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) — Banno

Linguistic meaning includes it's expression(how the language is used). There is no separation without loss. While the attribution of meaning can happen without(prior to) language, and thus without it's being expressed, such attribution of meaning is irrelevant here.

Here's what troublesome to me... aside from the talk of moving something that does not have a spatiotemporal location...

I cannot overlook the backdoor smuggling of agency when there is none warranted. All talk about information being within cells, rna, dna, etc. dubiously presupposes meaning where there is no creature/agent capable of drawing correlations between different things.

All information is already meaningful. All attribution of meaning(and thus all meaning) requires a creature capable of making connections(drawing correlations) between different things. So too does information.

Push hard enough on the notion of information and a conflation between causality and meaning takes place...

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. — Banno

Some linguistic meaning, that is...

Witt began pursuing this vein. Enlarging the scope of observation to include not only the vocalization and/or written expressions, but also the accompanying actual behaviours during the utterance(speech act).

The Speech Act Theorists picked it up and carried it a little farther. They expanded upon the meaning in terms of force. There's much to be liked about Austin to this regard(expanding our considerations regarding how meaning is attributed).

Meaning is shared solely by virtue of a plurality of capable creatures drawing correlations between the same sort of things. The smashing of the bottle on the surface of the ship amidst it's christening.

Using a copy metaphor(copying information is copying meaning) is unhelpful here. The sender cannot copy themselves, and they are an elemental part of the correlations drawn between the marks and other things.

Communication of information- as Banno implied earlier - has the same meaning on both ends.

Communication of information is shared meaning. It's what happens when two people draw the same correlations between language use and something else. Miscommunication happens when the correlations between the language use and something else is different regarding the something else. That's how and why the same words can mean very different things to different people.

Situating meaningful information anywhere along the spatiotemporal line of evolutionary progression in a place/time preceding initial/original thought/belief formation presupposes meaning prior to thought/belief.

Here, as earlier, a conflation between causality and meaning will ensue.

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

That overstates the case.

Some knowing does.

Knowing that fire causes pain does not.

Knowing that it is feeding time doesn't require some sort of rule following either.

Drawing a correlation between directly perceptible things, such as the act of touching fire and the ensuing pain, requires neither following rules nor common language. That correlation is belief that touching fire caused the pain. That is nothing less than the attribution/recognition of causality. Expectation ensues.

Drawing correlations between directly perceptible things such as myself, the food container, the odor of the food, and the sound of the container lid being opened, etc., results in expecting to eat. The expectation that results is clearly put on display for all to see each and every time those correlations are drawn - once again - between the same things.

Both are well-grounded true belief. Both are meaningful to the creature. Both presuppose their own correspondence to what's happened/happening.

Neither requires language use, predication, or propositional content. Our report requires all of these. Neither requires my report.

If you take thinking about the actions of the interlocutors out of the picture, how would you say that meaning arises? In other words, how do those actions denote or connote anything, how do they achieve any semantic associations, if we remove thought from the scenario?

if we remove thought from the scenario? — Terrapin Station

Are you considering experimenting on lobotomites? Or merely observing them?

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

Question: What is done with information?
Answer: Meaning.

How is that a coherent answer to that question? Does meaning move information? What does that mean? Notice that I am informing you with my question - that I don't have information and that I am requesting it. Are questions meaningful, or informative in your mind?

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... — Banno

It is only useless to the present goal in your head. If your goal was to understand environmental change then it would be useful. It is useless in this conversation. To say something off-topic is to say something useless to the conversation at hand. The usefulness or uselessness of some information coincides with your changing goals.

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

Not without making use of that information... — Banno

How do you make use of information - by moving it? It would help if you took the time to put a little more meat in your posts. You don't provide enough information to chew on.

I thought it too obscure. — Banno

A bit ironic from you :wink: . But "doing things with words" would be kind of arbitrary use of words. Doing things with forks and knives is not necessarily accomplishing anything with them. Once you use it for an actual task and it achieves an outcome of some sort (hopefully intended), then it is "getting things done". So doing something with words is just literally saying stuff. There is no outcome attached. Getting things done with words, is trying to get something to happen with words- some sort of outcome.

So doing stuff with words can be considered a sort of critique that language is not really accomplishing anything. It's a bunch of idle chatter. There is something else that has the efficacy to get something done outside of the language. Getting stuff done with words, would be saying that language can bring about outcomes, hopefully intended and has real efficacy in bringing about outcomes. So there is a major difference in the interpretations of your argument.

...one question: What are those “things” (which you’ve referenced) that it does with words? Your explanation of this will be quite elucidative for argument’s sake.

...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. — csalisbury

What's going on here? Is the point only for the student to be able to make the noises 'Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7th, 1941' on demand?

Then that might be what is done in that little game. And what looked like information passing from one mind to another was a step in a game of recitation.

Compare that with the teacher making a recording of saying 'Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7th, 1941' - is the point for the recording device to be able to say 'Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7th, 1941' on demand? Is that an instance of information being passed on? Does that make it an example of language use? Any noise would do for a recorder; but not for the student. Why?

Because the meaning is not found in transferring information, but in the doing. Information transfer is at best incidental.

there is a way of understanding rules that is not given in words, but consists in implementing the rule. PI

well, yes. That’s rather the point here.

there is a way of understanding rules that is not given in words, but consists in implementing the rule. PI — Banno

So, imitation then, rather than following specific rules?

well, yes. That’s rather the point here. — Banno

So, not too deflationary for the the concerns of the thread, but rather deflationary in a sense which is precisely the concern of the thread?

I cannot overlook the backdoor smuggling of agency when there is none warranted. All talk about information being within cells, rna, dna, etc. dubiously presupposes meaning where there is no creature/agent capable of drawing correlations between different things. — creativesoul

Actually, agency is warranted. How do you think DNA could replicate without agency?

I cannot overlook the backdoor smuggling of agency when there is none warranted. All talk about information being within cells, rna, dna, etc. dubiously presupposes meaning where there is no creature/agent capable of drawing correlations between different things.
— creativesoul

Actually, agency is warranted. How do you think DNA could replicate without agency? — Metaphysician Undercover

Easier than I thought...

Push hard enough on the notion of information and a conflation between causality and meaning takes place...

Any noise would do for a recorder; but not for the student. Why? — Banno

Because the recorder doesn't have a goal to determine what sounds are useful and which aren't. Hammers and screwdrivers are both tools to get work done, just different kinds of work. One is more useful for certain tasks than the other. A tool's usefulness is dependent upon the goal.

Because the meaning is not found in transferring information, but in the doing. Information transfer is at best incidental. — Banno

Meaning is found in the relationship between the sounds and the state-of-affairs or visual concepts that they are about - like the state-of-of-affairs that was the attack on Pearl Harbor and like visuals of Japanese torpedo bombers dropping bombs on American naval ships anchored in a harbor.

There is much to be said about learning how to use language. I'm not talking about the average ordinary just talking about what's on your mind. Rather, I'm talking about using language with the intent to acquire a desired result.

We use language to ask questions about things, and make statements about things. Prior to either of these particular uses, we must first use language to pick individual things out of this world to the exclusion of all else as a means to isolate it as it's own subject matter worthy of subsequent considerations. Hard to talk about something or ask about something if there is no way to successfully refer to that something.

But there are other things that can be done with language...

Very early on, we make concerted attempts to use language as a means for obtaining what we want at the time. We use certain language in certain situations with a clearly understood, envisioned, imagined, thought of result(clear expectation of what will happen afterwards). The child behaves in such a way as to do what s/he/they believe will get them the result that they are looking for.

Each and every one of us has drawn and will continue to draw correlations between certain situations, specific things, and particular language uses. This is how one learns to use language with the intent to reach a goal.

All of these ways, and more, provide a concrete footing for Banno's earlier assertion that knowing(how to use and/or do things with language) requires some sort of rule following...

:kiss:

Push hard enough on the notion of information and a conflation between causality and meaning takes place — creativesoul

What are you saying, that information is meaning with causal power? But you wanted to remove agency, that's what I objected to. Meaning cannot be causal without agency. The form of causation here is commonly called "final cause", what you refer to as "the intent to acquire a desired result", and agency is implicit within this concept of "intent". Clearly, when we speak of "information" in this way, the assumption of agency is warranted, and cannot be overlooked.

All of these ways, and more, provide a concrete footing for Banno's earlier assertion that knowing(how to use and/or do things with language) requires some sort of rule following... — creativesoul

When did Banno assert such a thing? This is something that I, not Banno, have been saying for a long time on these forums - that knowledge is simply a set of rules for interpreting sensory data.

I even said it to Banno just a few weeks ago in another one of his poorly executed threads, here:

To know something is to have a rule for interpretting some sensory data. — Harry Hindu

And of course, the typical Banno reply that leaves one wanting:

It is? How do you know? — Banno

So is Banno finally coming around to knowing what knowing is?

What are you saying, that information is meaning with causal power? — Metaphysician Undercover

It is really nice to know that people are coming around to my way of seeing things. This is another thing that I have asserted many times on these forums (search it if you don't believe me) - that information and meaning are the same thing and information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect.

Push hard enough on the notion of information and a conflation between causality and meaning takes place
— creativesoul

What are you saying...? — Metaphysician Undercover

All talk about information being within cells, rna, dna, etc. dubiously presupposes meaning where there is no creature/agent capable of drawing correlations between different things.

What's going on here? Is the point only for the student to be able to make the noises 'Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7th, 1941' on demand?

Then that might be what is done in that little game. And what looked like information passing from one mind to another was a step in a game of recitation. — Banno

That's a possible thing, but it's neither nor here nor there, since I'm not talking about a situation like that, but about people learning what date an event occurred on.

But what actually is learning what date pearl harbor happened on? I guess the deflationary answer is that its learning what date pearl harbor happened on. If the kid wasn't actually learning what date pearl harbor happened on, it would no longer be the example I'm giving.

Of course the significance of the fact changes quite a bit depending on the means you have at your disposal to contextualize that fact. A professional historian can read a lot more into a date than someone just learning to pass a multiple choice test. But does that mean the fact - PH bombed on 12/7/41 - is a different fact if used in different language games? It's possible, but that's what opens up the vaccuum.

Come on, Banno. You know you have to do better than that. 5 words? Fucking Australians. There's a good chance the moderators will delete your post, with good reason. — T Clark

I guess we were too late. And he'll justify it by wringing at least 10 pages out of you suckers.

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

Knowledge...

Folk seem to think of it only in terms of knowing that...; they forget about knowing how...

I've argued that knowledge being seen as justified true belief is at best a good first guess. Given that we should be looking to what words do rather than what they mean, we should be looking at what we do with what we know. Knowing that... reduces to knowing how...

So knowing that one plus one is two is being able to count and hence to add. it's the doing, the capacity of implement the rule, that shows the knowing.

You don't have to be here if you don't want to.

But what actually is learning what date pearl harbor happened on? — csalisbury

Knowing such a date consists in so much more than the bare recitation. It's about knowing that it was after the start of the war in Europe, before the bombing of Tokyo, the event that caused the US to become involved, launched from aircraft carriers and so on. It's about being able to talk knowledgeably on the topic, and to relate it to other things you know.

It's this breadth of language, it's role in life, that is missing from an account of language as a conduit.
(@Coben)

It turned out well enough to justify a spectator seat. I'll :zip: now

Popcorn or hotdogs?

Tim Tams in your honour.