University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Truth and Agency: Rethinking the Definition of Information

Obille, Kathleen Lourdes B.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/133129

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Title
Truth and Agency: Rethinking the Definition of Information
Author(s)
Obille, Kathleen Lourdes B.
Issue Date
2024-08
Keyword(s)
definition of information, epistemic agents, truth, meaning
Date of Ingest
2026-04-23T13:16:48-05:00
Abstract
This paper argues that while truth is appealing and compelling as a necessary condition in defining information, this limits our understanding of information. It argues for truth-neutral definitions of information and acknowledges epistemic agents as the center for understanding information. It also argues that meaning and truth are co-constructed by epistemic agents, thus giving the agency to the receiver(s) of information as they make sense of it in their varying contexts. With the need to understand how information plays within communities, and how communities make sense of information and form knowledge, library and information science should not only turn to philosophy of information but complement it with social epistemology. Acknowledging the agency of individuals and the contributions of other individuals to the process of information, I refer to social epistemology as a framework for the practice of library and information science and to philosophy of information as the framework for understanding information concepts. This acknowledges that being informed is an individual as well as a community process.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Series/Report Name or Number
Volume 73, Issue 1-2, August & November 2024
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
article
Language
eng
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2025 University of Illinois Board of Trustees

Owning Collections

Library Trends 73 (1-2) August & November 2024: Design and the Philosophy of Information [Restricted] PRIMARY
This 2024 special issue of Library Trends was inspired by the contributions of Marcia Bates to our field and discipline. We are very fortunate to have her selected works gathered into three volumes (Bates 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). Thus, the vision for this issue was to treat Bates’s research “protoparadigm” as derived from Thomas Kuhn as a design sounding board, and I invited authors to freely explore these parameters. Additionally, I called for scholarship deriving from the emergence of Chinese information philosophy as another metatheory for LIS. I intentionally left the term “design” as open as possible, with some influence of Floridi’s (2019) definition of philosophy as conceptual design as a directive. Also, Bates (2002) has long called for good design for elements making up retrieval system interfaces and criticized models that do not actually improve information sources for users.