Toward a Systemic Notion of Information: Practical Consequences

Our main purpose in this paper is to start a process of a systemic definition of the notion of information and to provide some initial practical consequences of it. We will try to do that providing: 1) a conceptual definition, following Ackoff’s (1962) description and method of such a kind of definition, and 2) following Peirce’s (1931-5,1958) conception of “meaning”, where the practical consequences should be included. To our knowledge, no attempt has been done up to the present neither to find a Peircean meaning to the notion of information, nor to start a process of describing a systemic notion of information. Consequently, we will try to integrate the different definitions made on information. But to integrate we should first differentiate what is to be integrated. Thus, we will typify information conceptions in subjective and objective, providing brief description and analysis of each type, integrating them in the context of a systemic notion of information, and drawing the respective pragmatic consequences, as required by Peirce, for any meaning description, and by a pragmatic-teleological systemic epistemology (Churchmann, 1971)