∅

Obviously, there are metaphors and expressions that vary across cultures, but I suppose what we’re meandering around here is on a more granular, individual level.

What about this:
Suppose someone doesn’t believe in genes. Say they don’t know that it is in fact possible to encode such complex information on proteins. Then, is cognobiology a relative metaphor that conceptualizes knowledge for me but not for this imaginary person?

“\textit{what does this buy us}”

This is an expression of \textsc{propositions are currency}.

So what does this buy us? Well, it opens the door to what might be called \textbf{relative metaphors}. If a domain is abstract to different extents for two different people, then it seems possible that a metaphor successfully conceptualizes it for the one person, but not the other.

Réfléchissez à la manière dont deux personnes peuvent comprendre quelque chose à deux étendues différentes.

#langsky #français #french

This explanation isn’t entirely clear, but the conclusion is intuitively true regardless.

∴ If I do not understand something, then it is abstract.

Conceptual metaphors do not guarantee sufficient knowledge because only one mapping is required for it to be a conceptual metaphor.

∴ ‘Concrete’ & ‘abstract’ are relative terms.

If something is concrete, then I have sufficient knowledge of it.

Contrapositively, if I have insufficient knowledge of something, then it is abstract.

If I do not understand something, then I have insufficient knowledge of it.

#cognitivelinguistics #logic

Hmmm

bsky.app/profile/varn...

Currently working my way through these notes, and boy is it a slog

Who could have guessed that taking notes on a tedious book would leave you with a bunch of tedious notes 😒

lmao Vygotsky is so boring

But I feel this only complicates things.

But I’m reminded of Joel David Hamkins’ Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics: (paraphrasing) “We study Turing machines to learn about the nature of computation, not to do computations themselves. Similarly, we do formal proofs to learn about the nature of proof.”

A sense of completion? (Again: composition)

Cf. our earlier remark on completeness in understanding: bsky.app/profile/varn...

It seems my vague New Year’s resolution to continue drawing throughout 2026 has met the sad fate of all other half-assed resolutions.

I do often have lots of things on my plate, though. I guess that’s my excuse…

It would be prudent to prevent them from becoming mere synonyms.

Considering that rationality can involve freedom from tradition, it occurs to me that we should perhaps be using ‘rational’ instead of ‘casewise.’

#philsky

Random fact about me: when I was little, I called oil pastels “oi pastels”.

"One might call a well-built machine beautiful in the same manner in which he calls it awesome."

Regardless, he might indeed still view it as a composition.

We like for things to be complete. That is why we find compositions pleasant.

I just don’t know what it’s going to develop into, ya know?

Despite having “Tags=mostly for muting” in my bio, I’m remarkably bad at tagging the beginnings of my threads.

But it only \textit{seems} untenable. If a 1m^3 cube containing a gas that fills the cube is expanding in a 10m^3 room, the volume inside the cube is still relatively complete or whole even though it hasn’t filled the room.

A maximal composition, so to speak.

Composition is the combining of parts to form a whole that relates the parts. Now, if the propositions of mathematics are parts in a composition, then all of mathematics must be a whole, which seems untenable thanks to Gödel etc.

This is tangential, but it’s not always clear what distinguishes “conceptualize” from “imagine.”

I feel like ‘composition’ is a word I’ve had on the tip of my tongue for quite a while.

The point is, if we can conceptualize knowledge as a space and the facts within it as tangible, visible objects, then we can effectively perceive mathematical information as a scenery to be an admirable \textit{composition}.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §626. “‘When I touch this object with a stick, I have the sensation of touching in the tip of the stick, not in the hand that holds it.’…”

At what grade level do you think kids should be allowed to use calculators? #MathSky #Community

1️⃣ Gr. 4-6, when calculations become tedious.
2️⃣ Gr. 7-9, when calculations are not the point.
3️⃣ Gr. 10-12, with radicals, trigs, and logs.
4️⃣ Nevah. Muahahaha.

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