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An epistemic logic for becoming informed

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Abstract

Various conceptual approaches to the notion of information can currently be traced in the literature in logic and formal epistemology. A main issue of disagreement is the attribution of truthfulness to informational data, the so called Veridicality Thesis (Floridi 2005). The notion of Epistemic Constructive Information (Primiero 2007) is one of those rejecting VT. The present paper develops a formal framework for ECI. It extends on the basic approach of Artemov’s logic of proofs (Artemov 1994), representing an epistemic logic based on dependent justifications, where the definition of information relies on a strict distinction from factual truth. The definition obtained by comparison with a Normal Modal Logic translates a constructive logic for “becoming informed”: its distinction from the logic of “being informed”—which internalizes truthfulness—is essential to a general evaluation of information with respect to truth. The formal disentanglement of these two logics, and the description of the modal version of the former as a weaker embedding into the latter, allows for a proper understanding of the Veridicality Thesis with respect to epistemic states defined in terms of information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy and Moral Science Department, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Gent University, 9000, Gent, Belgium

    Giuseppe Primiero

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  1. Giuseppe Primiero
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Primiero.

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The author is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Ghent (Belgium) and Affiliated Research Fellow at the IEG Research Group, Univeristy of Oxford (Great Britain) and at the Research Group in the Philosophy of Information, Hertfordshire University (Great Britain). Research for this paper was supported by subventions from Ghent University. Thanks to the participants of the First Workshop on the Philosophy of Information and Logic for useful comments and discussions.

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Primiero, G. An epistemic logic for becoming informed. Synthese 167, 363–389 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9413-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9413-8

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