Radford – On the Philosophy of Communication
Radford, G.P. (2005). On
the Philosophy of Communication.
South Bank, Vic., Australia: Thomson Wadsworth.
Chapters 1 – 4
Preface:
-
The book is about how and why we talk about
communication the way we do and how we might transcend it.
Chapter 1 – How we
talk about communication today.
-
Convention wisdom of communication is:
o
The exchange of ideas.
o
Transmission Theory
o
Making oneself understood.
o
The study of communication will give people the
edge in negotiation and make for better jobs and living.
-
These are communicative acts.
Regime of communication – Grossberg
-
We are living in an organization of discourse
and ideological power.
-
We are forced into talking about communication
in certain ways and it limits the way we think about communication.
-
We are trapped in a matrix.
Conduit Metaphor – Reddy p. 8
-
A cultural logic informed by our use of the
English language.
o
The logic demonstrated by our use of English
expressions that people employ to describe the communication process.
-
Four categories that form the framework of the
conduit metaphor.
o
Language functions like a conduit transferring
thoughts bodily from one person to another.
o
In writing and speaking people insert their
thoughts or feelings into words.
o
Words accomplish the transfer by containing the
thoughts or feelings and conveying to others.
o
In listening and reading, people extract the
thoughts and feelings once gain from the words.
-
It is difficult to speak to communication in
other ways than these theories.
-
People focus on the nature of the message and
its accuracy rather than how and why the message was formed in a particular
way.
-
This book focuses on why do we talk about
communication using the vocabulary of transmissions and conduits. P. 9.
o
The question becomes the discourse itself.
-
The book will examine:
o
Empiricist account of Human understanding.
o
Discourse on the unconscious.
o
Profound impact of mathematical theory.
o
Convergence of information processing.
o
How can we escape the regime of communication.
o
How to speak to communication without reference
to the human mind.
o
Hermeneutics to further articulate
communication.
o
Return to communication is contained in the
language we speak and how knowledge of communication can move us beyond
language.
Chapter 2 – John Locke
and the Transmission model of Communication.
A mist before our eyes.
-
The transmission view of communication is
relatively new.
-
The Ritual View was the dominant association
long before the transmission view.
o
Associated with sharing, participating and
association.
-
A shift occurred in the late fifteenth century
from community and shared action of making common, to communication as an
object.
-
In the seventeenth century communication was
often an abstraction for roads, canals and infrastructure.
John
Locke
-
To make words serviceable to end the end of
communication.
-
They excite in the viewer exactly the same idea
as in the mind of the speaker.
-
The sense of conveying an idea replaces the idea
of sharing an idea.
Lock
use of communication needs to be placed in his broader context on the nature of
understanding. P18.
Locke’s
account of knowledge:
-
The mind starts as a blank slate.
o Tabula
Rasa
-
It is written upon by experiences collected by
the senses.
-
Simple idea – an immediate and direct experience
from the senses.
o Not
definable.
o The
experience before reflection and definition take place.
o Alinguistic,
not the product of convention, culture or vocabulary.
o Pure
sense that caused the experience.
-
Transmission theory matches Locke.
o The
receiver is the blank slate for the sender.
o Locke
differentiates between the physical audio sounds of words and the thoughts of
people.
§ Thoughts
are put into words.
Human
Understanding – Operation of the Mind.
-
Takes a word or object.
-
Forms it as a subject
-
Perceives and reflects upon and through.
-
The operation of our mind.
Human
Understanding provides an interface between our minds and the world.
-
Takes incoming senses and creates acts of
objects of perception.
The
idea of seeing things alinguistically means:
-
People can see things the way the are without
the dominant view of “church, crown or custom.”
Ideas
sent and received are performed by the individual, not as part of the
collective, or society.
-
The knowledge is in the mind of the individual.
Meanings
by the receivers:
-
Are perceived and interpreted by human
understanding.
-
The receiver forms meaning.
-
It is not a direct transfer of ideas.
The
communication of genuine knowledge: p 21.
-
Simple idea comes from the environment.
-
Knowledge comes complex ideas.
-
Complex ideas are created through the addition,
subtraction, combination and arrangement of ideas.
The
Mind is:
-
Passive in reception of simple ideas.
-
Active in making complex ideas.
Complex
ideas can:
-
create meaning for knowledge.
-
Free to dream things up.
Locke
wants to differentiate between genuine knowledge and fantasy.
Transmission
theory runs a parallel:
-
How does the receiver know genuine knowledge
form fantasy.
Words
we use to encode are not exact fits of our ideas. P 28.
