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

I mostly agree, and was hinting at something similar in my paragraph about the historian vs the studying-to-test-well student (tbf it was an edit so may have gone in as you were responding.)

But : does that mean that the student doesn't know that pearl harbor was bombed on 12/7/41?

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 is instead just making moves in games, the corrective itself can get very weird.

Google translation works by taking vast collections of already translated documents and examining statistically the recurrence of the words to be translated.

I am guessing that few here would say that Google translation understands the meaning of the texts it uses. It works on information at the level of syntax.

That's all that is needed for moving information about. Using language is far more than that, which again shows the poverty of the conduit model.

Language is not moving information about.

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

The title is intentionally a provocation. I'll posit that any information transfer that takes place is incidental; the main game consists in what we do together, not what is transferred from one head to another.

But : does that mean that the student doesn't know that pearl harbor was bombed on 12/7/41? — csalisbury

A rigid education system might offer the student a multiple choice question about the date of the bombing, and conclude that she has the knowledge. A more flexible system might insist that she write an essay on the import of the bombing before claiming that she knows.

It depends, of course, what we are doing with the word "know"...

Another great Australian export...

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

If you take the actions out of the picture, then aren't you left with only syntax?

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

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.

Another way at this.

(1)Replace 'conceptual schemes' with 'conceptual games' - various ways of knowing-how, rather than knowing-that.
(2)Retain Davidson
(3)Retain Wittgenstein
(4) Is there one all-encompassing game (or potential-game) all other games can be (in principle) translated into?

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. 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.

In my understanding, information is the correlation itself. Knowledge is the capacity to make use of that information: to integrate it into an existing set of correlations, which then interacts with the world.

So I agree that language is not moving information from one head to another. Language is a set of correlations through which we can transmit other correlations among sets of correlations.

It is how we understand the nature of correlations at various levels or dimensions that confuses the issue. Some sets of correlations we consider to be things or entities, and tend to ignore the fact that they consist of correlations at all. This is because, despite what information we now have (ie. what correlations we have integrated), it requires less effort to interact with the entity than with the set of correlations. Other correlations we refer to as ‘concepts’, and recognise that interacting with them as an entity or ‘thing’ can lead to inaccuracies that render the interaction counterproductive.

Language enables us to integrate correlations across a number of different levels or dimensions of awareness by treating everything as ‘conceptual’. Ignoring the multi-dimensional aspect of these correlations is where language often runs into trouble.

When DNA replicates, it's quite clear that something is making a correlation between distinct things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Got an argument, or perhaps minimal criterion for correlation(what all correlation is existentially dependent upon)?

Ignoring the multi-dimensional aspect of these correlations is where language often runs into trouble. — Possibility

That bit about "the multi-dimensional aspect" points in the right direction.

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

:lol:

Is this discussion about information or meaning? Or knowledge? Or something else?

It's about information, meaning, and knowledge... and doing stuff with language that cannot be adequately accounted for by saying that language moves information from one place(mind) to another.

Read through it...

It's not only about the assertion of the OP then? Okay.

Those are not mutually exclusive options... are they? It can be about all those things and more.

Language cannot move anything. Language has no agency. No physical structure to exert upon that which is being moved.

Language can move everything in the sense that it can re-arrange one's beliefs.

The OP was an intentional provocation. Stir things up a bit.

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?)...

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

As if information need be equivalent to meaning or knowledge in order for both to be germane to the OP?

Meh.

Interesting argument.

:smile:

Thanks.

Interesting subject matter.

Got an argument, or perhaps minimal criterion for correlation(what all correlation is existentially dependent upon)? — creativesoul

Argument? If you do not believe that there's a correlation between the two distinct instances of DNA, when DNA replicates, then just say so. But I think that's a silly argument on your part.

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."

But when we're talking about the correlation between a proposition and a state of affairs, surely we're not saying that they're similar in that way, are we? (And beside that, extramentally, we have nothing to make a determination that they're similar.)

With the DNA example you use, we're talking about a physical process that manipulates materials in a particular way. If we're proposing this for a way that correspondence can work when it comes to something like truth value, what analogous (to DNA) physical process are we talking about?

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

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.

But answer this: if it turns out that language is more creative than we usually give it credit for, does that sit well with you? Try this out:

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.

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

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.

The message does have to do with rain, but also has to do with the intent of the speaker (the cause) to start a conversation. There is more information that is conveyed than just what the words mean when language is used. You are also informed that someone is speaking, understands English, who is speaking and there location relative to you. Your senses provide you with nothing but information, and words - being visual scribbles and sounds themselves - are just part of that information. How you interpret the different levels of causes for what you are hearing or seeing is based upon learned experience - your knowledge.

It is up to the listener to get at the cause of what they are hearing (the effect) (effects carry information about their causes) - which would be the intent of the speaker. What information did the speaker really intend to convey? In the above example, the speaker is speaking indirectly about their intent. They could have just said "Can we try to put it behind us and start again?", and in that case the words would mean what they are commonly defined as meaning and that information would be conveyed more directly and the message WOULD have to do with the words being used.

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

Then a toaster knows how to toast bread. Got it. :up:

You know how to plug in a toaster and flip the switch but a toaster is what knows how to toast bread as it is the one doing the toasting.

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

We're saying that properties are "the same," yes. I'm not sure what you're pointing out here, because "it's all properties" really.

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

Um . . . :confused: I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're getting at with any of that. So I'm not sure how to comment on it.

it's all properties" really. — Terrapin Station

That's phenomenalism.