[Fis] A Paradox

[Søren Brier]

Dear  Xueshan

The solution to the paradox is to go to a metaparadigm that can encompass information science as well as linguistics. C.S. Peirce's semiotics is such a paradigm especially if you can integrate cybernetics and systems theory  with it. There is a summary of the framework of Cybersemiotics here:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a5e7/cf50ffc5edbc110ccd08279d6d8b513bfbe2.pdf

Cordially yours

                 Søren Brier

Depart. of Management, Society and Comunication, CBS, Dalgas Have 15 (2VO25), 2000 Frederiksberg
Mobil 28494162 www.cbs.dk/en/staff/sbrmsc<http://www.cbs.dk/en/staff/sbrmsc> , cybersemiotics.com.



Fra: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] På vegne af Xueshan Yan
Sendt: 26. februar 2018 10:47
Til: FIS Group <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Emne: [Fis] A Paradox

Dear colleagues,
In my teaching career of Information Science, I was often puzzled by the following inference, I call it Paradox of Meaning and Information or Armenia Paradox. In order not to produce unnecessary ambiguity, I state it below and strictly limit our discussion within the human context.

Suppose an earthquake occurred in Armenia last night and all of the main media of the world have given the report about it. On the second day, two students A and B are putting forward a dialogue facing the newspaper headline "Earthquake Occurred in Armenia Last Night":
Q: What is the MEANING contained in this sentence?
A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.
Q: What is the INFORMATION contained in this sentence?
A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.
Thus we come to the conclusion that MEANING is equal to INFORMATION, or strictly speaking, human meaning is equal to human information. In Linguistics, the study of human meaning is called Human Semantics; In Information Science, the study of human information is called Human Informatics.
Historically, Human Linguistics has two definitions: 1, It is the study of human language; 2, It, also called Anthropological Linguistics or Linguistic Anthropology, is the historical and cultural study of a human language. Without loss of generality, we only adopt the first definitions here, so we regard Human Linguistics and Linguistics as the same.
Due to Human Semantics is one of the disciplines of Linguistics and its main task is to deal with the human meaning, and Human Informatics is one of the disciplines of Information Science and its main task is to deal with the human information; Due to human meaning is equal to human information, thus we have the following corollary:
A: Human Informatics is a subfield of Human Linguistics.
According to the definition of general linguists, language is a vehicle for transmitting information, therefore, Linguistics is a branch of Human Informatics, so we have another corollary:
B: Human Linguistics is a subfield of Human Informatics.
Apparently, A and B are contradictory or logically unacceptable. It is a paradox in Information Science and Linguistics. In most cases, a settlement about the related paradox could lead to some important discoveries in a subject, but how should we understand this paradox?

Best wishes,
Xueshan
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