The universe punishes you for using the wrong ritual of cognition, but not in the same way. In real life, it goes like:
Wrong ritual of cognition --> false belief --> bad decision --> bad outcome
In the Phantom tollbooth:
Wrong ritual of cognition --> ejected from car
This bothers me, because I don’t want to teach people that certain modes of thinking are Good or Bad for intrinsic reasons, but rather for their instrumental value in making decisions.
It’s being used as a teaching device to signal that there might be something wrong with that cognitive process.
If a child insists that leaping to conclusions is wrong because of The Phantom Tollbooth, then I’d agree that something is wrong. But it’s a metaphor for the reality (it’s harder to get out of a conclusion than to reach it, and jumping to it tends to retard your progress and keep you from your goals).
Prove it. I really doubt that. I think they’re a highly ineffective teaching device relative to clean demonstrative thought-experiment parables. Analogies might be useful as scaffolding or a spec for learners to build to, but metaphors take it to a level of obfuscation that makes successful integration of the underlying principles of any given metaphorical package unlikely to ever occur.
Prove it. I don’t think the use of metaphor to transmit principles has a sound cognitive basis. I propose metaphors fail to integrate with a person’s knowledge base and their corresponding principles remain not latent but permanently inactive.
But there’s something about being whisked off to the Island of Conclusions that might fix the idea in your mind.
Of course, this reflects the observation that both Hanson and I make of fiction—that it amounts to trusting the author to pick the right things to emphasize. But The Phantom Tollbooth did. And c’mon, these are children’s books we’re talking about.
The universe punishes you for using the wrong ritual of cognition, but not in the same way. In real life, it goes like:
Wrong ritual of cognition --> false belief --> bad decision --> bad outcome
In the Phantom tollbooth:
Wrong ritual of cognition --> ejected from car
This bothers me, because I don’t want to teach people that certain modes of thinking are Good or Bad for intrinsic reasons, but rather for their instrumental value in making decisions.
It’s being used as a teaching device to signal that there might be something wrong with that cognitive process.
If a child insists that leaping to conclusions is wrong because of The Phantom Tollbooth, then I’d agree that something is wrong. But it’s a metaphor for the reality (it’s harder to get out of a conclusion than to reach it, and jumping to it tends to retard your progress and keep you from your goals).
Metaphors are dangerous but incredibly valuable.
Prove it. I really doubt that. I think they’re a highly ineffective teaching device relative to clean demonstrative thought-experiment parables. Analogies might be useful as scaffolding or a spec for learners to build to, but metaphors take it to a level of obfuscation that makes successful integration of the underlying principles of any given metaphorical package unlikely to ever occur.
Prove it. I don’t think the use of metaphor to transmit principles has a sound cognitive basis. I propose metaphors fail to integrate with a person’s knowledge base and their corresponding principles remain not latent but permanently inactive.
Dangit. Does this gravestone hang around forever? I was only going to rewrite it.
Refresh the page, a Delete button will show up.
No? It doesn’t?
I believe how it works is that you can delete a retracted comment only if it has no replies.
… Irony.
You missed one.
I would have tried to coordinate with linkhyrule5 to delete our replies if a third person hadn’t gotten involved..
OK let’s retract our comments here and see if the tree gets pruned.
I think you can delete things, yes. Testing with this post.
But there’s something about being whisked off to the Island of Conclusions that might fix the idea in your mind.
Of course, this reflects the observation that both Hanson and I make of fiction—that it amounts to trusting the author to pick the right things to emphasize. But The Phantom Tollbooth did. And c’mon, these are children’s books we’re talking about.