Meaning construction

When we attempt to make sense of our surroundings, by necessity, we notice only a fraction of phenomena. Otherwise the amount of signals would overwhelm our senses and overtax our attention. This is done by our mental mechanisms, which include filtering processes to direct our attention on what it deems important. This happens at every instant.

We are only aware of a minimum set of prioritized events. Out of that small set we attend to only a few of them, maybe a couple of them only while our senses keep receiving multiple signals. Those signals may be pre-coordinated, as in a face-to-face conversation when we hear words but also see gestures, or body language. For post-coordination of signals, the brain couples separate and unsynchronized partial channels. In both cases, the objective is to fit all the stimuli we receive within a coherent framework that explains them as a whole. This whole process is known as sense making.

Sense making and meaning construction are similar cognitive processes. Sense making is semi-internal because it works with external stimuli and organizes it into a coherent entity. Construction of meaning integrates the coherent entity into a structure in memory that already exists, expanding it, or creates a new structure. Any one of these structures may be novel or an ontological replica of another.

Meaning construction results in a greater structural entity than the interpretation of the initial collection of signals and stimuli. It is a purely internal cognitive process of integration or creation that either expands an existing structure or creates new ones.

At a first step, our senses capture signals, then they are cognitively joined to make a temporary whole or conceptual structure in memory that is interpreted and placed into a greater whole conceptual structure, also in memory. The need to consider these as two separate processes arises from the intermediate need to combine and interpret the separate signals first and to place it into another structure at a second stage.

Question: Are these structures, or structural entities, information, knowledge?
Question: Where is information?