World and mind, information and semantic content

Abstract

Many times, the notion of information is used in such a way that the following two theses are suggested: 1) that the world might be no more than information, and 2) that our minds might be no more that information. This paper rejects both theses. In relation to that, I will argue for the need to take into account non-informational aspects of reality that are epistemically accessible. Only that way, we could deal with the problem of selecting a determinate semantic content and with the problem of error. The two more common strategies to deal with these problems appeal to some primitive “referential capacities” or to some special kinds of (natural) “functions”. We propose another strategy based on very simple processes of signalization. With the help of that strategy, we offer a new way of defining semantic content.