The Grammar of Information

Wittgenstein said he preferred to reserve the expression “I know” for the cases in which it is used in normal linguistic exchange. […] If we are to build a theory of information, if there is ever to be a science of information, that, after all, is what we want a theory, a science, of — whatever we, in normal conversation, are talking about when we talk about information. (Dretske 2003)

According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: "There seems to be no pragmatic pressure in everyday communication to converge to a more exact definition of the notion of information." The following discussion is not intended to offer a more exact definition, but it is intended to present what I think are some important observations about the concept of information that are all too commonly overlooked, ignored or misunderstood.

Communication Dependence

The first of these is that information is dependent upon communication and the skills that mediate between intelligent creatures. To fail to account for this connection is to risk undermining the important distinction we typically assume between communication and causation. To communicate is to share information, usually between two or more parties. Inanimate objects cannot share information. Their influence is causal, not communicative. Nonetheless, the effects of causal influence can be used as information, but only by creatures with some understanding or awareness of cause and effect.


Transmissibility and Communication
In a paper entitled “The Metaphysics of Information” (2003), Fred Dretske argues that information has three “essential properties”, one of which is its transmissibility. On this point I agree, but I think we could probably be a little more specific. Communication always involves transmission but transmission does not always involve communication. Conductive materials transmit heat or electricity, but they do not communicate heat or electricity. Communication is the narrower conceptual category, but it still encompasses all forms of information. It might be rightly argued however, that information about the origins of the Universe is transmitted from distant stars without being communicated by them. The important point to bear in mind though, is that without our culturally acquired communication skills and associated technologies we would have no capacity to treat the light from distant stars as information.


The of/about Distinction

The next “essential property” of information, according to Dretske, is that it is about something and is therefore necessarily semantic: “If it isn’t about anything, it isn’t information.” If this means that nonverbal (i.e. non-semantic) representations do not qualify as information, then we would have good reason to object. A simple but vitally important distinction will help to exemplify the issue. We commonly distinguish between what nonverbal representations are of and what they are about. I can answer the question of what an image (for example) is of by offering another depicted view (by providing different information that is). But I cannot answer the question of what a representation is about in the same way. “Aboutness,” as it is sometimes called, is necessarily semantic, whereas of-ness is not. A more detailed image of what a representational sculpture is of will certainly provide more information, but it will not necessarily provide more information concerning the semantic content of the sculpture, i.e. what it is about. We could document Rodin’s sculpture “The Kiss” in minute detail without providing the slightest information regarding what it is about.


False Information

The last essential property of information according to Dretske, is that it is true. He acknowledges that we sometimes talk of misinformation and false information, but he regards it as “heavy-handed” to conclude that information can be false. He states: “False information is fake information and fake information is not a species of information any more than fake diamonds are a kind of diamond.” If a theory of information needs to take account of “whatever we, in normal conversation, are talking about when we talk about information,” then it makes little sense to reject our ordinary talk of false information, misinformation and misleading information etc. It is also mistaken to suggest that “fake information” will serve as a superior substitute. Fakes are always intended to be fakes, whereas false arguments, for example, are almost never intended to be false.

Unreliable information needn’t always be false information. Information may be adequate in some circumstances and not in others. And even if such information were always reliable in most circumstances, this would only make it contingently true and not universally true.


Effects as Information

According to Steven Pinker (1997) “Information itself is nothing special; it is found wherever causes leave effects.” There is potential to be led astray here. Causation is not in the business of leaving representations in its wake. We can measure and evaluate many of the effects of causal processes, but these measurements and evaluations—not the effects measured and evaluated—are invariably instantiated in the form of representational tokens of one sort or another. It should be clear then, that information concerning the precursors of a certain effect is not to be found like apples lying around an orchard. It can only be found through the application of various skills, tools and techniques, many of which have taken many centuries of experimentation and discovery to reach their current levels of sophistication.


Carrying Information

Pinker continues: “We can regard a piece of matter that carries information about some state of affairs as a symbol; it can ‘stand for’ that state of affairs.” It may not be immediately obvious, but this is a tautology. It is like saying that we can regard a symbol as a symbol. To say that something “carries information” is already to imply that it can be regarded in symbolic terms. When information is transmitted, the process can be described in either of two ways: causal or symbolic. Despite being a tautology, Pinker’s point is correct—a piece of matter can be regarded as a symbolic stand-in for a state of affairs of which it is the effect. That’s what it means to “carry information about some state of affairs”.


