One thing I notice from the side, though. When I watch people standing on the first two floors, the careful-analysis one and the caution one, they often seem to be doing something other than what the third floor asks for. At some point in a decision conversation, they slide back into a different question: what does the word really mean, in the abstract.
The person on the careful-analysis floor concludes that any definition will misfire somewhere and harm someone, so they stop at refusing to define. The person on the caution floor stays satisfied that nothing got compressed, and the surface words pass through without anything attached to them.
Both end up in a place that isn't quite where the decision is being made. The floors are real. But when someone tries to invite either of them onto the third floor, the conversation tends to slip back into "what does the word mean" rather than "what are we deciding here." Could just be me, but it shows up enough that I notice.
Yes, I've noticed the same. The slip-back is real, I see it everywhere.
My working hypothesis is that the first two floors are operating under what Michael Reddy called the conduit metaphor, the unexamined assumption that meaning is packaged inside the word and shipped from one head to another. If meaning sits inside the word, then the analytical task is finding the right meaning hiding in there (floor one), or guarding the depth that's already in there (floor two). The third floor requires dropping the metaphor entirely and treating meaning as something the room builds together, in context, for a particular decision, with the participants we have.
Reddy's 1979 paper "The Conduit Metaphor" is the load-bearing. Lakoff drew on it heavily. It's one of those pieces that reframes what you're seeing without giving you a new vocabulary to perform, which makes it useful in exactly the rooms you're describing.
Have you read it? Curious whether you've come across it.
Honestly, no — first time hearing of Reddy or the conduit metaphor. I come at this from observation rather than academic reading, so a lot of the load-bearing names are blank to me. Your framing gives me a name for something I've only been watching from outside. Going to track the paper down.
The three floors all being real — that lands.
One thing I notice from the side, though. When I watch people standing on the first two floors, the careful-analysis one and the caution one, they often seem to be doing something other than what the third floor asks for. At some point in a decision conversation, they slide back into a different question: what does the word really mean, in the abstract.
The person on the careful-analysis floor concludes that any definition will misfire somewhere and harm someone, so they stop at refusing to define. The person on the caution floor stays satisfied that nothing got compressed, and the surface words pass through without anything attached to them.
Both end up in a place that isn't quite where the decision is being made. The floors are real. But when someone tries to invite either of them onto the third floor, the conversation tends to slip back into "what does the word mean" rather than "what are we deciding here." Could just be me, but it shows up enough that I notice.
Yes, I've noticed the same. The slip-back is real, I see it everywhere.
My working hypothesis is that the first two floors are operating under what Michael Reddy called the conduit metaphor, the unexamined assumption that meaning is packaged inside the word and shipped from one head to another. If meaning sits inside the word, then the analytical task is finding the right meaning hiding in there (floor one), or guarding the depth that's already in there (floor two). The third floor requires dropping the metaphor entirely and treating meaning as something the room builds together, in context, for a particular decision, with the participants we have.
Reddy's 1979 paper "The Conduit Metaphor" is the load-bearing. Lakoff drew on it heavily. It's one of those pieces that reframes what you're seeing without giving you a new vocabulary to perform, which makes it useful in exactly the rooms you're describing.
Have you read it? Curious whether you've come across it.
Honestly, no — first time hearing of Reddy or the conduit metaphor. I come at this from observation rather than academic reading, so a lot of the load-bearing names are blank to me. Your framing gives me a name for something I've only been watching from outside. Going to track the paper down.
Let me know if you need a link or a copy.
Yes, please. A link would be a real help. Thanks, Jerry
Here you go: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/reddy_1979_conduit_metaphor.pdf
Thank you, Jerry! I'll give it a read.