What constitutes true communication?
Posted on Jul 20th, 2008
by 
Robert
Robert
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for July 20, 2008:
True communication can only be attained at the expense of the receiver of a message. First, communication presupposes two or more differences. There must at least be a sender and a receiver, and they must not contain the same information or have the same structure. Second, communication only occurs as a product of the force of an impulse, or a shock. True communication means undergoing a change from which one cannot return.
That is, take two systems or complexes (two human individuals, if you like) that may wish to communicate, A&B. One can admit that communication has occured only if a change in the state of system A corresponds to a change in the state of system B. Prior to communication, A had a larger range of freedom or possibility, its sending a message constrained it. B's receiving a message means constraining its possibilities (though this makes the future possible). Thus, communication means limitation. Communication means making a selection, reducing the complexity in one's environment, interpreting the message. However, such limitation is necessary. It is a condition of communication. It is constitutive of it.
Because it is always based on a message that may or may not be received, whose meaning may be variously interpreted, all communication is contingent. It is so even for the minimal two differences required of communication, however, meaning that communication is always doubly contingent. This condition of communication is nicely expressed in the idea that I don't know what I've said until I hear it repeated back to me.
Some provisos to these early remarks: 1) placing emphasis here on the sender-receiver model involves all sorts of ontological commitments that may be cleared away, in large part, by focusing on the selection of the message, its self-referential processing, rather than on those systems between which it is said to be transmitted.
Selection of information has been a huge concept in communication since the cybernetical theories of Weaver and Shannon. However, we would do well to remind ourselves of Bertalanffy's criticism of the cybernetic model of communication as mechanistic inasmuch as it first assumes structural order for systems that communicate. Thus, the cybernetic model tends to focus concentration on secondary processes of communication. Rather than viewing those systems which communicate as themselves events of communication, cybernetics assumes systems ready made and asks how it is that they may maintain themselves homeostatically. Here, the identity of a system is presupposed.
The Darwinian revolution in science meant especially that things be treated as accumulations of free-floating differences rather than as presupposed identities. Systems are thus open to the future, not determined by their past.
That is, take two systems or complexes (two human individuals, if you like) that may wish to communicate, A&B. One can admit that communication has occured only if a change in the state of system A corresponds to a change in the state of system B. Prior to communication, A had a larger range of freedom or possibility, its sending a message constrained it. B's receiving a message means constraining its possibilities (though this makes the future possible). Thus, communication means limitation. Communication means making a selection, reducing the complexity in one's environment, interpreting the message. However, such limitation is necessary. It is a condition of communication. It is constitutive of it.
Because it is always based on a message that may or may not be received, whose meaning may be variously interpreted, all communication is contingent. It is so even for the minimal two differences required of communication, however, meaning that communication is always doubly contingent. This condition of communication is nicely expressed in the idea that I don't know what I've said until I hear it repeated back to me.
Some provisos to these early remarks: 1) placing emphasis here on the sender-receiver model involves all sorts of ontological commitments that may be cleared away, in large part, by focusing on the selection of the message, its self-referential processing, rather than on those systems between which it is said to be transmitted.
Selection of information has been a huge concept in communication since the cybernetical theories of Weaver and Shannon. However, we would do well to remind ourselves of Bertalanffy's criticism of the cybernetic model of communication as mechanistic inasmuch as it first assumes structural order for systems that communicate. Thus, the cybernetic model tends to focus concentration on secondary processes of communication. Rather than viewing those systems which communicate as themselves events of communication, cybernetics assumes systems ready made and asks how it is that they may maintain themselves homeostatically. Here, the identity of a system is presupposed.
The Darwinian revolution in science meant especially that things be treated as accumulations of free-floating differences rather than as presupposed identities. Systems are thus open to the future, not determined by their past.
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communication
July 2008 