Abstract: Luciano Floridi has impressively applied the concept of information to problems in semantics and epistemology, among other areas. In this essay, I briefly review two areas where I think one may usefully raise questions about some of Floridi's conclusions. One area is in the project to naturalize semantics and Floridi's use of the derived versus nonderived notion of semantic content. The other area is in the logic of information and knowledge and whether knowledge based on information necessarily supports closure, (...) in every instance. I suggest that it does not and, thereby, raise a challenge to Floridi's logic of being informed. (shrink)

This paper traces the application of information theory to philosophical problems of mind and meaning from the earliest days of the creation of the mathematical theory of communication. The use of information theory to understand purposive behavior, learning, pattern recognition, and more marked the beginning of the naturalization of mind and meaning. From the inception of information theory, Wiener, Turing, and others began trying to show how to make a mind from informational and computational materials. Over the last 50 years, (...) many philosophers saw different aspects of the naturalization of the mind, though few saw at once all of the pieces of the puzzle that we now know. Starting with Norbert Wiener himself, philosophers and information theorists used concepts from information theory to understand cognition. This paper provides a window on the historical sequence of contributions made to the overall project of naturalizing the mind by philosophers from Shannon, Wiener, and MacKay, to Dennett, Sayre, Dretske, Fodor, and Perry, among others. At some time between 1928 and 1948, American engineers and mathematicians began to talk about `Theory of Information' and `Information Theory,' understanding by these terms approximately and vaguely a theory for which Hartley's `amount of information' is a basic concept. I have been unable to find out when and by whom these names were first used. Hartley himself does not use them nor does he employ the term `Theory of Transmission of Information,' from which the two other shorter terms presumably were derived. It seems that Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon were using them in the Mid-Forties. (shrink)

Abstract: The core aim of this special issue is to present the philosophy of information as a way of doing philosophy, to focus on the contributions of Luciano Floridi to that area, and most important, to stimulate the debate on the most distinctive and controversial views he has defended in that context. This introduction contains a description of the philosophy of information, a discussion of two common misconceptions about the scope and the ambition of the philosophy of information, and a (...) brief overview of the essays in the issue. (shrink)

Luciano Floridi’s Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction is a survey of some important ideas that ground the newly emerging area of philosophy known, thanks to Floridi, as the philosophy of information. It was written as a textbook for philosophy students interested in the digital age, but is probably more useful for postgraduates who want to investigate intersections between philosophy and computer science, information theory and ICT (information and communications technology). The book is divided into five independent chapters followed by a (...) worthy, though impressionistic, afterthought under the title of the conclusion. Chapter One, “Divide et Computa: Philosophy and the Digital Environment,” begins by outlining four topics to consider when examining the significance of the digital revolution: 1) computation, 2) automatic control, 3) modeling and virtual reality, and 4) information management. This preliminary outline is followed by a brief historical consideration of the transition from analogue to digital information processing and the importance of “digitization” for developing mechanical means to manage information. According to Floridi, this digitization has occurred in three main areas. Regarding the scope of digitized content, we have moved from numerical data to sounds and images. At the same time, our interfaces to the computer have become less digital and more humane. Graphical user interfaces and WYSIWYG software have quickly replaced punch cards. In the area of connectivity, we have moved from the mainframe to the Internet, hence, to the possibility of a global information network. Together these transformations are accelerating the evolution of the infosphere and consequently its dramatic effect on the shape of society. These changes are of world historical significance, thus worthy of philosophical investigation, as the last part of the chapter shows.. (shrink)

The paper presents a critical appraisal of Floridi’s metaphysical foundation of information ecology. It highlights some of the issues raised by Floridi with regard to the axiological status of the objects in the “infosphere,” the moral status of artificial agents, and Floridi’s foundation of information ethics as information ecology. I further criticise the ontological conception of value as a first order category. I suggest that a weakening of Floridi’s demiurgic information ecology is needed in order not to forget the limitations (...) of human actors and/or of their surrogates, digital agents. I plea for a rational theoretical and practical view of such agents beyond utopian reasoning with regard to their potential moral status. (shrink)

Written by world-leading experts, this book draws together a number of important strands in contemporary approaches to the philosophical and scientific questions that emerge when dealing with the issues of computing, information, cognition and the conceptual issues that arise at their intersections. It discovers and develops the connections at the borders and in the interstices of disciplines and debates. This volume presents a range of essays that deal with the currently vigorous concerns of the philosophy of information, ontology creation and (...) control, bioinformation and biosemiotics, computational and post-computation approaches to the philosophy of cognitive science, computational linguistics, ethics, and education. http://www.amazon.ca/Computation-Information-Cognition-Gordana-Dodig-Crnkovic/dp/1847180906. (shrink)

