Theory of Communication

Definition: Communication: The effect one being has on another being.

• May be reciprocal or not.
• May be relational (static) or affective (dynamic).
• May be agentive or not.
• May be intentional or not.

Human communication is not a transfer of meaning or ideas. Such is impossible given the ego-centric nature of each self.

The process of deliberate agentive human communication:

1. The sender-self creates a sender message.
2. The sender-self acts to project that message (speaking, writing, signing) through its body.
3. The receiver-self perceives the code signal used by the sender.
4. The receiver-self creates a message which he/she hypothesizes the sender is sending.

Definition: Message: The mental unit of deliberate agentive communication. It exists only in the self and is associated with agents only.

A sender message always consists of three parts:

1. A desire or intention
2. A message-action (physical and/or verbal) intended to fulfill the given desire or intention.
3. Creation of a hypothesis as to what will happen next.

Postulates and laws of communication:

1. To exist is to communicate. Not to affect anything is not to exist. All real beings communicate with something.
2. Some beings exist only to be acted upon. Other beings exist both to be acted upon and to act.
3. Communication produces two kinds of effects: change of accident and change of essence. (Example: To give someone information is to affect that person in accident. To cut off a person’s leg is to affect the person’s body in essence. There is no way for communication to change the essence of a self. Self does not equal body.)
4. An agent is a being wherein the only changes made by communication are changes of accident. All change of essence is made by the volition of the agent.
5. An agent self affects change of essence in that agent’s self mainly by choosing accidents in which to immerse the self (we affect ourselves by choosing the communications we will receive). The choice of certain types of accidents and the persistent dwelling in them to the exclusion of other choices of accidents create habits of choice and satisfaction which in time will create a new essence of the self.
6. There is no being which is not acted upon. There is no unmoved mover in regard to accident; the closest thing to that is perdition (to be lost). There is an unmoved mover in regard to essence: God.
7. Only agentive beings created messages.
8. Agentive communication is always moral or immoral. (Value considerations are part of every action.)
9. An agent is a being whose sending is not fully controlled by its receiving.
10. All “natural language” usage is elliptical in communication. Always much is assumed which is not said.
11. No receiver recapitulates the full intended message of a sender. Full recapitulation is approached only asymptotically. The communication situation is always entropic, never complete.

Definition: Total Communication: Observing and accounting for all of the (possibly observable) acts of the sender, not just present speech acts.

Ways to maximize communication:

1. Strive for total communication. Know the values, beliefs and habits of the sender or receiver.
2. Communicate about many things. Communicating about everything enhances communication about anything.
3. Sender variables: (i) Strive for redundancy, (ii) Reduce ellipsis. (iii) Define and act out messages ostensibly. Paint a picture. (iv) Encode appropriately to receiver’s ability to decode. (v) Attain and maintain correspondent’s attention.
4. Receiver variables: (i) Capture the message (Actively search out the intent, the assertion, the relevance (expectation). (ii) Search for and/or stimulate evidence which will confirm/disconfirm the interpretive hypothesis.