Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!CCH.BBN.COM!bnevin
From: bnevin@CCH.BBN.COM (Bruce E. Nevin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: definition of information
Message-ID: <19880613194921.4.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 13 Jun 88 19:49:00 GMT
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Date: Mon, 13 Jun 88 09:43 EDT
From: Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: Re: definition of information
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 11 Jun 88 13:57:20 PDT
To: Bob Riemenschneider <rar@ads.com>
cc: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu, bnevin@cch.bbn.com

My understanding is that Carnap and Bar-Hillel set out to establish a
"calculus of information" but did not succeed in doing so.  

Communication theory refers to a physical system's capacity to transmit 
arbitrarily selected signals, which need not be "symbolic" (need not mean
or stand for anything).  To use the term "information" in this connection
seems Pickwickian at least.  "Real information"?  Do you mean the
Carnap/Bar-Hillel program as taken up by Hintikka?  Are you saying that
the latter has a useful representation of the meaning of texts?

Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
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