Yup. Thass me at times ;-)
>
> "Cattle prods are electrified instruments used to cull the steers for
> slaughter from the breeders."
>
> Good God, woman, you got a nasty violent streak! Here I was being
> all metaphorical and stuff. . .
Yeah. Specially when I get all cranky. But the point I was trying to make
is that here is yet another instrument of our own making, refined for our
own purposes...a la KB speak. So, to get all contextual on your fanny, we
"name" our situation, defining and sharpening our instruments, and away
we rhetor...
> OK, how about this: Computers are electronic instruments
used to > send e-mail that includes metaphors that are reductionist,
> overreaching, and inaccurate (in my case).
The machine may be the "tool" we use. But I would suggest that the email
list is more than a tool. This elist, in pentadic terms, can be viewed
from many different ratios. Some of us "name" lists, metaphorically, as
our community and thereby name the situation our "community" and are
fully implicated in that act of naming, as enactment of our practices.
Metaphors, rather than being reductionist, spin out into multiple/
multiplying naming of our situational contexts. So I would posit the actual
machine, and the capability the machine offers as the tool which provides the
elist as electronic community, a community we build in language, and the key
terms then, especially how we define the key terms, reveal our motives for
our use of the tool. If I define/name/metaphorize elists as communities, and
you define/name/metaphorize elists as instruments, the ratios will spin out
very different purposes and motives for action, eh? At any rate, that clash
of key terms points to where the ongoing discussion leads to enactment of
basic principles.
Euw. I better shaddup now. Methinks I am becoming incomprehensible.
> > Besides, I thought meat comes from the supermarket. . . > > sf > ;-)
Nice try. Welcome to the slaughterhouse and the human barnyard :)
Janet
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There are now-a-days professors | DaMOO
of philosophy but not philosophers. | http://lrc.csun.edu:8888
Thoreau | or
| telnet lrc.csun.edu 7777
Janet Cross |
hceng028@csun.edu |
Learning Resource Center | www.csun.edu/~hceng028/MOO.html
Cal State University, Northridge |
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