Dear colleagues and Xueshan??
The relationship between meaning and information:
1. Three levels to understand them
1.1 words in language: there are just two different words,meaning and
information.
1.2 concepts in thought: the meaning of meaning, the meaning of information,
where both are the same, then they are two usages of one use of synonymy,
respectively; if both mean something different then they are two different
concepts.
1.3 objects in world: the meaning and the information of these two terms
specifically refer to.
2. Either look at them from a linguistic point of view, or talk about them both
from an informational perspective. In principle, they should not be discussed
both in linguistics and in information science. Otherwise, they will encounter
the contradiction between the two.
Best wishes,
Xiaohui, Zou
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------------------ Original ------------------
From: ?????? <y...@pku.edu.cn>
Date: ????,3?? 4,2018 9:18 ????
To: FIS Group <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] A Paradox
Dear Dai, S?0?3ren, Karl, Sung, Syed, Stan, Terry, and Loet,
I am sorry to reply you late, but I have thoroughly read every post about the
paradox and they have brought me many inspirations, thank you. Now I offer my
responses as follows:
Dai, metaphor research is an ancient topic in linguistics, which reveals the
relationship between tenor and vehicle, ground and figure, target and source
based on rhetoric. But where is our information? It looks like Syed given the
answer: "Information is the container of meaning." If I understand it right, we
may have this conclusion from it: Information is the carrier of meaning. Since
we all acknowledge that sign is the carrier of information, the task of our
Information Science will immediately become something like an intermediator
between Semiotics (study of sign) and Semantics (study of meaning), this is
what we absolutely want not to see. For a long time, we have been hoping that
the goal of Information Science is so basic that it can explain all information
phenomenon in the information age, it just like what Sung expects, which was
consisted of axioms, or theorems or principles, so it can end all the debates
on information, meaning, data, etc., but according to this view, it is very
difficult to complete the missions. Syed, my statement is "A grammatically
correct sentence CONTAINS information rather than the sentence itself IS
information."
S?0?3ren believes that the solution to this paradox is to establish a new
discipline which level is more higher than the level of Information Science as
well as Linguistics, such as his Cybersemiotics. I have no right to review your
opinion, because I haven't seen your book Cybersemiotics, I don't know its
content, same as I don't know what the content of Biosemiotics is, but my view
is that Peirce's Semiotics can't dissolve this paradox.
Karl thought: "Information and meaning appear to be like key and lock." which
are two different things. Without one, the existence of another will lose its
value, this is a bit like the paradox about hen and egg. I don't know how to
answer this point. However, for your "The text may be an information for B,
while it has no information value for A. The difference between the
subjective." "??Information?? is synonymous with ??new??." these claims are the
classic debates in Information Science, a typical example is given by Mark
Burgin in his book: "A good mathematics textbook contains a lot of information
for a mathematics student but no information for a professional mathematician."
For this view, Terry given his good answer: One should firstly label what
context and paradigm they are using to define their use of the term
"information." I think this is effective and first step toward to construct a
general theory about information, if possible.
For Stan's "Information is the interpretation of meaning, so transmitted
information has no meaning without interpretation." I can only disagree with it
kindly. The most simple example from genetics is: an egg cell accepts a sperm
cell, a fertilized egg contains a set of effective genetic information from
paternal and maternal cell, here information transmission has taken place, but
is there any "meaning" and "explanation"? We should be aware that meaning only
is a human or animal phenomena and it does not be used in any other context
like plant or molecule or cell etc., this is the key we dissolve the paradox.
In general, I have not seen any effective explanation of this paradox so far.
Best wishes,
Xueshan
From: Syed Ali [mailto:doctorsyedal...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 8:10 PM
To: Sungchul Ji <s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu>
Cc: Terrence W. DEACON <dea...@berkeley.edu>; Xueshan Yan <y...@pku.edu.cn>;
FIS Group <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] A Paradox
Dear All:
If a non English speaking individual saw the newspaper headline ??Earthquake
Occurred in Armenia Last Night??: would that be "information?"
