@Banno Doesn't making language about what we do in this way leave us vulnerable to the maundering, marauding post-truth postmodernists? Is there no fact of the matter? I'm told such and such happened on such and such a date - but really all that's happening is someone else is doing something with language to me?

nice.

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. — frank

You know there's a difference between information and knowledge, don't you? That there is information all over the universe does not mean that there is knowledge all over the universe. I seek information so that I can have knowledge. When I find the information which I am looking for, it does not go into my head and become knowledge. Other people can find the same information which I find, and produce their own knowledge which is not the same as my knowledge, based on that same information. Clearly the information does not go into my head, if others have equal access to it. How could the same information go into all those different heads at the same time?

Or Harry's inability to see when a question has been answered... — Banno

I didn't catch the answers to my questions from the first page. When you answered, were you "using language" without communicating? If so, did you really use language?

I'd happily posit that information does not have meaning until it does work. — Banno

What would information without meaning be? Can you give an example?

I think that a bit trivial. To know something is to act in certain ways. — Banno

What would be the cause of the act?

So ... knowledge is when words are used to put information to work?

So ... knowledge is when words are used to put information to work? — Marchesk

Knowledge is semantic information, which may be empirical (based on experience, such as tacit/implicit or declarative/explicit knowledge), or pure (based on metacognition).

Language is formal (not material, efficient, or final) cause.

The best articulated definition comes from information theory. — Banno

Didn't Shannon not really define the term? — Terrapin Station

OK - I understood Shannons entropy equation as a definition of information, but I may have read too much into that. — Banno

Shannon's equation quantifies information, which he defined as the reduction of uncertainty.

What I take away from the Mathematical Theory of Communication isn't the math, it's the communication concept.

I agree. Language is more about sharing a space than transferring information.

How is "the reduction of uncertainty" not either hopelessly vague or just not related to any conventional sense of certainty/uncertainty?

Read Shannon's paper, I'm not interested in defending his work.

Shannon's equation quantifies information, which he defined as the reduction of uncertainty. — Galuchat

This definition of "information" just begs the question. Certainty is subjective (of the subject), so a change to the degree of certainty, "information", must also be subjective. How can we account for any naturally occurring information with a definition like that?

It would depend on the definition of "information" that we're using. That word tends to be used in a lot of different senses--including simply denoting "data," or alternately "knowledge"--all sorts of things; those are just two examples. So I'm never sure what someone has in mind with it unless they specify a definition. — Terrapin Station

So language is copying something from one mind to another and we're simply disagreeing on the term used for that something. In other words, we agree that something is copied and we arent talking past each other. We are just using different terms? Are we copying information, meaning, knowledge or what? What if someone claims that all three are the same thing?

If none of that is the case then what happens when language is used? What kind of work is done?

Doing things with words, or getting things done with words? Those are two different things. — schopenhauer1

@Banno, I don't think you answered that one.

Shannon provided a definition of information.
I don't endorse it as a general definition of information.

So language is copying something from one mind to another and we're simply disagreeing on the term used for that something. In other words, we agree that something is copied and we arent talking past each other. We are just using different terms? Are we copying information, meaning, knowledge or what? What if someone claims that all three are the same thing?

If none of that is the case then what happens when language is used? What kind of work is done? — Harry Hindu

What a strange idea in my opinion--that language amounts to "copying" something from one mind to another.

What happens instead, in a nutshell, is that individuals assign meanings to the observable parts of language--utterances, text marks, symbols, gestures, etc, where the "game" is to do that in a way that makes sense of further linguistic observables in context, as well as other behavior, and where part of that is a game of trying to elicit particular behavior as well as gain approval responses, etc. from others.

I thought it too obscure.

You still haven't addressed the issue of moving information versus copying it. Can meaning be copied? — Harry Hindu

Well, yes I did, since in that meaning is what is done with information, meaning is not the sort of thing that moves...

Per NASA, in the last 35 years, the amount of the earth's surface covered in leaves has increased by about twice the area of Australia. This is due to an increase in atmospheric CO2. — frank

This is good. Proper analytic stuff.

