• Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    @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?
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    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?
  • Harry Hindu
    5.1k
    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?
  • Harry Hindu
    5.1k
    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?
  • Harry Hindu
    5.1k
    I think that a bit trivial. To know something is to act in certain ways.Banno
    What would be the cause of the act?
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    So ... knowledge is when words are used to put information to work?
  • Galuchat
    809
    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.
  • Galuchat
    809
    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.
  • Arne
    815
    I agree. Language is more about sharing a space than transferring information.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    How is "the reduction of uncertainty" not either hopelessly vague or just not related to any conventional sense of certainty/uncertainty?
  • Galuchat
    809

    Read Shannon's paper, I'm not interested in defending his work.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    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?
  • Harry Hindu
    5.1k
    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?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    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.
  • Galuchat
    809

    Shannon provided a definition of information.
    I don't endorse it as a general definition of information.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    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.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    I thought it too obscure.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    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...
  • Banno
    24.8k
    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.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    So you think my suggestions would lead to some form of relativism?
  • Banno
    24.8k
    What would information without meaning be? Can you give an example?Harry Hindu

    Not without making use of that information...
  • Banno
    24.8k
    Knowledge might be a bit more complex. But your idea would be part of it.

    Knowing involves some sort of rule following....
  • Banno
    24.8k
    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.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    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.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    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?
  • Janus
    16.2k
    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?
  • frank
    15.7k
    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?
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    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.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    It's as though a resident Kantian, after years of involved forum discussion, posted a thread named 'the ethical is categorical'.csalisbury

    :lol:
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