Language is not moving information from one head to another.
It's doing things with words. — Banno

I agree.
Language is a code used for intrinsic and extrinsic mental communication (data encoding, messaging, and decoding).

Intrinsic Mental Communication: communication within a mind.
Extrinsic Mental Communication: communication between minds.

Information is the result of communication.

I think we want to resist having information scattered all over th environment because that would appear to be either behaviorism or panpsychism.

What's wrong with that? The detective goes looking for clues, relevant information.

What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul


Yeah - Terrapin Station? — Banno

I have to read through the thread in detail--I might be missing context I need here, but there would be two three senses to talk about:

One, relative position. The position of my brain can change relative to my desk, for example. So definitely if we're talking about meaning, for example, that can move in terms of relative position.

Two, whether some phenomenon (in the general occurrence/event/thing sense) can be passed from one object to another in some sense.

In some cases it can. For example, vibrations in one object--a guitar string, say, can in a sense be transferred to another object--such as a guitar's scoreboard, and then whether that can be transferred to a microphone or to other amplification, etc. (even though that's not an "exact" transfer, it's close enough and it makes sense to say that the vibrations were passed from one object to another).

It other cases it can't. For example, the heat resistance properties of hafnium carbide can't be transferred to chlorine trifluoride.

So, it depends on the properties we're talking about, the materials in question, and just what's possible, process-wise, in terms of transference.

And actually I suppose I should say that a third sense is that of transferring, say, a baseball from one person to another. That's really just a relative positional change of the baseball, but it might be worth making a third sense for this type of motion since it's a transference in a way that simple positional change is not, but at the same time it's also not transference in the sense of something like sympathetic resonance (the guitar example).

When we're talking about meaning, that's a property of brains that can't be transferred to soundwaves, gestures, marks on paper, etc. Of course, in a very ontologically loose manner of speaking we say things like "I get your meaning, man," but what's really going on there is not a literal transfer of properties or processes.

What's wrong with that? The detective goes looking for clues, relevant information. — Metaphysician Undercover

It reveals the ontological confusion underneath the OP. Behaviorism has been rejected for the most part, while science doesn't even have the conceptual tools to consider panpsychism.

I don't see how "having information scattered all over the environment", which appears to me to be an accurate description, (imagine if you could see microwaves, the pollution! - out of sight, out of mind), leads to behaviourism, or panpsychism. That's quite the stretch.

It's the "information in the head" situation. We located it there because we didn't want knowing to be an activity that's smeared across the universe. Too mind-of-Goddish.

It's doing things with words. — Banno

So far this is sounding deeply related to Reddy's Conduit Metaphor essay and its criticism of folk theories of language use.

double

No no, the other way around. 'Information transfer' is one way we do things with words.

The discussion in this thread is not at the peak level of philosophical discourse which might be hoped for, — T Clark

It started with the OP and Banno's inability to acknowledge and answer tough questions.

Language is a code used for intrinsic and extrinsic mental communication (data encoding, messaging, and decoding).

Intrinsic Mental Communication: communication within a mind.
Extrinsic Mental Communication: communication between minds.

Information is the result of communication. — Galuchat

Information is the relationship between cause and effect. Effects carry information about their causes. You are not only informed what someone is saying, but informed that someone is saying something - that language is being used. How do you know that language is being used if you aren't informed language is being used? Seeing and hearing words is informing you that someone is using language because that is the cause of you hearing and seeing sounds and scribbles.

The mind is nothing but information as an effect of the interaction between your body and the world.

What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul

Like I said earlier, the information isn't being moved, it is being copied. The information doesn't leave your head and arrive at another. It now exists in two places thanks to language use. So this whole idea that the OP is based on is wrong.

'Information transfer' is one way we do things with words — StreetlightX

Think there's information transfer without words though, smoke indicates fire. A spider detects flies in webs through vibrations. Indicators are older than language.

There's probably a useful paradigm of thought somewhere that treats human language as a capacity which has evolved to symbolically attend or affect differences; transmission of information requires information to encode. Whether this is a continuous refinement of language abilities of human 'precursors' or whether human language is a discrete break from the tradition of language through the development of recursive grammars (or some other on-off property) matters less than the rootedness of 'information transfer' language capacities in the presence of information rich patterns in the world.

There is probably also a recursive component to the evolution of information transfer here, the current linguistic community's expressive capacity (what they can do with language) is likely to be something that is adaptive (or a favourable trait) for an ecological constraint.

An excellent point. Does information mean anything without a decipherer? — Banno

Information and meaning are the same thing.

If they aren't then what is the difference?

Wittgenstein observes that there is a way of understanding a rule that is not found in stating it, but in following it. Is the information in a rule is given in the stating of that rule? — Banno

Information isn't in a rule. Rules are information.

I am informed of many things just by using my eyes and ears, not just what people are saying, but that they are saying something. If I am to understand what someone is saying I have to know that they are saying something - that they are using language in the first place. Language use is just a part of that information that makes up my mind, not the other way around.

