14.0312 neural metaphors

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: 10/05/00

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 312.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
    
    
    
             Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 06:19:32 +0100
             From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
             Subject: Re: 14.0289 neural circuitry?
    
    Willard,
    
    The source text as you quote it reads "[...] neural circuitry [...]".
    
    As you comment upon it the adjective changes to "electrical".
    
    Now wouldn't a computer have to be programmed to recognize the intended
    synonymity? Wouldn't a human have to run scenarios to know when to raise
    the delicate nuance that exists between "neural" and "electrical"?
    
      > becoming more and more difficult to get computing into perspective because
      > of such metaphors? It's not as if we can do much about this -- except in
      > the classroom, where I'd think it's rather important to point out that the
      > way computers process data is very different from however it is that we
      > think about artefacts, and that this difference is our real subject.
    
    Is a scenario very different from a program?
    
    Would the real subject be tolerance for loops and ability to thread a
    meta-level at will?
    
    Strange how my reading of your moves in the hypertext linking post
    predisposed me to read your metaphor post along the lines of a trope of
    slippage. I am beginning to think twist instead....
    
    a computer may slip on a loop; a human, groove to the beat
    
    
    --
    Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
    	http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
    Member of the Evelyn Letters Project
    	http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dchamber/evelyn/evtoc.htm
    



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