Simple
ideas are from impressions, words only auditory.
-
Words by their nature are different than
impressions.
People’s
ideas of complex thoughts vary between people.
We
are forced to use words as a medium in that only approximate our ideas.
For
Locke using words for clarity is a contradiction of terms.
Communication
is considered inherently problematic by its very nature.
-
There will always be a market claiming
communication solutions.
Two
basic questions when constructing a message.
-
What is to be said.
-
How is it to be said.
o Knowing
your audience is critical.
o Pacing
and pausing.
o Eye
contact.
o Vocal
variety.
Chapter 3: How Communication Became Known
as Information Processing.
The
true physical reality. P 36.
Modes
of thought that interpret and process, but that we can’t articulate is the
realm of the unconscious.
Memory
may be stored and stimulated.
-
But by what process.
That
something lies beyond becomes foundational for communication.
-
The idea is behind the meaning.
-
The unconscious is behind the conscious.
Unconscious
– The idea of an autonomous mind without consciousness.
The
attempt to make Psychology empirical:
-
Analogizes:
o Experiences
gives us bricks.
o Reflection
as the mortar that holds the bricks together.
-
Empirical standard would be a unit of sensation.
The
Framework for early psychologists was:
p. 43
-
How can one measure the self-evident facts of
sensation, feeling, idea and will.
-
The study was the description of external
patterns and correlations of external stimulation.
-
Operations of the mind are inferred, rather than
observed.
-
The attempt was to observe peoples reactions to
stimulus and see through to determine the mental processes.
o The
psychologist has to get past the person to get to the operation.
o The
subject is interruptive to the process.
-
The psychologist has to get past the subject (the
person) to get to the object – the interpretation of the operation of the mind.
-
An idea is always a composite of something.
The
overall useless point:
-
the science of psychology is contradictory as
the self cannot be reduced to facts.
Third
component:
-
Limen – threshold of unconscious mental
processes becoming conscious and knowing experience.
o When
object becomes subject and objective processes become subjective experience.
o Supralimenal
– Above the limen: consciousness, awareness and experience.
o Sublimenal
– that which lies below: Unconscious, objective inner experience.
o
Limen
is not a real thing, just a way to talk about what is scientific and what
cannot be spoken to as scientific.
-
The difference between talking about subjective
awareness and objective unconscious.
-
It is not about what the subject feels, but what
constitutes feeling.
Communicating
as Information Processing:
-
People tend to look at communication in the same
manner they see themselves.
-
- The unconscious as a machine that works on
established processes.
-
People look at themselves as processors of
information.
-
The paradigm is directly related to the computer
model.
o Computer
science offered a language to describe communication.
o The
psychologist is attempting to discover subroutines and processes without seeing
the human code.
Numerous
parallels with Locke.
-
Communication becomes a response of cognitive
procedures that process information.
-
There is no direct contact with the real world.
o Similar
to thoughts from Kant.
o All
knowledge exists of mental states.
A series of processes applied to sensory behavior.
-
What are these processes.
-
How do they work.
Sensory memory is brief.
-
Seeks out biological goals, needs and danger.
-
It is selective.
Short term memory is everything someone is experiencing now. P. 52
-
Associated with consciousness.
-
Selected experiences are interpreted with short
and long term memory.
-
Consciousness is the interplay between short and
long term memory.
Long term memory: Store of experiences that help us make
sense of a disordered world.
-
Enables us to create categories to recognize new
objects in relation to existing understanding.
-
Semantic memory: Knowledge of the world.
o
Composed of concepts.
These prompt the questions:
-
How does a sender construct a message.
-
How does a receiver process a message.
In short:
-
What happens inside our heads that make
communication happen.
Everything about perception and attention takes place inside
the head.
Inside the head are where:
-
Ideas are formed and constructed.
-
Ideas are received, deconstructed and interpr
-
ted.
How do we select what to pay attention to and why?
-
Understanding how we select stimuli helps us
understand how we gain and maintain attention.
-
Opinion, beliefs and culture affect
communication.
Understanding
communication is secondary to understanding the mind.
-
The nature of the mind is referred to as outer
expression or inner self.
Communication
is a manfestation of the mind.
-
Something occurs and then our mind communicates.
-
Squares clearly with the nature of the
unconscious and Psychology.
-
We have to look beyond communication to
something else.
Communication
is a conduit to move around ideas created by an objective mental process. Page 55
The
ability of the human individual to think, perceive and act on information is
derived from the environment and form memory.
-
This is why communication is reduced to inner
states and out expressions.
