Information, Certainty, and Identity: Toward a Phenomenology of Information Beyond the Phenomenology of Time

Abstract

The research contributes to a groundbreaking re-articulation of the Philosophy of Information by defining it as a phenomenology of information, in both its most basic meaning of phenomenology of certainty and phenomenology of identity. It is said that the final condition of possibility of conscious experience is certainty, which is understood in terms of reflexive identity and informational coincidence, based upon the Informational Singularity of Self-Consciousness (ISS), and the Principle of Direct Relation (PDR). Unlike prevailing conceptions that focus on uncertainty, the analysis reveals that certainty has an inherent informational value, stabilizes phenomena, and forms the basis of cognition, meaning and self consciousness. The research also demonstrates that this phenomenology of information generalises the phenomenology of internal time-consciousness of Husserl: temporality structures, (i.e. retention, protention, the living present), assume a previous stratum of informational identity. The correspondence between certainty and time is structurally comparable to the correspondence between predicate logic and propositional logic; certainty gives the richer structural base of assertion of time. Combining phenomenological, semantic and quantitative approaches, the framework provides a comprehensive solution having a philosophical implication to the philosophy of mind, logic and information. It offers new conceptual instruments into dealing with classical philosophical issues on identity, analyticity, and informational basis of experience..