The Relational Nature of Information: Why Information Is Neither Matter nor Energy

Information is commonly treated either as a measurable quantity (Shannon), a semantic entity (Floridi), or a physical resource ("It from Bit"). This paper proposes a different ontological perspective: information is not an intrinsic property of matter, nor of structure alone, but an emergent property of a relation established between systems through a shared structural code. The framework separates four conceptual layers — matter, structure, coding, and information — and distinguishes two kinds of coding relation: coding-by-convention, which requires agents and historical agreement (e.g., language, telecommunication protocols), and coding-by-mechanism, which requires only causal machinery (e.g., the genetic code). A further refinement indexes the coding relation temporally, distinguishing codes that are actively shared, codes that are latent but recoverable (as with deciphered or partially deciphered scripts), and cases where the existence of any code remains indeterminate (as with anomalous astronomical signals or the relation between neural structure and conscious experience). This three-way distinction allows the framework to give a precise answer to cases that purely physical or purely semantic theories of information leave unresolved. The paper situates this relational account against Bateson's notion of "a difference that makes a difference" and Floridi's semantic theory of information, arguing that the present proposal is narrower than the former and weaker than the latter, and specifying exactly where each comparison holds. An appendix relates the framework to the author's Theory of Necessary Architecture (TNA), presenting the correspondence as a structural mapping rather than an identity, with caveats noted explicitly.