Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Dai Griffiths]

Many (most?) linguistic interactions are not propositional in the sense 
that you imply.


There is no verifiable equivalent to opening the fridge door for 
utterances like "Cool", "Give us a hand won't you", "You're welcome", 
"Justin Bieber is wonderful", "You go and sneak in round the back while 
I distract them at the front door", and so on.


So I doubt your 'usually', and the application to natural language.

Dai


On 15/11/16 15:05, Bruno Marchal wrote:
A model is a mathematical structure making a sentence (proposition) 
true or false, and this, in my opinion applies to meaning in the 
natural language, where usually some notion of reality is involved: 
 the proposition "there is two beers in the fridge" is judged 
meaningful because we believe in a reality with fridge containing, or 
not, beers.


--
-

Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Education
School of Education and Psychology
The University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton, BL3 5AB

Office: T3 02
http://www.bolton.ac.uk/IEC

SKYPE: daigriffiths
UK Mobile +44 (0)7491151559
Spanish Mobile: + 34 687955912
Work: + 44 (0)7826917705
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email:
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   dai.griffith...@gmail.com

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Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Malcolm Dean and colleagues,


On 12 Nov 2016, at 22:11, Malcolm Dean wrote:

To an animal about to be attacked and eaten, the meaning of an  
approaching predator is quite clear.


Obviously, meaning is produced by, within, and among Observers, and  
not by language.


Meaning may be produced *through* language, not *in* language, as a  
medium of interaction (aka communication).


I wish scientific specialists had more awareness of the effects of  
their specialization.


I wish people knew a bit more about mathematical logic, which is  
partially the study of the semantics (aka meaning) of formal  
expression. Meaning refer to a notion of reality, "modeled" by models  
(a bad term as physicists used "model" for what logicians call a  
theory). A model is a mathematical structure making a sentence  
(proposition) true or false, and this, in my opinion applies to  
meaning in the natural language, where usually some notion of reality  
is involved:  the proposition "there is two beers in the fridge" is  
judged meaningful because we believe in a reality with fridge  
containing, or not, beers.


The term "information", like the term "infinite" admits many technical  
(and incompatible) definitions, and also some intuitive every day  
meaning. In the case of information, many people are unclear if they  
talk about something third person describable, like with Shannon, or  
quantum information, or if they talk about the first person  
interpretation of the information, which requires a subject (at least  
a universal machine or number) and a reality (supposed to support the  
subject and what he is talking about). Despite logicians work on  
rather simple systems, most results on models and meaning are  
negative. No machine can build a complete unequivocal study of its own  
semantics. It has to be elusive, and that elusiveness plays an  
important role in the unavoidable evolution of machines and collective  
of machines.


Bruno Marchal






Malcolm Dean


Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2016 20:29:21 +0100
From: "Loet Leydesdorff" 
To: "'Alex Hankey'" , "'FIS Webinar'"

Subject: Re: [Fis] Is quantum information the basis of spacetime?

Dear Alex and colleagues,

Thank you for the reference; but my argument was about meaning.  
Meaning can only be considered as constructed in language. Other  
uses of the word are metaphorical. For example, the citation to  
Maturana.


Information, in my opinion, can be defined content-free (a la  
Shannon, etc.) and then be provided with meaning in (scholarly)  
discourses. I consider physics as one among other scholarly  
discourses. Specific about physics is perhaps the universalistic  
character of the knowledge claims. For example: "Frieden's points  
apply to quantum physics as well as classical physics." So what?  
This seems to me a debate within physics without much relevance for  
non-physicists (e.g., economists or linguists).


Loet Leydesdorff
Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Bob Logan]

Dear FISers - I enjoyed Jose’s distinction of meaning and sense making. 
Employing McLuhan’s notion of figure and ground in which one can only 
understand a figure in terms of the ground in which it operates, I would 
therefore say that meaning is figure and sense-making is the ground in which 
the full significance of the meaning emerges. The same information with 
identical meanings can have very different significances to two different 
recipients of that information. Put another way in terms of a McLuhan one-liner 
"the user is the content".

I hope you got the meaning and the significance of my remark - best wishes - Bob

__

Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto 
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications










On Nov 13, 2016, at 10:26 PM, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero  
wrote:

Dear Malcolm,

I think that is useful to distinguish between sense-making (Sinn in german, 
sentido in spanish) and meaning (Bedeutung, significado). Meaning is 
linguistic, while sense-making mixes linguistic and non linguistic dimensions. 
For the social sciences, like intellectual history, this distinction helps to 
clear further the difference between semantics (a field of meaning) and social 
structure (communicative information processing structures, like condes and 
communication media -in Luhmanns terms). 
I am aware that maybe in physics this might not be quite convincing...

Best,

El nov 12, 2016 4:43 PM, "Malcolm Dean" mailto:malcolmd...@gmail.com>> escribió:
To an animal about to be attacked and eaten, the meaning of an approaching 
predator is quite clear.