The Burden of Information

It is also important to distinguish the carrying involved in information-transfer (or communication more generally) from the carrying of a physical burden. Carrying in the sense that we use when discussing information, is not at all like the carrying of a sack of potatoes or the carrying of a virus. It is more like the carrying of value or responsibility. When we say that a coin “carries” value, it would be absurd to assume that the value inheres, and is therefore detectable, in the coin. Value is conferred upon the coin through a system of exchange that enables the coin to be traded for various goods or services. The carrying of responsibility is likewise, something that finds its expression in actions. To carry responsibility for looking after a friend’s dog, is to be trusted to treat the dog with care and consideration. Burdens of responsibility are not burdens that can be measured by the kilo; they are burdens of expectation.

So when we say that something “carries information,” we mean that it can be treated in representational terms and, by virtue of this treatment, we acquire information either in the form of actual representations or through the ability to produce them.


Representational Utility

In a paper entitled “The Informational Turn in Philosophy” (2003), Fred Adams writes:

Waves of radiation traveling through space may contain information about the Big Bang before anyone detects it. Fingerprints on a gun may contain information about who pulled the trigger before anyone lifts the prints. Thus, information appears to be mind-independent (and, thereby, language independent too).

Just as the utility of objects precedes any use that might be made of them, so too does the capacity for something to be used as information precede any use we might make of it. So, whilst the ways of exploiting the world did not exist before they were discovered, the regularities—that enable exploitation—almost certainly did. Fingerprints on a gun are not representations, but when used as representations about the identity of of a murderer say, they can have very significant utility indeed. It should be noted though, that without the necessary skills and techniques, this utility of fingerprints—and thus any information they might contain—would remain wholly inaccessible. A latent image on a sheet of unprocessed film is not yet a representation, even though it contains information. It clearly follows then, that it is the techniques and processes that we apply to things that draw out their representational utility; their information.

Information Reified

According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Audi, 1999), information is: “an objective (mind independent) entity.” If information is an entity, we could be forgiven for trying to put a finger on it. Sometimes philosophers use the term “entity” to cover concepts (as does Dretske in fact) and this is usually unproblematic. In Audi’s case though, the claim that information is an objective mind-independent entity, would surely make it more substantial than a concept. Representations are entities but a capacity to represent something is not. Skills exist of course, but it is both silly and misleading to suggest that they are entities. If I commit some information to memory, I have not taken an entity on board, I have developed an ability. Abilities are not entities, they are actions that we can perform.


The Principle of Information Proliferation

When we produce information, the way that we do so can also be treated as information. When we make a phone call, the time, duration, origin and destination of the call can all be measured and recorded. This kind of information has recently become known as "metadata" and there is no reason in principle why the measurement and recording of metadata could not itself be measured and recorded. It will be evident then, that, in principle at least, this process could proliferate infinitely. I can think of no better or more persuasive evidence that information is a consequence of the way that we treat things as representational tokens.


The Media of Information

Without its representational utility, information would have no capacity to inform. So when we say that something "carries," "contains" or "conveys" information, this utility is implicit. Information is something we use. To use an object as information is to treat it or respond to it in a particular way or ways that have to be learned. Using information is thus a skill and is reliant upon techniques of communication in which representations function as the fundamental medium of exchange.

I would like to thank the members of the British Wittgenstein Society Facebook Group for valuable input during the preparation of this text.

Mute Witnesses

"While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph." Lewis Hine (1909)

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."” — Jean-Luc Godard

Remarks of this kind are familiar. They suggest that images—and unedited photographs in particular—stand in some special relation to truth: that they testify, bear witness, or in some sense “tell” us how things are.

It is easy enough to speak this way, but less easy to say clearly what it amounts to.

We often describe images using terms borrowed from verbal communication. We say that they “convey meaning”, that they “tell” us something, that they “refer” to, “describe” or even “explain” the world. Photographs are said to document, to testify, to lie, or to reveal the truth. In everyday use, such talk is unproblematic. But it can begin to mislead if taken too literally, as though images function in the same way as sentences.

