In the Beginning was Information

a) Concerning the sender:– What actions are desired of the recipient?– Has a specific action been formulated explicitly, or should itbe implicit?– Is the action required by the sender to be taken in only onepredetermined way, or is there some degree of freedom?b) Concerning the recipient:– To what extent does the received and understood meaninginfluence the behaviour of the recipient?– What is the actual response of the recipient?Theorem 17: Information always entails a pragmatic aspect.The pragmatic aspect could:– be unnegotiable and unambiguous without any degree of freedom,e. g. a computer program, activities in a cell, or a militarycommand– allow a limited freedom of choice, like instinctive acts of animals– allow considerable freedom of action (only in the case ofhuman beings).Note: Even if there is considerable variation in the pragmaticsresulting from the semantics, it does not detract anything from thevalidity of Theorem 17.When language is used, it does not simply mean that sentences arejumbled together, but that requests, complaints, questions, instructions,teachings, warnings, threats, and commands are formulatedto coerce the recipient to take some action. Information wasdefined by Werner Strombach [S12] as a structure which achievessome result in a receiving system. He thus referred to the importantaspect of taking action.74that such a man would save me a lot of trouble.” (Source: Reader’s Digest, February1993, p 168).Truman did not realise that he was actually looking for a Minister for Pragmatics(or even Apobetics). He was mainly concerned with the workings of hismind, but he placed it at least one level too low – on the semantic level.