-
Communication does not exist without the
foundation of mental states.
Meaning
is not the definition, or objects.
-
meanings are in people.
-
They are covert responses.
-
Meanings are learned.
-
They are personal, and they are our own
property.
-
Meanings are internal responses to stimuli.
-
Meanings derive from factors of the individual,
as related in the physical world around them.
-
People can share similar meaning only to the
extent they have shared experiences.
-
Meanings are never fixes. They shift and they change.
-
People will always respond to stimuli in light
of their own meanings.
-
You must pair stimulus with other stimuli the
audience has.
Communication
lies with:
-
cognitive theory, but is reduced
-
to the psychological field and,
-
spoken in terms of information theory.
Chapter 4 –
Information and the Mathematical Theory of Communication.
Summary so far:
-
Communication is:
o
Framed by the Philosophy of John Locke.
o
Legitimized by the invocation of the
unconscious.
o
And the computer metaphor of information
processing theory with cognitive theory.
We can look to mathematical theory to see how the above
thoughts come together.
Shannon’s mathematical theory of Communication:
-
Shannon focuses on Transmission theory.
o
How to reproduce a message at one point exactly
as selected at another point.
o
He wanted to reproduce any message
mathematically from point a to point b.
A five stage model p 63.
-
Information Source – Produces a message.
-
A transmitter – Operates messages to produce a
transmission.
-
A channel – a medium for transmittal.
-
A receiver – reconstructs the message.
-
A destination – the person or thing for whom the
message is intended.
A communication system moves signals from place to place,
but has no interest in understanding them.
Point a communication system does not need to know semantics
and meaning to perform its function.
-
Mathematical system – cares not for meaning.
-
Locke’s transmission theory questions what is
meaning.
Information theory is a link between scientific theory and
information processing.
-
Psychology invokes the ability to speak to the
unconscious as a field of empirical observation.
-
Mathematical Theory separates the notion of
communication as a system without concern of meaning, interpretation or
understanding.
The Nature of Information
p 65.
Mass and energy are constants.
Information can reproduce and multiply.
Mathematical theory does not directly deal with information,
but physical representations of information.
-
It is not concerned with knowledge until it is
expressed.
-
Information is codified with descriptors, works,
numbers, signs, etc…
Information is additive.
-
It is added to what one already knows.
-
It is relative to what the receiver already
knows.
-
High information content is unexpected and new information.
In the mathematical model:
-
Information refers to the potentialities of
message selection from a particular source.
-
The probability of selecting words are based on
perceiving selections.
Conversation: A pattern or evocation response and evocation.
P 69
-
What is deemed appropriate is determined by the
co-text of the surrounding utterances.
-
Content is derived from the context of
utterences.
-
Utterances are constrained by the probabilities
imposed by the preceding words.
-
Selections are based on:
o
Contexts of the conversation.
o
Sentence structure.
o
Syntactic system: a set of rules for combining
words.
English speech is 50% redundant.
-
We choose about 50% of what we say.
People tend to see messages as:
-
meaning and context, rather than
-
signals derive from probabilities from the
selective source.
Not Concerning Shannon – p 72.
Weaver – Introductory note on the general setting of the
analytical communication studies.
-
Weaver wanted to:
o
Take Shannon’s notion of mathematical theory in
context of broader communication discourse.
Weaver – Three levels of communication problems.
-
How accurately can the symbols of communication
be transmitted.
-
How do the transmitted symbols convey the
desired meaning.
-
How effectively does the received meaning affect
conduct in the desired way.
Shannon’s theory was only relative to the accuracy of
transmitted symbols.
-
and information must not be confused with
meaning.
-
Word information in communication theory is not
so much about what you say, as what you could say.
-
Is concerned with the statistical nature of the information
source – not the individual message.
How receivers interpret symbols is not a mathematical
question, but a psychological one.
-
The question – how does the human mind extract
meaning from symbols.
-
Weaver who was avoiding this realm said:
o
Through some as yet unknown mind-brain process.
Norbert Weiner: Weiner’s Cybernetic theory of Messages
-
Communication as the means by which an
information processing system responds to its environment.
-
Society can only be understood through the study
of messages and the communication facilities that belong to it.
-
An act of communication is always an attempt to
control the receivers response.
-
Responses are forms of feedback.
-
No difference between peoples communication or
machines.
David Berlo:
-
We communicate to influence, to affect with
intent.
-
The purpose of communication is the production
of a response.
-
When we learn to phrase our purposes in terms of
response from our messages, we are moving towards efficient and effective communication.
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