How effective is linguistic communication, really? (piefed.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by fluffy_cloud@piefed.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just-language, without any irl stuff, probably doesn't really achieve communication. Because the words don't carry their definition. And they definitely don't carry any real experience-stuff (sight, sound etc) either.

It's just assumed that you're connecting the word to the definition/experience, in your head, in a way that makes communication happen.

And that's a big assumption. It might be only 80% congruent. Or 50%. Or 5%. We could be a race of Chinese boxes for all we know.

IRL there is a verification to the process. If I order a pizza and I get a pizza then that's a pretty good sign that the communication is working.

But on the Internet, where it's just-language? Forget it. Howling solipsists all the way down.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] cattywampas@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

You might be interested in reading about the knowledge argument aka Mary's Room, a thought experiment about knowledge. See also: qualia

Basically this: Mary is a brilliant scientist who spends all day every day in her room. She has no color of any kind in her room. But, being a brilliant scientist, she has learned everything there is to know about color. She knows about frequencies and wavelengths, she knows all about the eye and the brain and how they interpret light to form the sensation of color. She has studied art from all of human history and knows how artists use color and understand all of their cultural associations.

But she has never seen red herself. So in all of her learning, does she really understand what red is? She's missing the qualia, the subjective experience of a thing. No amount of language and communication can bridge that gap.

[-] fluffy_cloud@piefed.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

In our language there's a missing providence-thing. Like, when somebody mentions "red" there's no thing telling us if they mean "red gleaned from a book" or "red gleaned from seeing". They're treated the same.

In fact, language stuff is generally treated as equivalent to experience stuff.

Madness, right?

[-] cattywampas@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

I'm not sure "madness" is the term I'd use but I see what you're getting at. Communication is a weird thing if you think about it long enough, the idea of trying to recreate a subjective experience in someone else's mind.

[-] fluffy_cloud@piefed.world 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

In common communication the shared fantasy is treated as equivalent to experience.

Not in science though. Science (and science-like things) is an exception there. Science has the providence-thing (you could say that it explicitly acknowledges that language isn't enough). I'd say that's the source of its power.

[-] tigermountain@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I understand the point of the story but if she's studied art from all of human history she's seen quite a bit of color.

this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026

17 points (79.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

41772 readers

1932 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world

7) No Hit-and-Run questions.

Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.

8) No Bots.

Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.