The difficulty becomes clearer if we attend, not to how we speak about images, but to how they are actually used. A photograph of a cup does not say anything. It does not assert, deny, or qualify. It does not exhibit anything like the structure of a sentence. Yet this does not make it empty or inert. On the contrary, its effectiveness lies precisely in the fact that it does not need to be read in this way. One simply sees what it is of. This recognition is typically immediate. No decoding is required, no translation into words. The question of what an image is about may be open, and often contested, but the question of what it is of is usually resolved without effort. Only after this does the further question—what it is about—begin to arise, and that question is rarely straightforward. We readily distinguish between uncertainty at these two levels. An ambiguous image may prompt disagreement about what it is of, but once that is settled, differences in interpretation do not ordinarily cast it back into doubt. What it shows remains stable, even where what it is taken to mean does not. This difference is important because if it made no difference what an image was of, then it could be replaced without loss by a description. In most cases, it cannot.

Part of what makes this possible is the use of illusionistic effects, with perspectival distortion as a particularly clear example. Images are made so that, under suitable conditions, they resemble what they depict closely enough for recognition to occur directly. Lines, tones, perspective, shading, focus—these are not arbitrary devices, but ways of exploiting regularities in how we see. A drawing can suggest depth; a photograph can stand in for what it shows, not completely, and not without remainder, but sufficiently for it to be taken, in certain respects, for the thing itself.

It is important to note that photographs are not, for the most part, illusions in any strong sense. We do not generally mistake them for the things they depict. But they employ illusionistic means, and under particular conditions—distance, blur, scale, lighting—they can produce effects that approach indistinguishability. The possibility of illusion is built into their operation, even where it is not realised.

Words do not work in this way. Words do not resemble the things they are about. Their use depends upon learned conventions, upon the ability to follow rules and to participate in practices of predication. Images make use of quite different capacities. They engage perception directly, relying not on symbolic substitution, but on visible similarities. For this reason, it is not obvious that images should be treated as bearers of truth or falsehood in the same way as sentences. A statement can be true or false because it asserts something about how things are. An image may depict something that did not occur, or present things in a misleading way, but it does not itself make an assertion. It shows, and what is shown can then be taken up in various ways. This is not to deny that images can be used in acts of deception, or that they can mislead. But the source of that deception lies in how images are used, combined, or interpreted—not in the image taken in isolation. Just as a gesture can be misleading without being a lie, so an image can mislead without asserting anything at all.

Two questions are often asked of an image: what is it of? and what is it about? The first is more basic. Without some answer to it, the second cannot get started. The temptation to reverse this order—to treat images primarily as vehicles of meaning—is understandable, but it risks obscuring the conditions under which they function.

This is perhaps most evident in theoretical discussions, where images are frequently assimilated to models drawn from language. They are described as signs, as messages, as objects to be decoded. Such frameworks can be useful, but they can also encourage the thought that images depend fundamentally on processes of interpretation, in the sense in which words do. What recedes in this picture is the extent to which images rely upon ordinary perceptual capacities—on the ability to recognise, to discriminate, and to respond to visual similarities. These capacities do not depend on linguistic competence, although they can be extended and organised by it.

In this respect, images might better be understood as things used in acts of showing. They make aspects of the world available in a way that can be shared. What follows from that—what they mean, how they are interpreted, what role they play—depends upon the practices in which they are embedded or inserted.

The appeal to truth, then, may be less fundamental than it appears. When we say that an image shows the truth, we are not attributing truth to the image itself so much as situating it within a wider context of use. A photograph may serve as evidence; it may support or undermine a claim. But the truth does not reside in the image as such. To recognise this is not to diminish the importance of images, but to clarify it. Their force lies not in their ability to state or to assert, but in their capacity to present—to place something before us in a way that can be taken up, examined, and discussed.

It is in that taking up, rather than in the image itself, that questions of truth and falsity arise.

Amongst Fiction

"Aha! Oho! Tracks in the dough" (for AOPH)

Uncertainty is more compelling than truth, possibility more intriguing than fact, suggestion more engrossing than accuracy and meaning more potent than information. 

The Mirror of Judgement

Perhaps the most widespread interpretation of the role of judgement is to think of it as having its discriminative intentions focussed squarely upon the experience, thing or person being judged. Nonetheless, with every judgement also comes a significant and all too easily overlooked element of social positioning. To judge - to be in the position of exercising judgement - is an expression, demonstration and consolidation of prestige. In order to maintain prestige, judgement needs to be exercised on a regular basis. But wherever judgements are made there is also a likelihood of errors of judgement and a consequent risk that one’s professional credibility may be called into question. Therefore the more incontestable those who judge can make their judgements, the better (for them). Numerous strategies for ensuring incontestable judgements have thus evolved; from obscurantism and mysticism on the one hand to the establishment of convoluted laws, regulations and elaborate evaluative criteria on the other.

