Language is not moving information from one head to another.
It's doing things with words. — Banno
What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul
Yeah - Terrapin Station? — Banno
What's wrong with that? The detective goes looking for clues, relevant information. — Metaphysician Undercover
It's doing things with words. — Banno
It started with the OP and Banno's inability to acknowledge and answer tough questions.The discussion in this thread is not at the peak level of philosophical discourse which might be hoped for, — T Clark
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.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
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.What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul
'Information transfer' is one way we do things with words — StreetlightX
Information and meaning are the same thing.An excellent point. Does information mean anything without a decipherer? — Banno
Information isn't in a rule. Rules are information.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
Does information mean anything without a decipherer? — Banno
You are not only informed what someone is saying, but informed that someone is saying something - that language is being used. — Harry Hindu
The mind is nothing but information as an effect of the interaction between your body and the world. — Harry Hindu
It's doing things with words. — Banno
"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
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
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
We often say a file is moved from one computer to another. It might be uploaded, downloaded, synched to the cloud or what not.
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?
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
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? — Marchesk
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
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