The book presents investigations into the world of info-computational nature, in which information constitutes the structure, while computational process amounts to its change. Information and computation are inextricably bound: There is no computation without informational structure, and there is no information without computational process. Those two complementary ideas are used to build a conceptual net, which according to Novalis is a theoretical way of capturing reality. We apprehend the reality within a framework known as natural computationalism, the view that the (...) whole universe can be understood as a computational system at many different levels - from quantum mechanical world, to biological organisms including intelligent minds and their societies. Questions about nature of information and computation and their unified view are addressed along with application of info- computational approach to knowledge generation. (shrink)

Abstract: This article provides replies to, and comments on, the contributions to the special issue on the philosophy of information. It seeks to highlight con-vergences and points of potential agreement, while offering clarifications and further details. It also answers some criticisms and replies to some objections articulated in the special issue.

The paper argues that the two best known formal logical fallacies, namely denying the antecedent (DA) and affirming the consequent (AC) are not just basic and simple errors, which prove human irrationality, but rather informational shortcuts, which may provide a quick and dirty way of extracting useful information from the environment. DA and AC are shown to be degraded versions of Bayes’ theorem, once this is stripped of some of its probabilities. The less the probabilities count, the closer these fallacies (...) become to a reasoning that is not only informationally useful but also logically valid. (shrink)

The usual way to try to ground knowing according to contemporary theory of knowledge is: We know something if (1) it’s true, (2) we believe it, and (3) we believe it for the “right” reasons. Floridi proposes a better way. His grounding is based partly on probability theory, and partly on a question/answer network of verbal and behavioural interactions evolving in time. This is rather like modeling the data-exchange between a data-seeker who needs to know which button to press on (...) a food-dispenser and a data-knower who already knows the correct number. The success criterion, hence the grounding, is whether the seeker’s probability of lunch is indeed increasing (hence uncertainty is decreasing) as a result of the interaction. Floridi also suggests that his philosophy of information casts some light on the problem of consciousness. I’m not so sure. (shrink)

Turing tersely mentioned a notion of ``cultural search'' while otherwise deeply engaged in the design and operations of one of the earliest computers. His idea situated the individual squarely within a collaborative intellectual environment, but did he mean to suggest this in the form of a general information system? In the same writing Turing forecast mechanizations of proofs and outlined genetical searches, much later implemented in cellular automata. The conjecture explores the networked data-information-knowledge continuum as the subject of Turing's notions (...) of search and intelligence, using analogous models from library systems theory. Floridi's philosophy of information is posed as a potential guide to applied information services design of the Turing type. The initial problem is to identify a minimal set of assumptions from Turing's essay beyond the general context of computing. This set will form a bridge to an analogous set of principles in library systems models by eliciting supporting evidence in the literature relating the two. Finally it will be shown how Floridi's philosophy of information more fully encompasses Turing's insight in view of the conjecture. (shrink)

The research programme of the philosophy of information (PI) proposed in 2002 made it an independent area or discipline in philosophical research. The scientific concept of ‘information’ is formally accepted in philosophical inquiry. Hence a new and tool-driven philosophical discipline of PI with its interdisciplinary nature has been established. Philosophy of information is an ‘orientative’ rather than ‘cognitive’ philosophy. When PI is under consideration in the history of Western philosophy, it can be regarded as a shift of large tradition. There (...) are three large traditions at large, known as Platonic, Kantian and Leibniz-Russellian. In the discussion of the position of the possible worlds, we have modal Platonism and modal realism, but both of the theories are made in the framework of Western philosophy. In this essay, it is argued that possible worlds could be seen as worlds in information, which is then an interpretation of modal information theory (MIT). Our interpretation is made on the basis of Leibniz’s lifelong connection with China, a fact often overlooked by the Western philosophers. Possible world theory was influenced by the Neo-Confucianism flourishing since the Song Dynasty of China, the foundation of which is Yijing. It could be argued that Leibniz’s possible world theory was formulated in respect to the impact of the thoughts reflected in Yijing, in that one of the prominent features is the model-theoretic construction of theories. There are two approaches to theory construction, i.e., axiom-theoretic and model-theoretic. The origin of the former is from ancient Greece and the latter from ancient China. And they determined the different features of theoretic structures between the oriental and occidental traditions of science and technology. The tendency of the future development of science and technology is changing from the axiom-theoretic to the model-theoretic orientation, at least the two approaches being complementary each other. To some extent, this means the retrospective of tradition in the turning point of history, and some of the China’s cultural traditions might become the starting points in formulating the future Chinese philosophy of science and technology. (shrink)

