Originally posted by firstfloor
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"Moreover, there have been attempts to add a semantic dimension to a formal theory of information, in particular, to Shannon’s theory (MacKay 1969; Nauta 1972; Dretske 1981). Although very fruitful, these approaches do not cancel the fact that Shannon’s theory, taken by itself, is purely quantitative: it ignores any issue related to informational content. Shannon information is not a semantic item: semantic items, such as meaning, reference or representation, are not amenable of quantification. Therefore, the issue about possible links between semantic information and Shannon information is a question to be faced once the concept of Shannon information is endowed with a sufficiently clear interpretation. But precisely this is still the step to be done: what is the nature of Shannon information?"
In short, Shannon equates symbols/tokens with what they convey (the 'information'). For Shannon's purpose (namely, engineering communication) that was perfectly valid and most fruitful, as history has shown. But Shannon was light years away from determining the core nature of information.
Jorge
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