Page 119 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

notion of intention altogether. In this model, com- munication is viewed in a much more general way than in the two previous ones. Communication would include all those processes by which human beings influence one another. In its most extreme form, this model entails that all behavior can be said to be com- municative. The interaction of human beings is char- acterized by the necessity to communicate; this necessity is superior to the notion of intention, which is based not only on the will to communicate, but also the will to interpret. Communication is thus part of perception; attention to and interpretation of com- munication are part of the process of perceiving.
What remains in this model are the principles of mutuality and reciprocity as basic requirements for communication to take place. However, those prin- ciples are not governed by normatively colored prin- ciples, such as Grice's conversational implicatures and Habermas's universal pragmatic consensus principles. In those frameworks, communication is a certain mut- ual tuning which necessarily must involve a certain moral commitment, that one believes what one says to be true, that one intends that which one says, and that the addressee necessarily takes for granted that the addresser follows these and similar principles. Communication, in the feedback model, is not char- acterized by a search for what could be called mutual knowledge, consensus, or intersubjective under- standing. Rather, the opposite is the case, namely that to communicate is to experience such principles as ideal goals: one cannot share other people's experi- ences or mental worlds, or truly understand the inten- tions of other communicators. The reason is that these principles of general reciprocity and mutuality are subject to societal power relations. Such relations are neither intended to be recognized in the message, nor perhaps even intended to be a part of the meaning of the message at all. But as sociologists insist on telling the naive linguist, power relations are inherent in every communicated message. There is no society in exis- tence without social hierarchies of some sort; a power- less Utopia is at best a pastoral idyll, at worst a totalitarian goal.
The basic problem in the feedback model is how to distinguish communication from information. As long as neither the addresser's nor the addressee's inten- tions are preconditions to communication, how are we to discriminate between all the incoming information, both on the content and expression planes of a mess- age—an amount of information which, according to certain theorists, is infinite? It seems that this problem can be solved only by defining communication as involving both information (in the sense of infor- mation theory), the conveyed message, and the under- standing of the message. Advocates of this model focus on the temporal nature of communication; com- munication is viewed as an enduring process which imposes meaning upon disturbances and noise,
through the selective processes of information, mess- age conveyance and understanding. Such a selection process is, of course, determined by the internalized language of the communicators, and is governed by other semiotic systems as well.
1.4 The Self-regulatory (Autopoesis) Model
The autopoesis model appears to be a radicalized ver- sion of the feedback model, in the sense that the model seems to have done away with what have been called the principles of reciprocity and mutuality. The auto- poesis model is therefore something as seemingly para- doxical as a solipsistic model of communication. In this model, the communicators (or as they are called, the 'emitters' and 'receivers') do not communicate in order to transfer and create a message (as in the con- duit and dialogue models), or even to create some information, a conveyed message, and an under- standing, but simply to integrate elements from the communicative situation (the environment) which can contribute to the communicators' so-called self- regulation and self-creation (hence the term 'auto- poetic'). This self-regulation and self-creation is an individual, idiosyncratic version of an interaction input. A basic goal of this self-regulation or autopoesis is to create a difference with respect to all other (real or potential) communicators. In this sense, com- munication is necessary for the individual in order to be constituted as an individual. The communicators are seen as closed systems, insofar as nothing can be integrated which is not specified in the system's own structure. It is important to note that the system is not a static structure, but rather a process. Com- munication is self-reflection, characterized as an unceasing search for functional substitutes.
Interestingly enough, this model allows for another, more advanced view of linguistic messages, such as written texts, than is normal in the linguistic tradition. Instead of being viewed as inferior reproductions of the prototypical or even 'natural' linguistic com- munication, namely verbal conversation, written messages are viewed as more communicative and cre- ative, in that they not only allow for a finer distinction between the individual communicator and his com- municative environment, but also for more permanent self-referential and autopoetic activity on the part of the individual communicator. Oral dialogue is thus reduced to one type of communication among others.
2. The Relation Between Communication and 'Language'
So far, the fundamental problem of the relation between communication and language has not even been superficially touched upon. Language is what most linguists recognize as the one and only object of linguistics; however, its relation to communication is a matter of continuous controversy: in fact, it is not even clear that the phenomenon of communication is
Communication
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