My posit is that meaning is information doing work. Frank's comeback is that if this were so, then every meaningful utterance ought have a use; but here is a meaningful statement from NASA that is useless...

What work does this information have to do in order to become meaningful? — frank

Well, it might serve as an example in a philosophical discussion...

Or it might lead to action to reduce carbon emissions.

So you think my suggestions would lead to some form of relativism?

What would information without meaning be? Can you give an example? — Harry Hindu

Not without making use of that information...

Knowledge might be a bit more complex. But your idea would be part of it.

Knowing involves some sort of rule following....

What happens instead, in a nutshell, is that individuals assign meanings to the observable parts of language--utterances, text marks, symbols, gestures, etc, where the "game" is to do that in a way that makes sense of further linguistic observables in context, as well as other behavior, and where part of that is a game of trying to elicit particular behavior as well as gain approval responses, etc. from others. — Terrapin Station

This is pretty close to what I would say, except for the notion that meaning is assigned to the parts of language.

The implication of that would be that there is somehow meaning apart from its expression.

And I can't make sense of that. (@creativesoul and thought/belief)

Paraphrasing... What happens instead, in a nutshell, is that folk use observable parts of language--utterances, text marks, symbols, gestures, etc, in a "game" that makes sense of further linguistic observables in context, as well as other behaviour, and where part of that is a game of trying to elicit particular behavior as well as gain approval responses, etc. from others.

The big difference here is that meaning is found in the actions of the interlocutors, not in private languages.

Meanign is not private, but what we do together when we do things with words.

So you think my suggestions would lead to some form of relativism? — Banno

Not necessarily. I mean that if you're doing away with 'moving information from one head to another' then, though you've improved our understanding of salt-passing, you have an explanatory vacuum for language use like e.g. a teacher telling a student 'Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th, 1941'. If that's not information-passing, we need an alternate characterization.

Knowledge might be a bit more complex. But your idea would be part of it.

Knowing involves some sort of rule following.... — Banno

How do we know how to follow the rules? Further rules?

I put this, a similar point, to Banno earlier and received no response:

Information is pervasive, not confined to words. Words, if they work, activate informed responses. In ordinary language this is called 'conveying information'; which is a 'movement' metaphor; don't take it literally and the problem dissolves.

Too deflationary of the concerns motivating his thread perhaps?

What work does this information have to do in order to become meaningful?
— frank

Well, it might serve as an example in a philosophical discussion...

Or it might lead to action to reduce carbon emissions. — Banno

It probably won't inspire anybody to reduce carbon emissions. CO2 increases plant growth. We're dependent on plants, so.

But as for an example in a discussion, that would imply:

1. It was meaningless to me before I brought it up in discussion.
2. A person can't know something that's meaningless.
C. Therefore, I didn't know it before I brought it up.

So I brought up some facts that I didn't know prior to bringing them up.

How did I do that?

I put this, a similar point, to Banno earlier and received no response:

Information is pervasive, not confined to words. Words, if they work, activate informed responses. In ordinary language this is called 'conveying information'; which is a 'movement' metaphor; don't take it literally and the problem dissolves.

Too deflationary of the concerns motivating his thread perhaps? — Janus

Perhaps, yeah. The correct title would be 'not *all of language* is moving information.' @StreetlightX already solved the problem in a very short post. Information-passing is a subset of language use.

I don't quite understand the thread. I mean, I get the idea [Wittgenstein, slabs, Austin, performativity etc] but I'm not sure what the occasion is. Haven't @Banno & others gone over this near a million times before? Wittgenstein's notion of language games is one of the most recycled themes on this forum (and its predecessor.) It's as though a resident Kantian, after years of involved forum discussion, posted a thread named 'the ethical is categorical'.

Maybe the op is an implicit response to some skirmish somewhere else that I missed.

It's as though a resident Kantian, after years of involved forum discussion, posted a thread named 'the ethical is categorical'. — csalisbury

:lol: