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This paper aims to examine the relationships between meaning and truth as they may contribute to a constitutive definition of information. The thesis is primarily that “information” cannot be defined unless within the context of meaning and truth, and that any theory based on, or related to, information is not possible without the foundational definition.

A review of related literatures and an arrangement of frameworks forms the design of this conceptual proposal.

While other definitions of information have been presented, the present one integrates meaning and truth in ways that others do not. The thoroughgoing semantic examination provides a starting‐point for a much deeper analysis of the integral role that language plays in the formation of any theory related to information. Truth tends not to be spoken of a great deal in information science; the definitional positioning of truth adds to a more complete definition and basis for theory.

This paper proposes a new definitional and theoretical construct for information.

Purpose — The purpose of this discussion is, first, to review the concept of truth claim and how it forms the framework for four research traditions: science, social science, law, and judgments of excellence. Then, the operational mechanisms of networks are reviewed. The discussion concludes by introducing three philosophic perspectives that might deepen the meanings nascent in the concept of “search.”

Methodology/approach — The methodology includes a historical approach to outline brief but sufficient definitions for how truth claims are built in four established research traditions. Each tradition is then analyzed with a view to testing its methods. The tests suggest a number of pathways to reframe search engine results in order to evaluate their relationship to the previously established types of truth claims.

Findings — The findings constitute an outline of the research traditions in the four areas of science, social science, law, and judgments of excellence. These are followed by a review of the current configurations of networks, their infrastructures, and their capabilities, including a brief section on the importance of search engine mechanisms. Crawling, indexing, and then ranking form the operational mechanisms that search engines employ in delivering search results. It is clear that each operation introduces logical problems. Then, the final sections outline three widely ranging philosophic perspectives on the nature of search: (1) an aesthetic theory of indexing, (2) understanding search from the psychology of learning, and (3) an exploration of the relationship between performativity and recent economic models of how data accumulates in today's world.

Research implications — It is suggested that exploration of a deeper philosophical perspective will assist library and information science (LIS) scholars to reframe Web search in ways that allow linkages to the established research traditions.

Originality/value of the paper — The idea of testing the “truth claim” as connected to traditional research methods was presented initially by Rall (2002, 2004). This area has been neglected in the literature as many Internet scholars find that the philosophy of research methodologies remains outside of their knowledge base. Overall, LIS scholars have focused on information seekers, on the politics of search engines, as well as documenting the computational problems that are present in search engine results. The consideration of how truth claims are formed and subsequently tested will allow LIS researchers to explore the linkages between their current studies and the established frameworks of scholarly research.

Mixed methods research can provide a fruitful line of inquiry for educational leadership, program evaluation, and policy analysis; however, mixed methods research requires a metatheory that allows for mixing what have traditionally been considered incompatible qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to apply Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action as that metatheoretical justification.

After reviewing the traditional quantitative/qualitative divide based on incompatible ontologies, the author argues for a pragmatist stance toward educational leadership inquiry. Such a stance allows for mixing methods because it privileges methodology and epistemology in social inquiry, rather than ontological theories of reality. Using Habermas’s metatheory, the author shows how truth claims are linguistically mediated; how they make reference to objective, subjective, and normative formal worlds; and how they are always fallible and revisable.

The author argues that Habermas’s metatheory allows (and requires) integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches to fully understand social phenomena. Such integration is possible if researchers attempt to make methodological decisions explicit by linking methodology (and thus methodical decisions) to all three formal worlds, and articulating the rationale for doing so. The author also argues that making the entire corpus of claims bound within a line of social inquiry subject to critical examination promotes the validity of inquiry.

This paper contributes to the discussion on mixed methods research by applying a particular strand of pragmatism. This is an advance in the extant literature, which argues for a pragmatist stance on mixed methods research, but has not yet conceptualized a metatheoretical position supporting this stance.

Post-Enlightenment liberalism faces a paradox: The liberal principle of legitimacy demands states justify their constitutional order in terms citizens can accept, but there is no uncontroversial comprehensive conception of justice on which to form the requisite consensus. Rawls resolves the paradox by embracing a pragmatism that abandons the concept of truth in the political forum to secure consensus and legitimacy. Philosophers have challenged the idea of justice without truth as incoherent, and social critics have attacked it as naïve. This chapter defends Rawls’s pragmatism against such critics and argues that the future of liberal constitutionalism may depend on its success.

