The
logic of information, also known as the logical theory of information, considers the information content of logical
signs and expressions along the lines initially developed by
Charles Sanders Peirce.
More recently this field has become known as the philosophy of information. The expression was coined in the 1990s by
Luciano Floridi, who has published prolifically in this area with the intention of elaborating a unified and coherent, conceptual frame for the whole subject.[2]
Definitions of "information"
The concept information has been defined by several theorists.[3]
Charles S. Peirce's theory of information was embedded in his wider theory of symbolic communication he called the semiotic, now a major part of
semiotics. For Peirce, information integrates the aspects of
signs and
expressions separately covered by the concepts of
denotation and
extension, on the one hand, and by
connotation and
comprehension on the other.
Donald M. MacKay says that information is a distinction that makes a difference.[4]
According to Luciano Floridi[citation needed], 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 constraint).
Philosophical directions
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 ideas, 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.
Pancomputationalism: On 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:
how can one avoid blurring all differences among systems?
what would it mean for the system under investigation not to be an
informational system (or a computational system, if computation is the same as information processing)?
Luciano Floridi, "
What is the Philosophy of Information?" Metaphilosophy, 33.1/2: 123-145. Reprinted in T.W. Bynum and J.H. Moor (eds.), 2003. CyberPhilosophy: The Intersection of Philosophy and Computing. Oxford – New York: Blackwell.
Greco, G.M., Paronitti G., Turilli M., and Floridi L., 2005. How to Do Philosophy Informationally.Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence 3782, pp. 623–634.
Albert Borgmann, Holding onto Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (Chicago University Press, 1999)
Mark Poster, The Mode of Information (Chicago Press, 1990)
Luciano Floridi, "The Informational Nature of Reality", Fourth International European Conference on Computing and Philosophy 2006 (Dragvoll Campus, NTNU Norwegian University for Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, 22–24 June 2006).
IEG site, the Oxford University research group on the philosophy of information.
It from bit and fit from bit. On the origin and impact of information in the average evolution - from bit to atom and ecosystem. Information philosophy which covers not only the physics of information, but also how life forms originate and from there evolve to become more and more complex, including evolution of genes and memes, into the complex memetics from organisations and multinational corporations and a "
global brain", (Yves Decadt, 2000). Book published in Dutch with English paper summary in The Information Philosopher,
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/decadt/