Re: Information and Natural Languages

   Rafael Capurro's point

>In other
>words, the condition of possibility of saying something is 'out
>there' is that the one who says 'out there' knows the difference (and
>makes this difference explicit) between being 'out there' and being
>'inside'.

should be well taken by many. The activity of making the difference
explicit must be primary more than anything else.

>(Western) Philosophy has
>been asking itself for centuries about the possibility of the 'out
>there' and the question of a bridge (quaestio de ponte) between
>'there' and 'here'.

   Ain't there still many adherents to this view?

>The possibility of saying (!) something is 'out there' is a
>possibility given to us through language, as far as we can say:
>something 'is' (or 'is not'), and to broad-cast our 'casting'.

   This is exactly the point that has intrigued me. Our linguistic
institution seems to underlie the issue of information, instead of
simply that information be something to adequately be represented
by a language.

>As far as I can see, your question has also to
>do with two interesting subject matters: what does it mean to
>'broadcast' a message? We need, I think, something we could call a
>theory of messages.

   Rafael, you seem to imply here that the descriptive author of
any text on messages is willing to accept behavioral active agents
surviving even within the text. Am I right?

>And the second point is, what does it mean to
>talk about information in the present tense and in the present
>progressive tense. This last question concerns the relationship
>between message transmission and time.

   How about the possibility that even time itself, whether global
or local, might be a human construct especially in the context of
talking about information?

>When talking about information
>without making the (human) difference between past, present and
>future, we get a specific form of information (or message)
>transmission.

   You may have some idea of time here. Could you explicate it
a little bit more? Your view looks quite challenging.

   Regards,
   Koichiro

     Koichiro Matsuno
Received on Tue Dec 9 10:13:26 1997