*5.10. Messaging Theory (Angeletics)*

Following McLuhan, further emphasis has been placed on communication as the exchanges of messages—'messaging' involving the triple of message, its sender and its receiver. Capurro coined the term 'angeletics' to replace that of information for the description of the exchanges of messages between human beings, going back to the ancient Greek word for messenger *angellos.* The choice of the term Angeletics for the study of messages and messaging is to signal the use of a philosophical framework, closest to that of Heidegger, which is ultimately based on Being of which the irreducible uniqueness of the individual human consciousness is a part. A major discussion by Capurro and others of the concept of Angeletics is given in [103].

The word message is derived from the Latin *mittere*, to send. For us, this describes a 'packaged' portion of a complex process of information in movement that can be also designated as an ontolon. This is consistent with the concept of Holgate [104] that science should continue "the epistemological revolution of our time" and extend relational, that is, ontological concepts to every field of science and the mind (relativity, pluralism, polarities, information exchange, etc.).

Communication involving the sending and reception of a message is a creative act, an energetic process that involves the exchange of energy, overcoming resistance to doing nothing, or not sending any message. Messaging theory or Angeletics must reflect the creative, value-laden characteristics of communication, their reference to the physical survival of the receiver, or more indirectly to his/her mental and spiritual well-being. It is easy to show a central role in philosophy of messaging in a historical perspective and more recently in the ontology of Heidegger. It is this central functional role of philosophy in messaging theory that calls for definition of a new specific field for the clarification of residual problems at the interface of the domains of messages, communication and information, in which the notion of Being plays a central role.

Capurro stated in [101] that the ontic difference between a sender a messenger and a receiver as separate entities presupposes the original unity of Being as sender, the world as message and humans as messengers. We can distinguish this original unity analytically, but we must be aware that any ontic separation (at whatever level of reality and concerning whatever kinds of beings) presupposes our being-in-the-world (to use Heidegger's formula). At the risk of overdoing the form but to make the point, we may use the expression Being in Reality in place of this formula. We propose a synthetic *non-*separation of subject and object and state grounded on the original relationship between man (and humans) and world. In an original angeletic perception, whatever we perceive AS being this or that and on whatever kind of relation (causal or not, etc.) is achieved on the basis of our being originally open to the message of the world that we process, at a higher level, as Being. One of the

<sup>8</sup> "Can't ge<sup>t</sup> 'em, they've et' 'em" they're gone and there ain't no moa." Australian popular song.

problems posed by discussion of Being in non-transcendental terms is whether one can talk also about it in terms of proper parts, as one can for ontic and epistemic phenomena, using the terms of ontolon and epistemon respectively. This problem is discussed in the next Section 6.

## **6. Forms of Reality and Existence**

The dialectical-logical approach that we have adopted in this paper o ffers support for a new view of the operation of thought and other real processes at a further complex level. We do not consider this another level of abstraction, in the sense of Floridi [105] dealing with objects 'abstracted' from reality, but in the sense of sets of dynamic moving elements, parts or forms of the processes involved, potentia and actual. It is useful for this purpose to maintain the two domains of ontology and epistemology, where for the latter the concept of 'epistemons' has been proposed by James Barham [106,107]. The 'pieces' of the former will be called 'ontolons'. These two sets of entities could be supplemented by a third referring to the domain of standard philosophy, that of being9, but this issue is outside the scope of this paper.

The relation of entities to disciplines is thus as follows:

1. Becoming/Change Ontology Ontolons 2. Knowing Epistemology Epistemons

No absolute separation should be taken to exist between the domains. They interact dialectically and logically in our LIR.

The terms of ontolons and epistemons are neologisms, but their derivation from Greek for 'being' and 'knowing' anchors them in a long tradition. Capurro [108] has made the somewhat easier connection of epistemon to 'what can be known', and has related it to Husserl's 'noesis'. This for us implies a process or stream of 'data', better, segments of processes. Ontolon is more complex, as it refers to both the immanent and transcendent aspects of 'being', the former in the English verbal sense. Our logical approach, however, suggests that these aspects are not and do not need to be totally disjunct. This is true in particular in relation to beings who, as we do, have the capacity of self-reference and an 'understanding' of our position, as in Heidegger. In Lupascian terms, we *are* both immanent and *transcending.*

Capurro states that, for Heidegger, ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct philosophical disciplines. These terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its object and its way of treating that object. Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of *Dasein*, which, as an entity—'analytic' or what we call proper part of existence— establishes a guide-line for all philosophical inquiry "at the point where it *arises* and to which it *returns*." LIR provides the framework for the parallel interactive interpretation of ontology and phenomenology.

In contemporary philosophy, phenomenology thus occupies a strange position: on the one hand it seems to place major ontological value on appearance while at the same time denying access to it by science. Phenomenology could thus have the not very felicitous designation of anti-scientific realism.
