Comments for The Informational Turn

Comment on An Analysis of Informational Relevance by Jakko Hintikka and Information in Philosophy | The Informational Turn

Jakko Hintikka and Information in Philosophy | The Informational Turn — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:47:37 +0000

[...] I am currently using Hintikka’s approach to analysing questions as requests for information in terms of epistemic modal logic for some research on informational relevance. [...]

Comment on An Analysis of Informational Relevance by admin

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:43:55 +0000

Depends on what type of information one is talking about or how they are talking about it, but information in general is not solely a reducible, anthropomorphic quantity. I am talking here about semantic information. Semantic information quantity is an agent-independent thing. The informativeness or relevance of a piece of information however is an agent-relative thing. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Semantic Conceptions of Information for more information.

Comment on An Analysis of Informational Relevance by Carlos

Carlos — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:41:08 +0000

Thus “Information” is solely a reducible, anthropomorphic quantity rather than phyiscal/intrinsic to all things?

Comment on Dissecting the General Definition of Information (GDI) by A Question Concerning Data | The Informational Turn

A Question Concerning Data | The Informational Turn — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:38:59 +0000

[...] rejection of dataless information in accordance with the General Definition of Information leads to the following modest thesis of ontological [...]

Comment on Knowledge and Its Value: Some Suggestions as To Why Knowledge Is More Valuable Than True Belief by Epistemology and the Value of Knowledge | The Informational Turn

Epistemology and the Value of Knowledge | The Informational Turn — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:38:36 +0000

[...] The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Survival, a paper I have just looked at which impressively supports the view that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief, a view which I support. [...]

Comment on Some Offhand Commentary on Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information by Lucy

Lucy — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:45:55 +0000

Thanks very much Simon, your reply along with the links were very helpful:)

Comment on Some Offhand Commentary on Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information by admin

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:37:09 +0000

1) There are two senses of the word meaning. In the first sense, for example 'smoke means fire', the term 'meaning' is synonymous with 'indicates' of 'is a sign of', so 'smoke indicates fire'. Paul Grice dubbed this informational kind of meaning natural meaning. This contrasts with a more general semantic sense of meaning, where, for example, 'fire means fire'. If a semantic agent receives the information that there is smoke, then they understand that this indicates there is fire. They also have semantic representations for these concepts and meaningfully interpret what is involved. 2) Check out sections 1.7 (Genetic neutrality) and 1.7.1 (Environmental information) in the Semantic Conceptions of Information entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. As for your last point, I think that if an agent already knows that x indicates y, then a signal x would carry no information about y to the agent. Dretske adds the k variable into his definition of information flow to accommodate the way we think about information; one cannot be newly informed about something that they are already informed about. But this does not mean that the information content was meaningless. x still indicates y and x is still semantically meaningful. Here is a useful article written by Dretske.

Comment on Some Offhand Commentary on Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information by Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:24:30 +0000

Hi there, I just came across your blog whilst searching on google for an answer to how Dretske saw the relationship between information and meaning. Your blog looks very interesting, but a lot of it was over my head, as I’m a complete beginner on these issues. So I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on the following two things:

1) How does Dretske’s define meaningful information content?
2) Is this something that always requires an interpreter (conscious agent, or otherwise)?

I got the impression from your post that under Dretske’s concept of information, *an agent* (rather than the information system) could determine whether a signal carried meaningful information or not? So, for example, if an agent already knew that ‘x’ correlates with ‘y’, then seeing an instance of ‘x’ would carry no information content. This suggests that the information content was meaningless. Is that right?

Any thoughts on this would be grand! (And nice blog!)

Comment on Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s Account of Semantic Information by Paraconsistent Semantic Information | The Informational Turn

Paraconsistent Semantic Information | The Informational Turn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:56:33 +0000

[...] issue with Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s account of semantic information is that it assigns maximal informativeness to contradictions, an issue that has been termed the [...]

Comment on Some Offhand Commentary on Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information by Properties of Information Flow | The Informational Turn

Properties of Information Flow | The Informational Turn — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:51:16 +0000

[...] Dretske’s inverse conditional probability account of information flow [see an earlier post here] but come out invalid in standard formal systems for counterfactuals (Jonathan Cohen and Aaron [...]