10 ways in which music is like language and 8 (more important) ways in which...
People often talk about music as if it were language. Leonard Bernstein even recorded a series of lectures applying Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar to music. Chomsky himself answered a question...
View ArticleHow to read ‘Women, Fire and Dangerous Things’: Guide to essential reading on...
Note: These are rough notes for a metaphor reading group, not a continuous narrative. Any comments, corrections or elaborations are welcome. Why should you read WFDT? Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things:...
View ArticleNot ships in the night: Metaphor and simile as process
In some circles (rhetoric and analytics philosophy come to mind), much is made of the difference between metaphor and simile. (Rhetoricians pay attention to it because they like taxonomies of...
View ArticleDoes machine learning produce mental representations?
TL;DR Why is this important? Many people believe that mental representations are the next goal for ML and a prerequisite for AGI. Does machine learning produce mental representations equivalent to...
View Article3 burning issues in the study of metaphor
I’m not sure how ‘burning’ these issues are as such but if they’re not, I’d propose that they deserve to have some kindling or other accelerant thrown on them. 1. What is the interaction between...
View ArticleWhat would make linguistics a better science? Science as a metaphor
Background This is a lightly edited version of a comment posted on Martin Haspelmath’s blog post “Against traditional grammar – and for normal science in linguistics“. In it he offers a critique of...
View ArticleWriting as translation and translation as commitment: Why is (academic)...
This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be...
View ArticleFruit loops and metaphors: Metaphors are not about explaining the abstract...
Note: This is a slightly edited version of a post that first appeared on Medium. It elaborates and exemplifies examples I gave in the more recent posts on metaphor and explanation and understanding....
View ArticleTuring tests in Chinese rooms: What does it mean for AI to outperform humans
TLDR; Reports that AI beat humans on certain benchmarks or very specialised tasks don’t mean that AI is actually better at those tasks than any individual human. They certainly don’t mean that AI is...
View ArticleHow to actually write a sentence: The building blocks of written language
Some time ago, Thomas Basbøll followed up his excellent post on how to write a paragraph with a much more daring endeavour on how to write a sentence. And while the post is a pleasure to read, I think...
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