The Informational Turn

New paper in the Journal of Philosophical Logic with a new take on the Scandal of Deduction: The Paradox of Inference and the Non-Triviality of Analytic Information. Part of the abstract:

Hence, although analytically true sentences provide no empirical information about the state of the world, they convey analytic information, in the shape of constructions prescribing how to arrive at the truths in question.

Some more material on the matter:

• The Scandal of Deduction: Hintikka on the Information Yield of Deductive Inferences
• The Enduring Scandal of Deduction

Am currently working on a paper to be given at this years AAL conference. Tentative details:

Title: An Analysis of Informational Relevance

Abstract: In this presentation a logical definition and analysis of informational relevance is given. Relevance is taken to be agent-oriented/epistemic, where the relevance of a piece of information is determined in terms of how well it satisfies an agent’s request, how well it answers their question. Firstly, a general metric is outlined whereby the relevance of a statement is measured in terms of its truthlikeness measure. Secondly, a logic is given in which a relevance operator is defined and investigated. The erotetic foundation for this logic is Hintikka’s approach to analysing questions as requests for information in terms of epistemic modal logic, which is then combined with a logic of intention.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.