\Complexity" is a catchword of certain extremely popular and rapidly developing interdisciplinary new sciences, often called accordingly the sciences of complexity1. It is often closely associated with another notably popular but ambiguous word, \information" information, in turn, may be justly called the central new concept in the whole 20th century science. Moreover, the notion of information is regularly coupled with a key concept of thermodynamics, viz. entropy. And like this was not enough, it is quite usual to add one more, (...) at present extraordinarily popular notion, namely chaos, and wed it with the above-mentioned concepts. (shrink)

We present the simplest solution ever to 'the hardest logic puzzle ever'. We then modify the puzzle to make it even harder and give a simple solution to the modified puzzle. The final sections investigate exploding god-heads and a two-question solution to the original puzzle.

I argue that so-called 'background knowledge' in confirmation theory has little, if anything, to do with 'knowledge' in the sense of mainstream epistemology. I argue that it is better construed as 'background information', which need not be believed in, justified, or true.

Taddeo’s recent article, ‘Information Warfare: A Philosophical Perspective’ (Philos. Technol. 25:105–120, 2012) is a useful addition to the literature on information communications technologies (ICTs) and warfare. In this short response, I draw attention to two issues arising from the article. The first concerns the applicability of ‘information warfare’ terminology to current political and military discourse, on account of its relative lack of contemporary usage. The second engages with the political and ethical implications of treating ICT environments as a ‘domain’, with (...) its ramifications for the pursuit of ‘dominion’, particularly through military action. (shrink)

This article provides an answer to the question: What is the function of cognition? By answering this question it becomes possible to investigate what are the simplest cognitive systems. It addresses the question by treating cognition as a solution to a design problem. It defines a nested sequence of design problems: (1) How can a system persist? (2) How can a system affect its environment to improve its persistence? (3) How can a system utilize better information from the environment to (...) select better actions? And, (4) How can a system reduce its inherent informational limitations to achieve more successful behavior? This provides a corresponding nested sequence of system classes: (1) autonomous systems, (2) (re)active autonomous systems, (3) informationally controlled autonomous systems (autonomous agents), and (4) cognitive systems. -/- This article provides the following characterization of cognition: The cognitive system is the set of mechanisms of an autonomous agent that (1) allow increase of the correlation and integration between the environment and the information system of the agent, so that (2) the agent can improve the selection of actions and thereby produce more successful behavior. -/- Finally, it shows that common cognitive capacities satisfy the characterization: learning, memory, representation, decision making, reasoning, attention, and communication. (shrink)

Rabern and Rabern (Analysis 68:105–112 2 ) and Uzquiano (Analysis 70:39–44 4 ) have each presented increasingly harder versions of ‘the hardest logic puzzle ever’ (Boolos The Harvard Review of Philosophy 6:62–65 1 ), and each has provided a two-question solution to his predecessor’s puzzle. But Uzquiano’s puzzle is different from the original and different from Rabern and Rabern’s in at least one important respect: it cannot be solved in less than three questions. In this paper we solve Uzquiano’s puzzle (...) in three questions and show why there is no solution in two. Finally, to cement a tradition, we introduce a puzzle of our own. (shrink)

It is argued that the Tractatus Project of Logical Atomism, in which the world is conceived of as the totality of independent atomic facts, can usefully be understood by conceiving of each fact as a bit in logical space. Wittgenstein himself thinks in terms of logical space. His elementary propositions, which express atomic facts, are interpreted as tuples of co-ordinates which specify the location of a bit in logical space. He says that signs for elementary propositions are arrangements of names. (...) Here, the names are understood as numerical symbols specifying coordinates. It is argued that, using this approach, the so-called colour-exclusion problem, which was Wittgensteins reason for abandoning the Tractatus, is in fact soluble. However, if logical space is a continuum then some coordinates will need to be expressed by numerical symbols that are infinite in size. How is this to be understood in Tractatus terms? It is shown that, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did recognise the possibility of infinite propositions and sentences expressing them. At first sight his approach to infinite sentences, and the approach of the present paper, seem to differ, but it is argued that the difference is superficial. Finally, we address the question of whether Logical Atomism is viable and this raises issues concerning its relationship to natural science. (shrink)