Abstract
THE burden of Dr. Ross Ashby's communication1 : “the meaning of a message also depends on the set that the message comes from” is known to every careful user of the English language who has learnt the meaning of the word ‘context’, but his example is incomplete. The messages that he instances may indeed change their meanings as the set is expanded, but “How we wish you were here” does not necessarily become ironic because “Do come and join us” is available as well. If the sender knows that such joining is impossible he may honestly choose the former message, which will then have the same meaning as if it were the only one of the two available. The set is of less importance in determining meaning than is the mutual knowledge that sender and recipient have of one another.
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Ashby, W. Ross, Nature, 187, 532 (1950).
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YAPP, W. The Relativity of Meaning. Nature 188, 964 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/188964a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/188964a0
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