Against "meaning" I think that there is a danger of allowing our anthropocentrism to bias the discussion. I worry that the term 'meaning' carries too much of a linguistic bias. By this I mean that it is too attractive to use language as our archtypical model when we talk about information. Language is rather the special case, the most unusual communicative adaptation to ever have evolved, and one that grows out of and depends on informationa/semiotic capacities shared with other species and with biology in general. So I am happy to see efforts to bring in topics like music or natural signs like thunderstorms and would also want to cast the net well beyond humans to include animal calls, scent trails, and molecular signaling by hormones. And it is why I am more attracted to Peirce and worried about the use of Saussurean concepts. Words and sentences can indeed provide meanings (as in Frege's Sinn - "sense" - "intension") and may also provide reference (Frege's Bedeutung - "reference" - "extension"), but I think that it is important to recognize that not all signs fit this model. Moreover,
A sneeze is often interpreted as evidence about someone's state of health, and a clap of thunder may indicate an approaching storm. These can also be interpreted differently by my dog, but it is still information about something, even though I would not say that they mean something to that interpreter. Both of these phenomena can be said to provide reference to something other than that sound itself, but when we use such phrases as "it means you have a cold" or "that means that a storm is approaching" we are using the term "means" somewhat metaphorically (most often in place of the more accurate term "indicates"). And it is even more of a stretch to use this term with respect to pictures or diagrams. So no one would say the a specific feature like the ears in a caricatured face mean something. Though if the drawing is employed in a political cartoon e.g. with exaggerated ears and the whole cartoon is assigned a meaning then perhaps the exaggeration of this feature may become meaningful. And yet we would probably agree that every line of the drawing provides information contributing to that meaning. So basically, I am advocating an effort to broaden our discussions and recognize that the term information applies in diverse ways to many different contexts. And because of this it is important to indicate the framing, whether physical, formal, biological, phenomenological, linguistic, etc. For this reason, as I have suggested before, I would love to have a conversation in which we try to agree about which different uses of the information concept are appropriate for which contexts. The classic syntax-semantics-pragmatics distinction introduced by Charles Morris has often been cited in this respect, though it too is in my opinion too limited to the linguistic paradigm, and may be misleading when applied more broadly. I have suggested a parallel, less linguistic (and nested in Stan's subsumption sense) way of making the division: i.e. into intrinsic, referential, and normative analyses/properties of information. Thus you can analyze intrinsic properties of an informing medium [e.g. Shannon etc etc] irrespective of these other properties, but can't make sense of referential properties [e.g. what something is about, conveys] without considering intrinsic sign vehicle properties, and can't deal with normative properties [e.g. use value, contribution to function, significance, accuracy, truth] without also considering referential properties [e.g. what it is about]. In this respect, I am also in agreement with those who have pointed out that whenever we consider referential and normative properties we must also recognize that these are not intrinsic and are interpretation-relative. Nevertheless, these are legitimate and not merely subjective or nonscientific properties, just not physically intrinsic. I am sympathetic with those among us who want to restrict analysis to intrinsic properties alone, and who defend the unimpeachable value that we have derived from the formal foundations that Shannon's original analysis initiated, but this should not be used to deny the legitimacy of attempting to develop a more general theory of information that also attempts to discover formal principles underlying these higher level properties implicit in the concept. I take this to be the intent behind Pedro's list. And I think it would be worth asking for each of his points: Which information paradigm within this hoierarchy does it assume? — Terry
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