Byte By Byte

We are discussing proper suffixes for 'inform'. Grice has

inform-ative

but there's also the more boring

inform-ation-al

H. D. White, who knoew _of_ Grice ("Byzantine!", he wrote) thinks there's a whole science to it which he calls,

information science

appropriately acronymed to

IS.

Now consider:

Kramer's caveat:

A: What colour is the horse.
B: The pillar box seems red.

vs.

A: What colour does the pillar box seem to you?
B: Red.

While B's utterance (i) in (I) does not _inform_, as Kramer rightly points out, A as to the colour of the horse (whatever else it may inform him about), B's utterance (ii) in (II) does inform him as to what he wants to be informed about,

"And it would, under the circumstances,"
-- Kramer writes --
"difficult, if not downright impossible,
to find a more 'informative' answer
than the one B provides, regardless
of Grice's caveats about phenomenalism"

Indeed.

So I propose

"p" is informational -- i.e. p has some logical form. It yields things and is yielded by things. The Byte by Byte thing.

(One problem here is that

%^@(308 &^@* is "also" informational (and informative)
although it can hardly be said to be entailed by something (a proposition, usually) or entail one).


"p" is informatIVE when as Kramer writes, "it satisfies my curiosity". Etc.

--- Etc.



----
Kramer: "informativeness, I would look not at how much information is supplied but how much curiosity is unsatisfied. If I ask you whether the horse is green, "the pillar box seems red" is not "informative" at all. (And what's a pillar box anyway?) I still know no more about the color of the horse than I did before. But if I ask "What color does the pillar box seem to you to be?", "The pillar box seems red." is a perfect answer, and it would be impossible to think of one that is more "informative."