My belief is - Yes. But he or she would have no idea what it was about- the
meaning would be : Possibly "something " as opposed to the meaning an English
speaking individual would draw.
In both situations there would be still be meaning - A for the non English
speaking and B for the English speaking.
Conclusion: Information is the container of meaning.
Please critique.
Syed
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On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 5:43 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu> wrote:
Hi FISers,
I am not sure whether I am a Procrustes (bed) or a Peirce (triadomaniac), but I
cannot help but seeing an ITR (irreducible Triadic Relation) among Text,
Context and Meaning, as depicted in Figure 1.
f
g
Context --------> Text
---------> Meaning
|
^
|
|
|
|
|_________________________|
h
??The meaning of a text is irreducibly dependent on its context.??
??Text, context, and meaning are irreducibly triadic.?? The ??TCM
principle?? (?)
Figure 1. The Procrustean bed, the Peircean triadomaniac, or both ?
f = Sign production; g = Sign interpretation; h = Correlation or
information flow.
According to this 'Peircean/Procrustesian' diagram, both what Terry said and
what Xueshan said may be valid. Although their thinking must have been
irreducibly triadic (if Peirce is right), Terry may have focused on (or
prescinded) Steps f and h, while Xueshan prescinded Steps g and h, although he
did indicate that his discussion was limited to the context of human
information and human meaning (i.e., Step f). Or maybe there are many other
interpretations possible, depending on the interpreter of the posts under
discussion and the ITR diagram.
There are an infinite number of examples of algebraic operations: 2+3 = 5, 3 -
1 = 2, 20 x 45 = 900, etc., etc.
If I say "2 + 3 = 5", someone may say, but you missed "20 x 45 = 900". In
other words, no matter what specific algebraic operation I may come up with, my
opponent can always succeed in coming up with an example I missed. The only
solution to such an end-less debate would be to discover the axioms of algebra,
at which level, there cannot be any debate. When I took an abstract algebra
course as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 1962-5, I
could not believe that underlying all the complicated algebraic calculations
possible, there are only 5 axioms
(https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-5-basic-axioms-of-algebra).
So can it be that there are the axioms (either symbolic, diagrammatic, or
both) of information science waiting to be discovered, which will end all the
heated debates on information, meaning, data, etc. ?
All the best.
Sung
From: Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Terrence W. DEACON
<dea...@berkeley.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 1:13 PM
To: Xueshan Yan
Cc: FIS Group
Subject: Re: [Fis] A Paradox
It is so easy to get into a muddle mixing technical uses of a term with
colloquial uses, and add a dash of philosophy and discipline-specific
terminology and it becomes mental quicksand. Terms like 'information' and
'meaning" easily lead us into these sorts of confusions because they have so
many context-sensitive and pardigm-specific uses. This is well exhibited in
these FIS discusions, and is a common problem in many interdisciplinary
discussions. I have regularly requested that contributors to FIS try to label
which paradigm they are using to define their use of the term "information' in
these posts, but sometimes, like fish unaware that they are in water, one
forgets that there can be alternative paradigms (such as the one S?0?3ren
suggests).
So to try and avoid overly technical usage can you be specific about what you
intend to denote with these terms.
E.g. for the term "information" are you referring to statisitica features
intrinsic to the character string with respect to possible alternatives, or
what an interpreter might infer that this English sentence refers to, or
whether this reference carries use value or special significance for such an
interpreter?
And e.g. for the term 'meaning' are you referring to what a semantician would
consider its underlying lexical structure, or whether the sentence makes any
sense, or refers to anything in the world, or how it might impact some reader?
Depending how you specify your uses your paradox will become irresolvable or
dissolve.
?? Terry
On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 1:47 AM, Xueshan Yan <y...@pku.edu.cn> wrote:
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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University of California, Berkeley
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