Philosophy of information

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The philosophy of information (PI) is a new area of research, which studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information technology, and philosophy. It is the philosophical field concerned with:

  1. the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences
  2. the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems."

(from Luciano Floridi, "What is the Philosophy of Information?", Metaphilosophy, 2002, (33), 1/2.)

PI was finally established as an independent field of research in the 1990s by Luciano Floridi, the first to use the expression philosophy of information in the technical sense expressed by the definition above and to elaborate a unified and coherent, conceptual frame for the whole subject.

PI is based on the technical work of Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, William Ross Ashby, Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, and many other scientists working on computing and information theory back in the early 1950s, and then, later, on the work of Fred Dretske, Jon Barwise, Brian Cantwell Smith, and others.

Contents

[edit] Defining information

What the word information means depends on how it is defined.

Claude E. Shannon, for one, was very cautious: “The word ‘information’ has been given different meanings by various writers in the general field of information theory. It is likely that at least a number of these will prove sufficiently useful in certain applications to deserve further study and permanent recognition. It is hardly to be expected that a single concept of information would satisfactorily account for the numerous possible applications of this general field. (italics added)” (Shannon 1993, p. 180). Thus, following Shannon, Weaver supported a tripartite analysis of information in terms of (1) technical problems concerning the quantification of information and dealt with by Shannon's theory; (2) semantic problems relating to meaning and truth; and (3) what he called “influential” problems concerning the impact and effectiveness of information on human behaviour, which he thought had to play an equally important role. And these are only two early examples of the problems raised by any analysis of information.

A map of the main senses in which one may speak of information is provided by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article. The previous paragraphs are based on it.

According to Floridi, four kinds of mutually compatible phenomena are commonly referred to as "information":

  • Information about something (e.g. a train timetable)
  • Information as something (e.g. DNA, or fingerprints)
  • Information for something (e.g. algorithms or instructions)
  • Information in something (e.g. a pattern or a constrain).

The word "information" is commonly used so metaphorically or so abstractly that the meaning is unclear.

[edit] Computing and philosophy

Recent creative advances and efforts in computing, such as semantic web, ontology engineering, knowledge engineering, and modern artificial intelligence provide philosophy with fertile notions, new and evolving subject matters, methodologies, and models for philosophical inquiry. While computer science brings new opportunities and challenges to traditional philosophical studies, and changes the ways philosophers understand foundational concepts in philosophy, further major progress in computer science would only be feasible when philosophy provides sound foundations for areas such as bioinformatics, software engineering, knowledge engineering, and ontologies.

Classical topics in philosophy, namely, mind, consciousness, experience, reasoning, knowledge, truth, morality and creativity are rapidly becoming common concerns and foci of investigation in computer science, e.g., in areas such as agent computing, software agents, and intelligent mobile agent technologies.

According to L. Floridi [1] one can think of three main ways for applying computational methods towards philosophical matters:

  1. Conceptual experiments in silico: As an innovative extension of an ancient tradition of thought experiment, a trend has begun in philosophy to apply computational modeling schemes to questions in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, and so on.
  2. Pancomputationalism (or the fallacy of a powerful metaphor): By this view, computational and informational concepts are considered to be so powerful that given the right Level of abstraction, anything in the world could be modeled and represented as a computational system, and any process could be simulated computationally. Then, however, pancomputationalists have the hard task of providing credible answers to the following two questions:

[edit] Software freedom philosophy

Main article: Free software movement

A movement known as the free software movement has argued since the early 80s that computer users should be free to run, modify, and redistribute any software which they have. The movement's leader, Richard Stallman, argues these are fundamental human rights which are necessary for a society where people can help themselves and each other.

Stallman argues that software is a new field compared to labour and journalism and thus lacks a discussion of what rights should be inalienable and present for all members of society. The first document of this philosophy was the GNU Manifesto. The best known document is the Free Software Definition.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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