On 7/17/25 7:17 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> thank you—your reply triggered self-awareness in sloppy usage.
> 
> Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy are similar but quite distinct, but a lot of people, including me except when I am being very very careful - tend to use "metaphor" as a conflation of all three.
> 
> Bohr did say that an atom is a tiny solar system, a metaphor (the use of is) but almost certainly meant "is like" which is a simile. More importantly, he spoke at some extent about how the two terms (solar system / atom) relate, making it an analogy.
> 
> Similarly, Quine (I think) used the term metaphor as an umbrella term for all three comparatives. And this is that of which I am also frequently guilty.
> 
> Metaphor became a research topic for me when I was doing my Masters thesis in comp sci (AI) and was prompted by the reciprocal metaphor: "the brain is a computer / a computer is a brain." This metaphor dominated the conversation across multiple fields including computing, psychology, and cognitive science while attempting to intrude on disciplines like cultural anthropology. The metaphor was used as if it was a lexical term, and computer scientists like Pylyshyn insisted that it was. Sure, the substrate was different, silicon and meat, but that was irrelevant.
> 
> The metaphor persists  when both "mind" and "intelligence" are defined as side effects of brain operation, hence there is no difference in mind or intelligence arising NAND (et.al.) gates closing in a computer with that arising from synapses firing in a human brain.
> 
> That is where MacCormac's lifecycle comes into play: I should be able to take the metaphor as epiphor, examine it for correlating referents, and determine if the epiphor can evolve to lexical term or dead metaphor. But doing this takes us deeply into the world of analogy. So it is sloppy usage to persist in using the term metaphor.
> 
> My sloppy usage is not forgiven by, but is far less egregious, than those that persist in treating the metaphor as if it was a lexical term.
> 
> BTW: "davew is a human being," is, to me, a metaphor. And, if I use analogy to explore it, it rapidly becomes a dead metaphor.
> 
> davew

