Information as Relevance Within a Cut

In conventional discourse, information is treated as something objective: a measurable quantity that systems contain, transmit, or process. This view gives rise to metaphors of storage, flow, and loss, as if information were a kind of stuff — granular, detachable, and context-independent.

But from the perspective of relational ontology, this picture unravels.

Information is not an objective quantity, nor a substance in motion.

It is the structure of relevance within a particular construal — the articulation of what makes a difference, to what, from where.

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1. Shannon’s Legacy — and Its Limits

Claude Shannon’s theory of information revolutionised communication by defining information as entropy — a measure of uncertainty reduction.

This approach was brilliant for engineering, but it made a critical abstraction:

• It defined information without regard to meaning.

• It treated messages as signals, not signs.

• It ignored interpretation, context, and perspective.

This abstraction allowed immense technical progress — but it also obscured what information really is.

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2. The Relational Shift: Information as Construal

In relational ontology, information is not “in” the world.

It emerges only through a cut — a perspectival act that constrains potentiality.

To say that something carries information is to say:

• It is distinguished within a construal,

• It makes a difference within that configuration,

• It is relevant within the perspective that enacts it.

Without a cut, there is no system, no context, no relevance — and hence, no information.

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3. Information is Always About Relevance

This means that information is not content, but structure:

• Not what is said, but what counts.

• Not a thing, but a relational difference that matters from within a configuration.

Relevance is not a property of the signal.

It is a function of the construal.

Thus, what “contains more information” is never an absolute judgement.

It depends on:

• The system of distinctions,

• The domain of potentiality,

• And the role of the observer as participant.

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4. The Collapse of Objectivity

If information is not a thing, then it cannot be possessed.

This dissolves the idea of objective “hidden information” inside quantum systems.

There is no “missing data” waiting to be uncovered.

Instead:

• Information only exists relative to a construal,

• And measurement is the cut that constitutes that relevance.

The supposed puzzle of information loss — say, in black holes — arises from imagining information as independent of its construal.

But if relevance is perspectival, then nothing is lost.

Only the cut is gone.

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5. No Information Without Meaning

Meaning is not a later layer added on top of information.

It is the condition of its possibility.

Without a construal that makes differences matter, there is no information.

This reorients the relationship between information theory and quantum theory:

• Quantum systems do not “contain” bits of information.

• Quantum phenomena instantiate relational meaning.

• And “quantum information” is just a measure of construal-dependent relevance.

There is no deep mystery here — only the mistaken projection of classical assumptions onto a relational world.

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Closing

Information, in the end, is not a count of symbols, but a cut of relevance.

Not a thing in the world, but a way the world is construed.

When we measure, we constitute what counts.

When we distinguish, we enact relevance.

And when we talk of information, we speak of what emerges within that act.

In the next post, we’ll revisit the idea of entanglement — not as spooky action, but as the relational indivisibility of a construal. No parts, no properties, no problem.