The information pyramid and structural realism

Abstract

The conceptual scheme of the 'DIKAS pyramid', presented in two previous articles published in this journal, explains the reciprocal relationships between the concepts of data, information, knowledge, awareness and self-awareness. This scheme has significant consonances with some contemporary philosophical theories (structural realism in its ontic, epistemic and informational variants, as well as the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli) and with certain aspects of some philosophical systems of the past (the one of the Indian Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna, who lived in the second century AD and those of English philosophers Bradley, Green, McTaggart, Royce and Whitehead, all of whom lived between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries AD).
All these systems and theories, despite their considerable divergences, are united by a greater centrality attributed to dynamic relationships, structures, processes and events compared to the one which is usually attributed, both by common sense and by philosophical and scientific theories, to static objects, individuals, entities and 'things'. The comparison between these conceptions and DIKAS makes some aspects of the latter conceptual scheme even more plausible and understandable, including, in particular: the processual nature of the information, the relative (but not necessarily subjective) nature of knowledge and the possibility of a complete naturalization (on an informational basis) of consciousness, which overcomes the apparent irreconcilability between objectivity and subjectivity.