engleski

The dichotomy of the notion of information regarding sender's data structure and recipient's background knowledge

If it is possible to give a comprehensive overview of the notion of information – besides through an exhaustive review of the trends in the development of information theories which took place during the second half of the 20th century – then it will be achieved by observing the two theoretical approaches with opposing principles: the objectivist and subjectivist understandings of this phenomenon. At this point in the discussion, we may ask if it is possible to talk about two types of information or informativeness as opposed to simply referring to two different understandings of the same phenomenon. In accordance with Shannon's theory, by analysing the role of information as 'pure informative content' with respect to both the sender's data structure and the recipient's knowledge structure, this paper seeks to point out the inherent dichotomy of the notion of information viewed in this context. We conclude that if Shannon's informativeness is inversely proportional to the probability of extracting selected data from a data structure (D[S]), which is relative to the total amount of data in a sender's D[S], then Brookes' informativeness is proportional to the probability that selected data could establish non-existing relations with a recipient's K[S], which is relative to the total number of relations in a given context. The communication process, therefore, does not encapsulate the knowledge acquisition process. If information is understood as a 'measure of surprise' or the 'unexpectedness of content' in a predetermined environment in which 'everything is already known' in the context of the communication process, then, by analogy, it is also a 'measure of novelty' which can be expressed through the number of relations that selected data can establish through the existing background knowledge of the recipient, in which not everything is known in the context of the knowledge acquisition process.

information ; data ; informativeness ; sender's data structure ; recipient's background knowledge

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