Metaphors associated with trigram and tetragram encodings

Comprehension of Requisite Variety via Rotation of the Complex Plane (Part #7)

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Metaphors of 8-foldness: Various seemingly disparate understandings of an "eightfold way" are cited above. Any focus on "eight Boolean operations" could also be considered in that light -- as another metaphorical framework indicative of cognitive insight. Together these various sets could be understood as complementary metaphors of an 8-fold mode of far more subtle understanding. Each such framework is then to be recognized as offering insights into its cognitive significance, with any one framework understood as potentially more accessible to some -- however alienating and irrelevant it may be to others.

Each 8-fold set is however far from being as memorable as might otherwise be assumed. Hence the widespread recourse to the dangerously simplistic binary distinction of "true-or-false", etc. Evidence indeed shows that users of database or information systems have difficulties specifying complex boolean queries. Similarly in legal proceedings (and other forms of examination) there is little subtlety to the binary requirement of whether something is known or not. Such questions are clearly of relevance to democratic governance where a popular vote may be exploited to argue that a majority of 51% reflects the "will of the people" -- as in the case of Brexit.

It is therefore understandable that there is interest in the metaphors which might facilitate comprehension of Boolean complexities and the relevance of their memorability:

• Krister Segerberg: A Modal Logic of Metaphor Studia Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic 99, 2011, 1/3
• Mitchell J. Nathan and Kristi Jackson: Reframing the Role of Boolean Classes in Qualitative Research From an Embodied Cognition Perspective, 2006
• Charles Dziuban Patsy Moskal: Analytics and Metaphors: Grounding Our Understanding in a Conceptual Framework 3 June 2013
• Luca Paolino, Monica Sebillo, Genoveffa Tortora and Giuliana Vitiello: The Predicate Tree: a metaphor for visually describing complex Boolean queries International Conference on Advances in Visual Information Systems VISUAL 2007: Advances in Visual Information Systems pp 524-536
• Francesco-Alessio Ursini: A Unified Approach to Metaphors and Polysemy: the case of At (Cambridge University Press. 2010)

Challenge of seemingly incommensurable frameworks: A characteristic of the variety of "eightfold ways" is the extent to which each is deemed irrelevant to the other -- to some degree, if not entirely. There is little sense of the requisite variety, as appreciated from a cybernetic perspective. Employment of truth tables may then be understood as playing out through the manner in which the proponents of each way claim it as "true" -- with other ways variously claimed to be "false". Any subtlety, potentially deriving from consideration of correspondence theories of truth, is thereby ignored (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007).

There is little capacity, if any, to engage in discourse with regard to frameworks deemed incommensurable. One is unquestionably right and true, and the other is necessarily the epitome of the wrong, the false and superstition -- or even a manifestation of evil. This is the challenge of interfaith, interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. It is only too evident in that between political parties of distinctive ideological persuasion, as between right and left, however this might be reframed (Coordination of Wing Deployment and Folding in Politics: bird flight and landing as complementary metaphors of global strategic coherence, 2018; Counteracting Extremes Enabling Normal Flying: insights for global governance from birds on the wing and the dodo, 2015). The pattern is variously nuanced, for some, in the relation between the "two cultures", the arts and the sciences

Dialogue with the "other" (the "enemy") is readily framed as treasonous -- as exemplified by the case of the Taliban. Ironically, with the extreme polarization of gender politics, this has become increasingly evident between the sexes, for which "truth tables" of a distinctive form could well be envisaged following widespread recognition of the LGBT and LGBTIQ patterns. Together these examples are indicative of a conflation of true/false, right/wrong, innocent/guilty with agreement/disagreement. The latter is emphasized by US foreign policy doctrine: You're either with us, or against us. Such conflation of distinctions could indeed be explored in the light of the physics of compactification.

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