The side effects of disguised bribes are hidden by their apparent good consequences (as pseudo-gifts). The aim of the chapter is to unveil to what extent pseudo-gifts (as disguised bribes) could distort the cultural, social, and communicational functions of gift-giving practices. We will firstly describe how disguised bribes could be analyzed from a Sartrean perspective, given that Sartre’s notion of bad faith could help to better understand the three basic kinds of substantive loss which follow from disguised bribes: (a) the loss of commonalities (the cultural function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Malinowski’s notion of culture): we will analyze the phenomenon of guanxi; (b) the loss of social bonds (the social function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Durkheim’s notion of culture); (c) the loss of communicability, and the arising of an empty truth (the communicational function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Jaspers’ notion of truth claims). Gift-giving practices are culturally rooted. This is the first level of analysis (surface). Seizing the social and moral function of gift-giving practices unveils the second level of analysis (beneath-the-surface). Describing the communicational function of gift-giving practices opens the door to the third level of analysis (exchanges of truth claims). Bribery is the distortion of those basic functions of gift-giving practices. We are then facing an empty truth (the communicational function of culture is distorted).

Any concept of disguised bribes must be empirically tested. The way the cultural, social and communication functions of gift-giving practices are distorted could vary from one culture to another. Future research could check how such distortions arise in given societal cultures. It could then distinguish the side effects of disguised bribes, either from a cultural viewpoint, or from social perspective, or even from a communicational pattern of reference. Unveiling the multiple ways of distorting gift-giving practices could help decision-makers to better understand the frontiers between bribery and gift-giving. Emphasizing the various functions of gift-giving practices, from a philosophical and sociological perspective, could allow business decision-makers to raise their ethical awareness.

This study aims to correct errors in, and comment on the claims made in the comment papers of Rigdon (2022) and Henseler and Schuberth (2022), and to tidy up any substantive oversights made in Cadogan and Lee (2022).

The study discusses and clarifies the gap between Rigdon’s notion of scientific realism and the metaphysical, semantic and epistemological commitments that are broadly agreed to be key principles of scientific realism. The study also examines the ontological status of the variables that Henseler and Schuberth claim are emergent using emergence logic grounded in the notion that variables are only truly emergent if they demonstrate a failure of generative atomism.

In scientific realism, hypothetical causal contact between the unobserved and the observed is a key foundational stance, and as such, Rigdon’s concept proxy framework (CPF) is inherently anti-realist in nature. Furthermore, Henseler and Schuberth’s suggestion that composite-creating statistical packages [such as partial least squares (PLS)] can model emergent variables should be treated with skepticism by realists.

Claims made by Rigdon regarding the realism of CPF are unfounded, and claims by Henseler and Schuberth regarding the universal suitability of partial least squares (PLS) as a tool for use by researchers of all ontological stripes (see their Table 5) do not appear to be well-grounded.

Those aspiring to do science according to the precepts of scientific realism need to be careful in assessing claims in the literature. For instance, despite Rigdon’s assertion that CPF is a realist framework, we show that it is not. Consequently, some of Rigdon’s core criticisms of the common factor logic make no sense for the realist. Likewise, if the variables resulting from composite creating statistical packages (like PLS) are not really emergent (contrary to Henseler and Schuberth) and so are not real, their utility as tools for scientific realist inquiry are called into question.

This study assesses PLS using the Eleatic Principle and examines H&S’s version of emergent variables from an ontological perspective.

The study draws upon three accounts to examine post-truth politics and its link to accounting. In studying Petrobras, a Brazilian petrochemical company embroiled in a corruption scandal, the authors draw upon a politics of falsity to understand how different depictions of similar events can emerge. The authors depict Petrobras' corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures during the period of corruption juxtaposed against the Brazilian Federal Police investigation (the Lava Jato/Car Wash Operation) and Petrobras' response to the allegations of institutional corruption.

The data set consisted of 56 Petrobras reports including Annual Reports, Financial Statements, Sustainability Reports and Form 20-Fs from 2004 to 2017, information disclosed by the Brazilian Federal Police concerning the Lava Jato Operation and media reports concerning Petrobras and the corruption scandal. The paper employs a discourse analysis approach to depict and interpret the accounts.

