[Sigia-l] data as information?

[Conal Tuohy]

> Conal Tuohy:
> 
> > So data exist objectively and independently...

Ziya:
> I don't buy it. You describe *a* model, as if that's the last word.

I don't care whether you "buy it" or not. I'm not "selling" it. :-)

As for "as if it was the last word" ... come off it! My post was
peppered with "in terms of the theory", "in this theory", etc, etc. 

It's just one particular bunch of formal semantics and if you don't find
them useful you don't have to use them. 

It's usually the case with scientific theories that they re-use common
words with new specialised meanings (like "force" in physics, or
"imaginary" in mathematics), and this mutilates the words and strips
them of part of their usual richness of meaning. But if you want to use
words in a scientific way this is necessary. You can use "information",
"data", etc, with whatever informal (and ambiguous) semantics you want.
But don't expect to have a productive theoretical discussion on that
basis, because we'll only be endlessly disputing the meanings of
individual words, rather than talking about the real life issues that
the words are supposed to describe.