Re: Data and meaning

Rafael,
You higlight a good point.
Overall answer: yes the presence of water will generate
a meaningful information for you and for the robot.
But beyond this statement, many things will be different.
Presence of water is the external information that you,
thirsty human, receive. And this received information will
generate a meaning in your body because it has some
relation with your constraint "maintain a given level of
water in the body". And the meaningful information
generated will be "presence of water that can reduce my
thirst".
For the robot, assuming it has been programmed with a
constraint "drink some water", the presence of water will
generate a meaningful information "presence of water that
can satisfy the constraint".
So the robot, like you, will generate internally a meaningful
information. At first look, theses two meaningful information
are quite similar. But this similarity is only for this precise
meaning vs this precise constraint. For the robot, it is all that
is to be said. But for us humans, the presence of water is going
to generate many other meanings coming from the constraints
related to our history of relations with water and with the world,
to our other desires, to our emotions, to our free will, and so on.
And for us, the meaning quite similar to the one generated
within the robot will be only a little element in the web of
meanings that the presence of water will generate within
ourselves.
This makes the difference. As you write it, a human can say
"it is related to my whole bodily being-in-the-world with others.. "
We could also add the other difference about derived vs non
derived meaning (the meaning in the robot comes from a
human programing. For us, it does not).
Apart from this last difference, I feel we can say that it is more
a question about a difference of complexity than about a
difference of nature.
Would you agree ?

Regards

Christophe

> Christoph,
>
> as far as I can see, something
> has meaning for me (or for another
> kind of living system) not just if data
> are *processed* in my brain but
> if it is related to my whole bodily
> being-in-the-world with others... I mean,
> if I am thirsty it is because my body is
> of this kind that it needs water. Would
> it make *any difference* (i.e. any
> meaning and therefore has any
> informational value...) if a robot that
> is not of the kind of bodily existence
> as I am, would be able to say: I am
> thirsty? and the same with all other
> *meanings*.
>
> Rafael
>
>
>
Received on Sun Sep 29 20:23:30 2002