Re: Sociobacteriology

<brogers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 28, 9:25 am, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmene...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





"John Wilkins" <j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mujin <umwin...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

[regarding "informatics" and intentional language in microbiology:]

Now that I think about it, there seems to be quite a lot of this
sort of language in microbiology, immunology, etc...is it a
function of working with things that are supposedly alive but don't
behave in ways that match our expectations of what animals do?

I think it is twofold in origin:

1. The vertebrate/animal/metazooan bias in biology leads those who
are microbiologists to overstress the things that microbes can do
that are supposedly the prototypical properties of animals/etc. This
is legitimate as a corrective. We tend to rely too much on great
chain thinking and treat microbes as if they were barely capable of
doing anything, individually or collectively. This is, I note, a
rhetorical ploy acting as a corrective to prior rhetorical ploys. As
such, it has no deeper significance than pushing metazoon
biologists' faces in the data and shouting "*Look*!"

2. We have an intentional fallacy just waiting to be used whenever
we find that nature does things that would entail intelligence if we
tried to engineer it. Informational, engineering, cybernetic, and so
on language is used because it is convenient, just as teleological
language is convenient. The real question of intentionality is when
it is *legitimate* to use it.

"Legitimate". Interesting word choice. (I might have preferred
'useful'.)

I would not cavil at that. I'm a pragmatist when it comes to language.



By focusing on the 'legitimacy', John leaves the impression that those
who misuse language are acting dishonestly - that they are
appropriating something which doesn't belong to them. But I don't see
that words have the kind of power which requires us to regulate their
use by demanding that their use be exclusively 'legitimate'. Instead,
I see vocabulary as akin to the palate of colors used by an artist.
When an artist chooses the wrong color, we don't decry his action as
'illegitimate'. Instead, we scoff at it as foolish.

No, I mean, and have said explicitly many times, that there are
prototype phenomena to which terms are applied - baptised in, if you
will - and if you stray too far from those phenomena, then you run the
risk of amphiboly or homonymity. This is legitimate in language, but not
so much in science or careful discourse.



I think it is foolish to rest an account, and wider metaphysical
implications, on a careless analogy. So I invite you all to mock
Shapiro, just as I would a IDer who rests the entire weight of his
argument on the word "design".

All analogies in science are flawed in one way or another, the "solar
system" model of the atom, the "wave" theory of light, the linguistic
analogy of DNA, etc. They are only good for provoking you to do good
experiments.

These are only models if they involve some quantitative and more or less
exact mathematics. The term "model" is itself a bit vague; in the
philosophy of science it means roughly a mathematical tranformation that
applies to a domain of phenomena. In the cases you cite, the
wave/particle duality (as I understand it) evaporates in the
mathematics. The problem is how to *visualise* what is going on. In
short, what metaphor shall we use?

Metaphors have a very limited, and ultimately only transient, role to
play in science. At their best they are analogies between domains
(classical physics to subatomic physics, for example) and if they can be
fleshed out as a tight analogy then they do a lot to encourage and
stimulate work. At their worst they are like Kekeule's dream - something
that inspires research but does no actual explanation, or worse, they
are simply misleading and false in every sense.

The ue of metaphors to *ground* actual science is always, I think, a
mistake. A lot of confusion has been caused by taking intentional
metaphors like information, meaning, reference and so on seriously in
domains that do not involve linguistic entities. The "language of the
genes" metaphor is one of the more pernicious ones, I think. DNA is
nothing like a code or a language (nor is it very like a whale).

There was an old analogy of bacteria as little chemical processing
plants. That analogy led to some good experiments on intermediary
metabolism. It does not seem to me that playing around with a new
analogy, that of a sort of distributed computer integrating inputs and
generating behavioural outputs, is really likely to retard progress.
Why won't it just lead people to think of experiments that would not
have thought of before? If it's a totally non-analogous analogy, the
experiments won't work and people will stop doing them. If the
experiments do work, then the analogy has been useful.

The "bacteria as factories" metaphor had, I think, some basis of analogy
- bacteria really do produce chemicals. We now abandon that metaphor
because we characterise what goes on in bacteria and other cells
directly in their own terms (metabolism is neither a metaphor nor an
analogy). But it was a *useful* stepladder. What is at issue here,
however, is whether intentional language or metaphors are useful in
dealign with bacteria. I have seen many cases of this metaphor, which is
almost the default human stance to any complex phenomenon, ttempt to be
applied. It may have had some use as a stepladder once upon a time, but
that time is now long past, and to return to this kind of
athropomorphising is to invite the old confusions all over again.

I should not be surprised, or even disappointed, as scientists seem to
make the old mistakes over and again throughout history. But that
doesn't mean that a suitably irritable philosopher can't call them on it
from time to time.

<snip>


--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sociobacteriology
    ... are microbiologists to overstress the things that microbes can do ... on language is used because it is convenient, ... implications, on a careless analogy. ... genes" metaphor is one of the more pernicious ones, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Sociobacteriology
    ... microbiologists to overstress the things that microbes can do that are ... legitimate as a corrective. ... language is used because it is convenient, ... implications, on a careless analogy. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Suns Victoria Livschitz envisions a new language
    ... with Sun's Victoria Livschitz in which she envisions a new software ... language called "Metaphors". ... models -- just about everything that makes up a programming ... properties of the existing metaphor. ...
    (comp.lang.java.announce)
  • Re: Incomprehensibility of technology...
    ... By analogy, sign languages can have components of gestures ... thumb, ... fact that she was formally taught a non-sound based language, ... Gorilla Project -- namely, that gorillas have a good sense of humor. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Genetics as a Language System
    ... >>> symbolically represented language system? ... >>> pairs are decoded with the use of specific rules of grammar. ... this is why I prefer the bitmap analogy. ... accept that the seas between well-formed strings in phase space are ...
    (talk.origins)