Other conference members, especially Donald MacKay, sought to reconcile Shannon's view of information, which they called selective information, with theirs of 'structural' information which signified how selective information was to be understood  (i.e. a true statement might acquire additional meanings in varied settings though the information exchanged itself has not changed). The addition of meaning into the concept of information necessarily brought the role of the observer into the Macy Conferences. MacKay argued that by receiving and interpreting a message, the observer and the information they perceived ceased to exist independently of one another. The individual reading and processing the information does so relative to their preexisting internal state, consisting of what they already know and have experienced, and only then acts.