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. — Banno
Only laboring the point because I think you're right to offer a corrective to the idea of language as information transfer. But if it isnt also information transfer, and it just making moves in games, the corrective itself can get very weird. — csalisbury
But : does that mean that the student doesn't know that pearl harbor was bombed on 12/7/41? — csalisbury
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? — Terrapin Station
I am not aware that Banno or anybody else said it would be redundant. It is logically redundant, and hence redundant if one believes the only use of words is to convey information embedded in the words. But the OP suggested that that is not the only use of words.Then why, Captain Obvious, would it be redundant and unnecessary to tell me, "It is raining", when I'm looking outside at it raining? — Harry Hindu
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
When DNA replicates, it's quite clear that something is making a correlation between distinct things. — Metaphysician Undercover
Ignoring the multi-dimensional aspect of these correlations is where language often runs into trouble. — Possibility
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. — Baden
The assertion of the OP was specifically about information; not about "all those things and more". Unless there is an argument that (moving) information is equivalent to meaning and knowledge (and more?)... — Luke
Got an argument, or perhaps minimal criterion for correlation(what all correlation is existentially dependent upon)? — creativesoul
When DNA replicates, it's quite clear that something is making a correlation between distinct things. If there was no correlation, it would not be a replication. So if agency is necessary to draw correlations between distinct things, then agency must be involved in DNA replication. — Metaphysician Undercover
One thing I brought up in another thread about this is that we could say that two things "match" when they're structurally similar--for example, two shirts that we'd loosely call "the same shirt." — Terrapin Station
All you have done is explain how words can be used to convey information. The fact that a word can be used to convey different information than what the word is defined as conveying doesn't contradict the fact that language is used to convey information.I am not aware that Banno or anybody else said it would be redundant. It is logically redundant, and hence redundant if one believes the only use of words is to convey information embedded in the words. But the OP suggested that that is not the only use of words.
For instance, the thing that the speaker might be doing is letting their partner, to whom the sentence is addressed, and with whom they have been in a furious, frigid, non-speaking standoff for two days, that they want to find a way to heal the breach.
There is indeed a message in the speech act, something like "I am sorry this has happened to us, and I would like to fix it. I am also sorry for my part in it, even though I don't think it was all me. Can we try to put it behind us and start again?".
But that message has nothing to do with rain.
So I would say that when we use words we are nearly always conveying some sort of message (even "Hello" usually signals friendly intent and that I consider the other person worthy of my acknowledgement), but the message often has nothing to do with the words used.
I suppose an instance where there is no information transmitted from one to another would be "I'm not afraid of you!", spoken to somebody I am afraid of, and who knows that. I say it to try and build up my own courage. Whether it has any impact on them is not the point. — andrewk
Then a toaster knows how to toast bread. Got it. :up: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. — Banno
But when we say two shirts are the same, isn't this a kind of shorthand for saying that the pattern, color, size, etc. are the same? The sameness you're talking about is under the umbrella of universals. I think your nominalism is sort of shabby chic. — frank
Imagine a dream in which the scenery comes into existence spontaneously with the flow of the dream. It wasn't there before the action takes place, but having come into being, the dreamer flows on with the rock solid assumption that the landscape it takes place in was always there. The dream gives itself its own history. When the dream characters interact, they all draw from this solid ground they find themselves in. And every word they speak is reinforcing and recreating that landscape moment by moment.
I think to some extent this is what we mean by form of life. Now that is doing something with words. — frank
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