BEING INFORMED: TOWARD AN ONTOLOGY OF INFORMATION AS EXISTENTIAL STRUCTURE

Abstract

Traditionally, information has been recognized as a signal, semantic content, or a means of gaining knowledge. Although these viewpoints have made a great contribution to information science and the philosophy of information, they are still generally epistemological, communicational, and computational in orientation. Thus, they explain how information functions in already intelligible contexts, while giving less attention to the ontological conditions necessary for the possibility of intelligibility and meaningful experience. This paper fills this gap by creating an ontology of information using the tools of conceptual analysis and hermeneutic phenomenology. It is based on the philosophy of information and a phenomenological ontology that argues that information is not only an object of knowledge but also an existential structure, the ground of disclosure, relationality, and intelligibility. The analysis introduces the concept of informational existence, which considers the act of being informed not as the possession of knowledge but as an existential mode of being through which reality becomes intelligible and meaningful. The paper unites the two perspectives of phenomenology and informational perspective, proposing a new ontological framework for the study of the relationship between information, meaning, intelligibility, and existence.