Through examining the connection between ontic accounts and ontological presuppositions, the authors illustrate a post-truth logic underpinning accounting, due to the interpretive, contestable and contingent nature of accounting information. Consequently, the authors turn to the “ethics of the real” as a response, as citizen subjects must be cautious in how they approach accounting and CSR disclosures.

Rather than relying on simplistic true/false dualities, the authors argue that the “ethics of the real” provides a courageous position for citizen subjects to interrogate the organisation by recognising the role of discourse and disclosure expectations on organisations in a post-truth environment. The study also illustrates how competing, contingent accounts of the same timeframe and events can emerge.

This paper aims to respond to Budd's discussion of meaning, truth and information by exploring the ontological framework prescribed by critical realism. Budd's thesis that information must be defined within the context of meaning and truth is challenged and the ontological priority of information is argued.

Following a critique of Budd's conclusions, a “regional ontology” of information is discussed. The practical adequacy of this theory is demonstrated by applying it to information‐seeking and meaning‐making, as described by Dervin's Sense‐Making Methodology (SMM). Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the re‐conceptualization and implications in future research applications.

Information is a “thing” of ontological significance and which possesses truth and meaning as properties. Information may present as uninforming, incomprehensible, deceptive, nonsensical or sensical, depending on how the properties truth and meaning are expressed.

The main implication arising from this paper is that a definition of information is provided which permits application to situations of conflict or dissonance concerning information use. Abductive reasoning facilitates application of SMM to historically produced documents.

The novelty of this paper lies in the analysis of information, truth and meaning according to a realist, emergentist ontology, and in the consequent application of Dervin's SMM to documents by abductive reasoning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the results of futures studies are knowledge or if not, what it is that futures studies actually produce. Five types of representations of the future are the result of these studies. As the value of futures studies depends on no small measure of their credibility, the standards for carrying out and reporting these studies are identified along with a description of how Toulmin’s model of informal logic can be used to best improve their credibility.

This paper is based on a multi-disciplinary literature review and integrative analysis.

Using epistemological criteria for knowledge as truth, belief and rationale, the results of futures studies are not and cannot be knowledge. Instead, futures studies produce five kinds of “representations of the future”: predictions, projections and forecasts, scenarios, visions and structures for action. Six standards for conducting and reporting the results of futures studies are provided which will increase the credibility of these studies. Toulmin’s informal logic format will provide the foundation for the most persuasive basis of such studies.

Futurists will understand that the products of their studies are not knowledge and why this is the case. They will also understand that the type of futures studies they are conducting are either conditional, contingent propositions or normative prescriptions in nature. There are six guidelines for carrying out and reporting futures studies which can also be used to assess the quality of published studies. They will see how the use of a certain kind of informal logic can establish the most credible foundations for their studies.

As an integrative literature review, it incorporates and simplifies widely disparate existing contributions to the topic of the nature of knowledge regarding futures studies and the criteria for making such studies as credible as possible.

Background: The concept of the ideas-informed society represents a desired situation in which: (1) citizens see value in staying up to date, and (2) citizens regularly keep themselves up to date by actively engaging with new ideas, developments and claims to truth, doing so both openly and critically. As a result, individuals become ever more knowledgeable, are better able to make good decisions, as well as find themselves in better position to re-align their values in response to new progressive norms and beliefs. Given these potential benefits, of primary interest are those who do not value staying up to date, nor attempt to do so.

Methods: With this systematic review we have sought to identify ways to consider how such “ideas refusers” might be switched-on to engaging with new ideas. We have done so by exploring: (1) the factors which act as barriers to and enablers of the actualisation of the ideas-informed society; (2) interventions/programmes and community-led activities developed to actualise the ideas-informed society; and (3) other non-empirically tested/verified suggestions for how the ideas-informed society might be actualised. Our findings derive from 25 research outputs (from a total of 631 originally identified) as well as examine case studies of “bottom-up” analogous activities.

Results: Our review highlights the presence of seemingly impactful approaches to enabling citizens to engage with new ideas, including science cafés and museum exhibitions. Other more bottom-up approaches include community-based events and festivals; social networks (and discussion within these networks) are also key to whether and how individuals engage with ideas, and the breadth of ideas they engage with.

Conclusions: We conclude by suggesting development and rigorous testing is now needed of interventions that seek to: (1) pique citizens’ curiosity; (2) establish connections to social networks and; (3) arm citizens with essential ideas-related dispositions.