Suppose we monitor the motor cortex, tracing back from the Betz cells ( the output layer to the lower nervous system, everything later is “mechanical”) to try to determine the information in a linguistic response. We trace the excitation back to the pre-motor areas and then perhaps to the sensory regions of the brain. We could determine then, for example, that the information was sensory in origin and that the motor response was produced in part by a driving function in the associative visual cortex for example, say a “grandmother cell” in Broadmann’s 19 for example.
We need not be concerned about the general supporting activity that makes any motor response possible, or about the exact nature of the recognition or recall process that produces the driving function and specific information in the response, these are psychological problems, our epistemological concerns or only with the type of information in the response. Neither are we concerned with the specifics of the response, what phonemes are produced or what marks are made on the paper, the language and all particulars of the method of rendition are epistemologically irrelevant.
This is an important advance over current “input side” empirical epistemology. Now we can say what the content or information in an element of verbal behavior really is, where it comes from, what sort of information it contains. It is all sensory or noise related to sensory information in the broadest sense.
What about thoughts? Do we have any metaphysical thoughts that we cannot express in language, that is in motor behavior? If not, the above analysis works. But even if I have my non- expressible transcendental notions, they are patterns of activity in the auditory cortex (neural reminiscence), and the information that produces them is likely either auditory or obscurely rendered noise in the system.
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