Obviously, meaning is produced by, within, and among Observers, and not by 
language.

Meaning may be produced *through* language, not *in* language, as a medium of 
interaction (aka communication).

I wish scientific specialists had more awareness of the effects of their 
specialization.

Malcolm Dean

 
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2016 20:29:21 +0100
From: "Loet Leydesdorff" mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net>>
To: "'Alex Hankey'" mailto:alexhan...@gmail.com>>, "'FIS 
Webinar'"
mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es>>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is quantum information the basis of spacetime?

Dear Alex and colleagues,

Thank you for the reference; but my argument was about meaning. Meaning can 
only be considered as constructed in language. Other uses of the word are 
metaphorical. For example, the citation to Maturana.

Information, in my opinion, can be defined content-free (a la Shannon, etc.) 
and then be provided with meaning in (scholarly) discourses. I consider physics 
as one among other scholarly discourses. Specific about physics is perhaps the 
universalistic character of the knowledge claims. For example: "Frieden's 
points apply to quantum physics as well as classical physics." So what? This 
seems to me a debate within physics without much relevance for non-physicists 
(e.g., economists or linguists).
 
Loet Leydesdorff
Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

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Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Malcolm:

 

To an animal about to be attacked and eaten, the meaning of an approaching 
predator is quite clear.

 

Obviously, meaning is produced by, within, and among Observers, and not by 
language.

 

“Quite clear” and “obviously” are no arguments. It is “as if” the animal 
attributes meaning, but this is metaphorical. You as an analyst characterize 
the behavior as based on providing meaning to the event by the animal. 

 

Best,

Loet

 

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Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Jose Javier Blanco Rivero]

Dejar Malcolm,

I think that is useful to distinguish between sense-making (Sinn in german,
sentido in spanish) and meaning (Bedeutung, significado). Meaning is
linguistic, while sense-making mixes linguistic and non linguistic
dimensions. For the social sciences, like intellectual history, this
distinction helps to clear further the difference between semantics (a
field of meaning) and social structure (communicative information
processing structures, like condes and communication media -in Luhmanns
terms).
I am aware that maybe in physics this might not be quite convincing...

Bests,
El nov 12, 2016 4:43 PM, "Malcolm Dean"  escribió:

> To an animal about to be attacked and eaten, the meaning of an approaching
> predator is quite clear.
>
> Obviously, meaning is produced by, within, and among Observers, and not by
> language.
>
> Meaning may be produced *through* language, not *in* language, as a medium
> of interaction (aka communication).
>
> I wish scientific specialists had more awareness of the effects of their
> specialization.
>
> Malcolm Dean
>
>
>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2016 20:29:21 +0100
>> From: "Loet Leydesdorff" 
>> To: "'Alex Hankey'" , "'FIS Webinar'"
>> 
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is quantum information the basis of spacetime?
>>
>> Dear Alex and colleagues,
>>
>> Thank you for the reference; but my argument was about meaning. Meaning
>> can only be considered as constructed in language. Other uses of the word
>> are metaphorical. For example, the citation to Maturana.
>>
>> Information, in my opinion, can be defined content-free (a la Shannon,
>> etc.) and then be provided with meaning in (scholarly) discourses. I
>> consider physics as one among other scholarly discourses. Specific about
>> physics is perhaps the universalistic character of the knowledge claims.
>> For example: "Frieden's points apply to quantum physics as well as
>> classical physics." So what? This seems to me a debate within physics
>> without much relevance for non-physicists (e.g., economists or linguists).
>>
>
>
>> Loet Leydesdorff
>> Professor, University of Amsterdam
>> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>>
>
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Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 32, Issue 13

[Malcolm Dean]

To an animal about to be attacked and eaten, the meaning of an approaching
predator is quite clear.

Obviously, meaning is produced by, within, and among Observers, and not by
language.

Meaning may be produced *through* language, not *in* language, as a medium
of interaction (aka communication).

I wish scientific specialists had more awareness of the effects of their
specialization.

Malcolm Dean



> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2016 20:29:21 +0100
> From: "Loet Leydesdorff" 
> To: "'Alex Hankey'" , "'FIS Webinar'"
> 
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is quantum information the basis of spacetime?
>
> Dear Alex and colleagues,
>
> Thank you for the reference; but my argument was about meaning. Meaning
> can only be considered as constructed in language. Other uses of the word
> are metaphorical. For example, the citation to Maturana.
>
> Information, in my opinion, can be defined content-free (a la Shannon,
> etc.) and then be provided with meaning in (scholarly) discourses. I
> consider physics as one among other scholarly discourses. Specific about
> physics is perhaps the universalistic character of the knowledge claims.
> For example: "Frieden's points apply to quantum physics as well as
> classical physics." So what? This seems to me a debate within physics
> without much relevance for non-physicists (e.g., economists or linguists).
>


> Loet Leydesdorff
> Professor, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
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