Information as verb: Reconceptualizing information for cognitive and ecological models.
Journal of Ecological Anthropology 3:4-13
Casagrande, D. G. (1999)
abstract
Current notions of information are inadequate for ecological and cognitive models because they: 1) only account for information gain that results from reducing uncertainty; 2) assume binary logic; 3) fail to model semantics and pragmatics; and 4) have not modeled shared and externalized cognition. A different model of information is presented here, which treats information as a process of state change (i.e., the term is used as a verb), rather than a variable. The potential for information is defined to include not only stimuli, but the context of the informational moment; and is distinguished from realized information, which is the result of a state change. The proposed model also distinguishes epistemological levels of abstraction at which information takes place. Pragmatic contextual marking of information at different levels provides a basis for explaining shared and external cognition, wherein abstraction, fuzzy logic, and consensus supercede the reduction of uncertainty.