Does information mean anything without a decipherer? — Banno

Perhaps not, but does this question have any bearing on whether language can move information from one head to the other? I gave a pretty clear example of that.

PA

You are not only informed what someone is saying, but informed that someone is saying something - that language is being used. — Harry Hindu

I agree.
The former is semantic information, and the latter is physical (specifically, first inorganic, then organic) information.

I have said that "Information is the result of communication." Specifically, information is a decoded message.

When someone is speaking (or has written) to me, I hear (or see) words (which are associated with concepts that have meaning). This is extrinsic mental communication (communication between minds), which first requires inorganic (then organic) data encoding, messaging (transmission, conveyance, and reception), and decoding; and finally, requires semantic data decoding.

Since the OP concerns human language (code consisting of a set of words having paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, hence; semantic content), it concerns all these types of information.

The mind is nothing but information as an effect of the interaction between your body and the world. — Harry Hindu

You could say everything that exists (actuality) is the sum of efficient cause (the laws of nature or intentionality) and final cause (information).

The mind processes experiential and metacognitive information.

It's doing things with words. — Banno

Doing things with words, or getting things done with words? Those are two different things.

"Where is the library"
"It's on 23rd street".

The second person gives information to the first person, who thereafter knows where the library is. This is done via language. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

PA — PossibleAaran

But if the second person “gives information” in a language that the first person doesn’t understand, no information is received. Only sounds/symbols/marks on paper are given. The receiver depends on his own knowledge, not information embedded in speech, to understand it.

Language is not moving information from one head to another. It's doing things with words.

That is more or less Maturana's position on 'languaging', which rejects the concept 'information' as a requirement for 'cognition'.
http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html

What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul

Surely the former is a subset of the latter. — StreetlightX

It would seem so.

What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location?
— creativesoul

Does information have a spatiotemporal location? — Marchesk

No, and that's precisely the problem with such talk.

We often say a file is moved from one computer to another. It might be uploaded, downloaded, synched to the cloud or what not.

Yup. People talk like that all the time... as if the file is equivalent to information and can be moved in it's entirety, like a cup, from the cupboard onto the table. It cannot. The file consists of marks/symbols/commands/coding/etc. It does not consist of information. The file is but one part of information.

We could say any instance of some piece of digital information, such as your banking number, is on a particular machine. But is it on the hard drive, in memory, inside the processor cache? Do the bytes that make up the file reside on one location, or in various ones that change as the operating system or whatever program moves bits around?

All good questions. The banking number is a piece of something more. That something more is information. Are the bytes equivalent to the information that they are a part of? Is the number?

No.

Information is meaningful.

But if the second person “gives information” in a language that the first person doesn’t understand, no information is received. Only sounds/symbols/marks on paper are given. The receiver depends on his own knowledge, not information embedded in speech, to understand it.
3h — NOS4A2

Indeed, I wouldn't want to deny any of these sensible points. The receiver has to have some background knowledge in order to interpret the noises of the speaker. I only insist that, given that the receiver has this knowledge, he can gain new information from the speaker via language. E.g, if speaker knows where the library is then he can give receiver this information so long as receiver speaks the same language, understands the concept of a street, etc.

PA

And information can be understood as Shannon entropy... — Banno

Well, that brings up the question of whether information exists independent of minds, and minds are just acting on the information already there in the environment, because that's why minds/bodies could successfully evolve.

Alternatively, minds generate the information when interacting with the environment based on what is useful to those minds. If information is a subset of language games, which themselves are made up, then information doesn't exist without language users?

Well, that brings up the question of whether information exists independent of minds, and minds are just acting on the information already there in the environment, because that's why minds/bodies could successfully evolve.

Alternatively, minds generate the information when interacting with the environment based on what is useful to those minds. If information is a subset of language games, which themselves are made up, then information doesn't exist without language users? — Marchesk

This is exactly the debate I had earlier in the Wittgenstein thread. Neo-Pythagorean types might argue that our epistemological capacities MUST find patterns, as the patterns themselves allowed for survival and evolution proceed successfully.

What moved? — Banno

How can anything occur without movement?

I read an article a number of years ago that when we transmit a signal, to some degree the two things have to be touching at some point (even in a vacuum the light has move across space and collide with the antenna or antenna like object), as sound travels through matter. (light as you know travels best through a vacuum). Language is defiinitely alot of things but it certainly very often involves moving information from one person to another person. If there is no gods or God then yes, perhaps we should just smoke crack all day and keep our mouths shut. lol.

I think we want to resist having information scattered all over th environment because that would appear to be either behaviorism or panpsychism. — frank

Information theory treats the world as information - information being the order in a given system.

When we're talking about meaning, that's a property of brains that can't be transferred to soundwaves, gestures, marks on paper, etc. Of course, in a very ontologically loose manner of speaking we say things like "I get your meaning, man," but what's really going on there is not a literal transfer of properties or processes. — Terrapin Station

So it seems from this that you agree with the title of this thread?