near the embryological implications of how onions form their layers?

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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 some OTHER  "process 
of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?

I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How 
about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our 
understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a 
metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker 
understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.  

One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been 
over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  
"My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, 
sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of 
these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that metaphor-making is 
at the core of scientific thought, the question is an important one.   We all 
of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to disclaim some of the 
implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he entitled to 
cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which 
entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck 
with them.  A proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: 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 metaphors everywhere is a 
strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)

On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a 
> metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of 
> /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were 
> offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

--
☣ glen

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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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.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of my 
> professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all the 
> steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of abstraction 
> (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my apprehension anyway).
> They eventually quit giving me F's for that antisocialism and began to give 
> me A's for the implied skill in not HAVING to be so explicit when there was 
> plenty of room to fill in the blanks conceptually if one tried.

Yes, and I accept all the fault.  My academic friends are always on me about my 
non sequiturs.  Even one old boss of mine (forcefully) suggested it is the 
speaker's responsibility to speak so that the listener can understand.  I did 
and do think that's bvllsh!t.  It is the listener's responsibility to make some 
effort to listen with empathy, rather than _leap_ to whatever conclusion is 
most convenient for them.  But, hey, I got poor grades and still struggle to 
make a living.  So what do I know?

> and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction of 
> levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next or the 
> many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers (each one 
> coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer and/or the 
> remaining (sub) whole?

If we first admit there's a difference in the result, then we can move on to 
whether there is an analysis method that is more _natural_ to the object being 
analyzed.  EricS, in particular, used the phrase

 DES> there is a natural sense of a system’s own delimitation

An onion is an example where layer is a more natural procedure of separation 
than level.  And if we can ever get around to agreement on that point, then we 
can move on to analogies between things that are more natural to layer than 
level.

On 06/12/2017 10:10 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:> BTW
> Can you (Glen) state your position on the utility or place of metaphor in 
> your world-view?  We might (once again) be bashing around in different wings 
> of  Borges' "Library of Babel" ( 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel )

I was very put off by the reliance on "metaphors everywhere" in both Philosophy 
in the Flesh and Where Mathematics Comes From.  I think it leads to exactly the 
type of muddled thinking we've seen in this thread.

That said, being a simulant, I rely fundamentally on the spectrum of weak ⇔ 
strong analogy (both quant. and qual.).  So, I'm down with any power metaphors 
might bring us.  But as with everything, I'm a skeptic.

-- 
☣ glen

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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 when analyzed with layers.
I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of 
my professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all 
the steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of 
abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my 
apprehension anyway).They eventually quit giving me F's for that 
antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not 
HAVING to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the 
blanks conceptually if one tried.

You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results than prying 
off its layers one by one.  Rigth?j
and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction 
of levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next 
or the many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers 
(each one coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer 
and/or the remaining (sub) whole?


And in the immortal words of someone else here years ago "but will it 
blend?" :

 http://www.willitblend.com/

Odd that some use "ideasthesia" and "conceptual blending" in similar 
ways to "conceptual metaphor". So "blending" itself is a 
metaphor...   recursion up the moibeus ourobourousian tailpipe?  Or is 
it down the rabbit hole?  Or is that more a literary allusion than a 
metaphor?   Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall!  Thank you Grace 
Slick!  I'm waiting for "Jefferson Wormhole" to form and transport us to 
another universe.  Metaphorically speaking of course!


- Sneeze


On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

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 the discussion of 
Complexity Science.

I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush small 
ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender for various 
culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we would have been 
talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a metaphor.   Why were 
we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion into or near the 
embryological implications of how onions form their layers?




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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 Embodiment of Mind".


Previous to and outside of this school of thought, many/most seem think 
of metaphor as no more than a flowery linguistic construct mostly 
reserved for poetry and other imagistic writing?


Can you (Glen) state your position on the utility or place of metaphor 
in your world-view?  We might (once again) be bashing around in 
different wings of  Borges' "Library of Babel" ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel )


- Sieve


On 6/12/17 11:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

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 the discussion of Complexity Science.


I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush 
small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a 
blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't 
think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the 
source domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I 
remember a discursion into or near the embryological implications of 
how onions form their layers?


- Steve



On 6/12/17 10:45 AM, glen ☣ wrote:
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 metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're 
inflicted with. 8^)



On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ 
domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and 
abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains 
(deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer 
conceptual parallax on this.




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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 prying 
off its layers one by one.  Rigth?

On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> 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 the discussion of 
> Complexity Science.
> 
> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush small 
> ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender for 
> various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we would 
> have been talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a metaphor.  
>  Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion into or near 
> the embryological implications of how onions form their layers?

-- 
☣ glen

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[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 the discussion of Complexity Science.


I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush 
small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a 
blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't 
think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the source 
domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember 
a discursion into or near the embryological implications of how onions 
form their layers?


- Steve



On 6/12/17 10:45 AM, glen ☣ wrote:

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 metaphors everywhere is a 
strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)


On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a 
metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  
Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer 
conceptual parallax on this.




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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 metaphors everywhere is a 
strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)

On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a 
> metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of 
> /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were 
> offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

-- 
☣ glen

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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 the familiar /source/ to help us reason about the more abstract or
unfamiliar /target/.

In the example at hand, Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain
in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target
domain of /layer/. Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin,
geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole we fell down when we began to try
to sort levels from layers. I think the distinction is critical to the
discussion (which is now nearly lost in this forest of trees of levels
and layers?) but is not the discussion itself. We digress within our
digressions.

Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person
"salon" of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the general
topic of Models, Metaphors, and Analogy.Jenny and I have elected
Dave to try to lead this, Jenny is providing chairs and shade. I'm
pulsing the locals for interest in participating... I'm only sorry Nick
and Roger and Glen are so far away right now. Got any (other) locals
interested in chatting face to face on these topics? Wimberly?
Guerin? I'm feeling the same juice as some our impromptu meetups
BEFORE FriAM became a formal deal! We could sure use Mike Agar about now!

Do any of you old men (or women) of this august body have a copy of
Wheelwright's 1962 "Metaphor and Reality" you are ready to give up? I'm
missing my copy... not sure where it got off to! Did I maybe miss
finding one in your stash when you left SFe, REC?

- Steve

On 6/12/17 9:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:

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. But, as I tried to say
earlier, I don't regard onions as a metaphor. They are simply a thing we can analyze using _either_ the
concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers (more flexible organization). So, the concept
of metaphors isn't useful to me, there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or onions) and the
analogy between them. So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 2 analogs, b) just the
relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs
plus their relation(s). So, if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting
particulate deposition" as the relationship/analogy. For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I
said: 1) coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral. And that analogy should help identify why "layer"
is a more general analysis concept than "levels".

On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is for me a serious and important art. It starts, I think, by
the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation. The situation that
unequivocably instantiates "layers". The next step will be to identify in the plainest way
possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".
Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with
it.

It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in
mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one
another. But I shouldn’t try to speak for you.

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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, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify 
> why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".

-- 
☣ glen

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Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

2017-06-12 Thread ┣glen┫

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.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I 
don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze 
using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers 
(more flexible organization).  So, the concept of metaphors isn't useful to me, 
there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or 
onions) and the analogy between them.  So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 
2 analogs, b) just the relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with 
implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs plus their relation(s).  So, 
if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting particulate deposition" 
as the relationship/analogy.  For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I said: 1) 
coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify 
why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".

On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  
> It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite 
> example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates 
> "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the 
> crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of 
> "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to 
> the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  
> 
> It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in 
> mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one 
> another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you. 

-- 
␦glen?

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Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language