Abstract
The paper considers the relation of Shannon-type information to those semantic and hermeneutic aspects of communication, which are often referred to as meaning. It builds on considerations of Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann and Robert K. Logan and relates them to an agent-based model that reproduces key aspects of the Talking Head experiment by Luc Steels. The resulting insights seem to give reason to regard information and meaning not as qualitatively different entities, but as interrelated forms of order that emerge in the interaction of autonomous (self-referentially closed) agents. Although on first sight, this way of putting information and meaning into a constructivist framework seems to open possibilities to conceive meaning in terms of Shannon-information, it also suggests a re-conceptualization of information in terms of what cybernetics calls Eigenform in order to do justice to its dynamic interrelation with meaning.
Highlights
In spite of its labeling as a “mathematical theory of communication”, the theory of Claude E.Shannon appears to be primarily concerned with the relation of signals and noise, or, in terms of theory, with a mathematical definition of information
As Shannon himself [1] mentioned, his conception is hardly a full-fledged theory of communication. It allows grasping some technical aspects of communication, it does not account for the semantic or hermeneutic aspects, which many consider essential in communication [2,3,4,5]
In the extant literature some of these aspects are comprised as meaning and especially in traditional philosophy are considered extra-communicational, Information2012, 3 with meaning being thought of as a sort of individual knowledge that draws on an actor’s intentions, and that finds its expression in special “illocutionary forces” (Austin) that correspond to a particular will of human actors to be understood [6]
Summary
In spite of its labeling as a “mathematical theory of communication”, the theory of Claude E. In the extant literature some of these aspects are comprised as meaning and especially in traditional philosophy are considered extra-communicational, Information2012, 3 with meaning being thought of as a sort of individual knowledge that draws on an actor’s intentions, and that finds its expression in special “illocutionary forces” (Austin) that correspond to a particular will of human actors to be understood [6] In this sense, meaning is considered a (human) attribute to communication, which resides somewhere beyond the sphere of what (Shannon) information is able to grasp [7,8]. It should be possible to subject the interplay of information and meaning (i.e., communication) to formalization, at least in terms of an emergent property of the interaction of a multitude of autonomous agents, as will be insinuated with regards to a multi-agent simulation These considerations could contribute to what has been envisioned as a Unified Theory of Information [11]. This hypothesis seems to find confirmation in experiments in AI and robotics as conducted by Luc Steels [12] and colleagues [13]
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