So, whilst much judgement can be seen as an attempt to exercise fine-grained intellect, discernment and critical wisdom it can also be seen as a form of social segmentation, of in-groups and out-groups, of individuals who qualify and individuals who do not, of members and outsiders, of the invited and the excluded, of those who comply and those who rebel, of those who are welcomed and those who are banished, ostracised or incarcerated, of those who evaluate and those who are evaluated.

Truth and Fiction

"The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2008)

One of the first posts on this blog addressed itself to this problem of narrative (though I was unaware of Taleb’s work at the time). I have since returned to similar territory on a number of occasions (here or here for example) to examine how the form of artworks can sometimes divert attention from other more important considerations or suggest truths where none exist. Indeed, it might be argued that much politics, religion and such so called "scientific" explanations as psychoanalysis are examples of this tendency to "bind facts together" in plausible but ultimately questionable form.

Whilst I still hold with this view, I think it’s important nonetheless to acknowledge that artworks represent a special case, since narrative - or more broadly meaning - is in many ways fundamental to the understanding of art. Without an “impression of understanding” we are left with nothing but sensations and whilst these may be pleasurable in themselves they do not constitute the kind of significances that we could call meaning. But where artworks are concerned, this meaning need not be "true", it need only cohere sufficiently for significance to be perceived.

Where the “impression of understanding” is increased in relation to artworks there can be little that is explicitly “wrong”, at least in the sense that Taleb intends. And this is because artworks do not lend themselves towards the kind of totalising certainty that constitutes a singular "true" interpretation". Artworks and the ‘work’ of interpretation itself admit of multiple perspectives and whilst it is the case that some interpretations are better than others, the aim of interpretation is rarely, if ever, to arrive at definitive truth:

“Images are not the kinds of things that reduce to singular meanings, and informed interpreters of images are not the kind of responding individuals who are looking for simple, single meanings. […] Good interpretations inspire other interpretations and engender further discourse.” Terry Barrett

Artworks encourage a plurality of interpretations, and the suspension of disbelief - which is perhaps where the principal difficulty (or “propensity” as Taleb calls it) lies. If we were unable or unwilling to immerse ourselves in such fictional encounters then the experience of much art would be extremely dreary, to say the least. Fictions simply collapse if we ask too much of them in terms of plausibility or truth. Images are simulations after all and one of the wonders of the imagination is that it thrives on scant input, indeed it seems to be largely evolved to generate the impression of completeness where there exists only the most fragmentary or nebulous information.

So, whilst this propensity to believe certain forms of information may be a disadvantage for the identification of truths, it is nonetheless a distinct advantage for the consumption of fictions – in fact, such pleasures may be impossible without it.

The Moral Dimension of Privacy

A conversation with a friend the other evening left me thinking about the difference between privacy and secrecy. In particular it left me ruminating over the silent burden of guilt that some people carry around with them when keeping secrets from friends and family.

Aside from the secrets we keep from loved ones about gifts and surprises, secrecy almost always brings with it an implicit assumption of deceit, of something concealed, illicit or hidden from view in order to maintain or gain power, influence or social standing. Whilst other people’s secrets are invariably regarded with distrust, privacy is regarded as an inalienable right of all. Both are things that we’d prefer to keep to ourselves (or at most a limited entourage of close acquaintances) but only secrecy brings with it a moral dimension, in fact, secrecy can be thought of as the moral face of privacy, a sub-classification of it, tinged with moral responsibility. But what constitutes this moral dimension? And, since these are conceptual abstractions formed and informed by social mores, what might be the purpose of such a distinction?

Morality, social taboos and religions in particular perpetuate the distinction between the secret and the private. How better to police the mind and actions of others than by compelling them to preside over their own thoughts and to determine if any particular action, memory or impulse should be categorized as either private or secret? It would seem to be this very tendency to categorize our thoughts according to differing moral standards that may, on occasion, lead to feelings of guilt and responsibility. Morals, of course, are a construct of social consensus, but they are rarely, if ever, universally shared across a culture.

If you have done something that is deemed as lawful by society as a whole but which is felt by some subgroup to be immoral - a sin even - then from their perspective it would be true to say that you are keeping a secret. But in actuality it is only a secret if you subscribe to their moral stance. Otherwise it is simply a matter of privacy, and what is private is nobodies business but your own and certainly no reason for either shame or guilt.