Thx for the clarification of identity; i was confused. :(
Yes, your example does seem to illustrate the transfer of information about the territory between minds by use of language.
But when you ask “Where did that number 0.9 come from?” things get more complicated.
In my view, 0.9 is a statistic representing a correlation between your map and my map.
Territory doesn’t even come into it—at least not directly. Suppose I have come up with that 0.9 estimate by keeping track of how often our statements “It is raining” or “It is not raining” agree or disagree. “Why the discrepancy?”, I ask myself. Do you sometimes lie? Do you mean “The streets are wet” whereas I mean “Water is falling”? Are you talking about rain falling at a different location?
We can conduct a discussion to help determine which of these hypotheses most completely explain the discrepancy. In conducting that discussion, we will be talking about our maps. We don’t need territory to discuss these hypotheses. We can do it by discussing thought experiments involving hypothetical maps (as you and I are doing now!).
But, you might object, the hypothesis which would justify the Bayesian inference involving the umbrella has to involve some kind of shared territory underlying our maps. Well, maybe it does. But, I claim that we cannot talk about the nature of that shared territory. All we can do is to construct a shared map.
Thx for the clarification of identity; i was confused. :(
Yes, your example does seem to illustrate the transfer of information about the territory between minds by use of language.
But when you ask “Where did that number 0.9 come from?” things get more complicated.
In my view, 0.9 is a statistic representing a correlation between your map and my map. Territory doesn’t even come into it—at least not directly. Suppose I have come up with that 0.9 estimate by keeping track of how often our statements “It is raining” or “It is not raining” agree or disagree. “Why the discrepancy?”, I ask myself. Do you sometimes lie? Do you mean “The streets are wet” whereas I mean “Water is falling”? Are you talking about rain falling at a different location?
We can conduct a discussion to help determine which of these hypotheses most completely explain the discrepancy. In conducting that discussion, we will be talking about our maps. We don’t need territory to discuss these hypotheses. We can do it by discussing thought experiments involving hypothetical maps (as you and I are doing now!).
But, you might object, the hypothesis which would justify the Bayesian inference involving the umbrella has to involve some kind of shared territory underlying our maps. Well, maybe it does. But, I claim that we cannot talk about the nature of that shared territory. All we can do is to construct a shared map.