Dear Xueshan,
let us work thru your Armenia paradox. It says:
" Suppose an earthquake occurred in Armenia last night and all of the main
media of the world have given the report about it. On the second day, two
students A and B are putting forward a dialogue facing the newspaper
headline “*Earthquake Occurred in Armenia Last Night*”:
Q: What is the *MEANING* contained in this sentence?
A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.
Q: What is the *INFORMATION* contained in this sentence?
A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night. “
Your viewpoint focuses on the identity of the two terms “meaning” and
“information”. Another approach would be to split A’s and B’s knowledge of
the earthquake. (Maybe A had heard it already in the radio, while for B the
paper was news.)
The text may be an information for B, while it has no information value for
A. The difference between the subjective, human usage of the word
“information” and the objective, technical usage of the same word is, that
in human context, “information” is synonymous with “new”. The sentences
“This is news for me” and “This is information for me” can be used
interchangeably in social discourses and there is no risk of being
misunderstood.
In a technical understanding of the context, into which the text must fit,
there can be no new elements or ideas. This is what Wittgenstein said. All
that can ever be said, can be considered as having been said. The sequence
of discoveries has only practical, but no theoretical importance. It is
completely and absolutely irrelevant whether which of teleportation or time
travel we discover first – please use your own examples of something that
we believe is not possible but that may still turn out to be possible -,
their possibility of being discovered is a part of their description.
Puzzles of Nature are not objective puzzles: they are subjective
shortcomings of not having kept the eyes open. The signs were always there
for a²+b²=c², the Neanderthals could also have formalised the fact, had
they had the time, inclination and education to discover it. There can be
no invention in the world of rational thinking, only discoveries.
As to the meaning part of a headline, there are ancient civilisations that
have learnt to listen carefully to the subtle nuances of when an
announcement is made, on which position and using which layout it appears
among the communications, and so forth. In Byzantium the fact of the
communication would have been set in a context, investigated under the
aspects of whether the earthquake and its public acknowledgement will
support Prince X’s machinations or rather those of Metropolit Y. That would
have been the meaning of the text, for A and B.
Information is the flip-side of a coin. Having drunk the mother-milk of
Shannon, one will not think possible that “.not. a” has variants
independently of “a”. If the repertoire is {0,1}, knowing one of them means
knowing all of them. If the repertoire is however {0,1,2,3}, the remaining
alternatives, after having established *i* is the case, carry a meaning for
the human, and carry information for the machine. Moreover, one can chain
up the non-selected alternatives, make use of their being available for a
concurrent process, build a kind of Lego construction out of the
alternatives. The community of the rejected, de-legitimised, non-accepted
has indeed sometimes reached a critical mass, in the course of history.
Information is an enumeration of the alternatives. If one knows all that
what is not the case in context Q, one may build predictions relating to
context R. For a prediction, it is irrelevant whether the data are
presented as positive or negative extents, as logical .t. or .f. values.
Information and meaning appear to be like key and lock. They cannot exist
without each other and humans like to distinguish them. If one sees the
production of a key together with the lock in an automated fine mechanical
factory, the sheets of drawing paper, or the multiple screens of a
computer, devoted to the components of the merchandise, allow management to
decide whether the key is an addendum to the lock, or the lock is a side
product of the key. Whether the hen {is more important than, contains} the
egg is an old paradox, now resurfacing as an earthquake.
Karl
PS.: In my book “Natural Orders” there are 2 chapters: Information,
subjective concept and Information, objective definition.
2018-02-26 12:26 GMT+01:00 Søren Brier <sbr....@cbs.dk>:
> Dear Xueshan
>
>
>
> The solution to the paradox is to go to a metaparadigm that can encompass
> information science as well as linguistics. C.S. Peirce’s semiotics is such
> a paradigm especially if you can integrate cybernetics and systems theory
> with it. There is a summary of the framework of Cybersemiotics here:
>
> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a5e7/cf50ffc5edbc110ccd08279d6d8b51
> 3bfbe2.pdf
>
>
>
> Cordially yours
>
>
>
> Søren Brier
>
>
>
> Depart. of Management, Society and Comunication, CBS, Dalgas Have 15
> (2VO25), 2000 Frederiksberg
>
> Mobil 28494162 <(28)%20494%20162> www.cbs.dk/en/staff/sbrmsc ,
> cybersemiotics.com.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Fra:* Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] *På vegne af *Xueshan Yan
> *Sendt:* 26. februar 2018 10:47
> *Til:* FIS Group <fis@listas.unizar.es>
> *Emne:* [Fis] A Paradox
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> In my teaching career of Information Science, I was often puzzled by the
> following inference, I call it *Paradox of Meaning and Information* or
> *Armenia
> Paradox*. In order not to produce unnecessary ambiguity, I state it below
> and strictly limit our discussion within the human context.
>
>
>
> Suppose an earthquake occurred in Armenia last night and all of the main
> media of the world have given the report about it. On the second day, two
> students A and B are putting forward a dialogue facing the newspaper
> headline “*Earthquake Occurred in Armenia Last Night*”:
>
> Q: What is the *MEANING* contained in this sentence?
>
> A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.
>
> Q: What is the *INFORMATION* contained in this sentence?
>
> A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.
>
> Thus we come to the conclusion that *MEANING is equal to INFORMATION*, or
> strictly speaking, human meaning is equal to human information. In
> Linguistics, the study of human meaning is called Human Semantics; In
> Information Science, the study of human information is called Human
> Informatics.
>
> Historically, Human Linguistics has two definitions: 1, It is the study of
> human language; 2, It, also called Anthropological Linguistics or
> Linguistic Anthropology, is the historical and cultural study of a human
> language. Without loss of generality, we only adopt the first definitions
> here, so we regard Human Linguistics and Linguistics as the same.
>
> Due to Human Semantics is one of the disciplines of Linguistics and its
> main task is to deal with the human meaning, and Human Informatics is one
> of the disciplines of Information Science and its main task is to deal with
> the human information; Due to human meaning is equal to human information,
> thus we have the following corollary:
>
> A: *Human Informatics is a subfield of Human Linguistics*.
>
> According to the definition of general linguists, language is a vehicle
> for transmitting information, therefore, Linguistics is a branch of Human
> Informatics, so we have another corollary:
>
> B: *Human Linguistics is a subfield of Human Informatics*.
>
> Apparently, A and B are contradictory or logically unacceptable. It is a
> paradox in Information Science and Linguistics. In most cases, a settlement
> about the related paradox could lead to some important discoveries in a
> subject, but how should we understand this paradox?
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Xueshan
>
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>
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