February 1986
Question: What is the most useful unit on which to focus as the basic unit of human communication?
Static system: A non-functioning sub-system consisting only of stationary parts and their relationships.
Communication in a static system: unobstructed contiguity of parts of a static system. Unit: discrete situations of unobstructed contiguity.
+ e.g.: The kitchen communicates with the dining room in this house.
– e.g.: Tunnel A does not communicate with tunnel B.
Dynamic system: A static sub-system having moving or effective parts, having input, internal process and output.
Communication in a dynamic system: The effect that one or more parts of a dynamic system have upon one or more other parts of the system. Unit: Effective force applied through time: foot-pounds of work.
+ e.g.: This thermostat communicates “turn on” and “turn off” signals to the furnace.
– e.g.: Because the power is off the thermostat cannot communicate with the furnace.
Agent system: A dynamic sub-system of which at least one agent is a dynamic part. (Agent: a dynamic system the output of which is not more than partly determined by input to that system.)
Communication in an agent system: The attempt of an agent to effect a desired change in the universe by performing an act (input to the rest-of-the-universe-sub-system by an agent in order to change its output). Unit of agent communication: Assertion+: the output of an agent which becomes input to the universe-system (the all-but-this-agent subsystem of the universe).
Assertion: The intentional act of an agent who acts to create a change in the universe. Assertion is the vehicle of message. It is a sentence, an exclamation, or any non-verbal intentional act. Assertions are physical and ostensive. Messages are mental only.
Message: The interpretation of any assertion in which the following operations are performed by an agent on the occasion of observing an assertion in context:
- The asserter’s intent is hypothesized.
- There is a propositional decoding of the assertion.
- There is an attribution of strength (support, + or –) for that assertion.
- There is an estimate of the impact or result on the universe of that assertion occasion (present result and probable future results).
Propositional decoding: Interpretation of the assertion into a concatenation of the concepts of the observer which the observer deems to be an adequate translation of the assertion from some physical language into his own concept language. The observer’s own concept language is not language specific in relation to the public languages of the human community.
Analogy: An assertion might be likened unto the shooting of an arrow (indeed, the shooting of an arrow by an agent is always an assertion). Message components:
- The target and intended effect of the shooting of the arrow.
- The specific nature of the arrow projected at the target.
- The force imparted to the arrow in its projection.
- The actual and probable future effects of the arrow as judged at the time when its force is spent.
Messages are constructed (created) attributions concerning as asserter and the asserter’s assertion by a participant in the assertion experience context. They should be ex post facto reconstructions of past events (hear or experience first, judge later). They may truly or falsely portray the assertion in context. True message portrayal: One-to-one correspondence between actual assertion and assertion context as judged by a perfect (unbiased) and omniscient observer.
False message portrayal: erroneous constructive portrayal of an assertion and its assertion context as judged by a perfect (unbiased) and omniscient observer.
Messages are always private mental constructions. To express those private mental constructions in any overt way is to assert, to make an assertion, which is to try to create a change in the universe by doing work (dynamic communication). Assertion is the dynamic communication of an agent, therefore is also agent communication.
Meaning: The total message a person creates for a given assertion. Meaning is always attributed (never inherent), and is always use-context specific. Words and sentences in mention context have no meaning. This is to say that though there are meanings-in-general (meanings that represent statistical modes of historic use-contexts), there are no general meanings (necessary or correct meanings) for words or sentences. Words in mention-context only have potential meanings, and that potentiality is infinite in theory but limited in practice.
Thesis: Assertion-in-use-context is the basic unit of communication.
Support
Successful assertion is always an assertion-in-use-context unit. Understanding or correct apprehension of meaning is always mental reconstruction by a participant in that context of an assertion-in-use-context (hereafter referred to by the acronym “aiuc”).
Aiuc vs. phoneme character: An isolated phoneme/character can be made to mean anything because it means nothing.
Aiuc vs. morpheme/word: An isolated morpheme/word has typical meanings but there is no way to know apart from context which typical or which atypical use is intended.
Aiuc vs. phrase: Phrase has all of the problems of morpheme/word.
Aiuc vs. sentence: Sentences in use are assertions, but not all assertions are sentences. Sentences in mention have only potential, not actual meaning. (Except that sentences in mention are actually cases of sentences in use and the user may indeed intend them to have a particular meaning, and the observer may indeed insist that his “meaning” attribution is appropriate. But there is nothing to which two observers who disagree could refer to settle their dispute. Aiuc always has something more than personal opinion to which persons can refer to help settle disagreements.)
Aiuc vs. proposition: as usually construed, propositions are taken so narrowly as to eliminate much meaningful human communication. As construed here, propositions are only part of the necessary complete unit of meaning.
Aiuc vs. message: Message is always the subjective reaction of a context participant. That message may improve or deteriorate through time relative to a given aiuc. The aiuc is the object of interpretation, and needs to be as fixed and as objective as possible to facilitate progressively better interpretations.
Aiuc vs. meaning: Meaning is the whole point of contention. To decide what is the most felicitous unit for communication is to say what is the basic unit of meaning. To settle on meaning over aiuc would be to beg the question.
Other points which favor aiuc as the basic unit of communication:
- This use of aiuc is continuous with common sense; we know that meaning can best be determined only in use-context.
- The use of aiuc allows as objective or behavioral a target for interpretation as possible, yet supplies a sufficiently rich situation to enable us often to come to agreement as to interpretation.
- This use of aiuc is metaphysically parsimonious, not necessitating the ad hoc invention of such creatures as “deep structure”, “objective referents”, or platonic categories.
- The use of aiuc recognizes agency, both in the asserter and in the attributor of meaning. Agent communication is thus not forced into a mechanistic reductionism.
- The use of aiuc facilitates consideration of non-verbal languages and non-language actions as part of the actual human communication phenomenon.
- This construal of aiuc helps to prevent hubris in the human species by reminding us that there is no human voice that is final and authoritative, about anything, and that every assertion is a species of bearing personal testimony.
QED!