Can Misinformation Be Informative?

Can misinformation be informative and if so, how? Here are some thoughts on the matter, with three ways in which misinformation can be considered informative. The first two are simply rehashes of standard facts about truth, falsity and logic explicated in informational parlance. The third is a novel point.

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Information and Information Flow

For a decent introduction to theories of information and information flow, with a focus on semantic information and approaches from within philosophy, I recommend Information and Information Flow: An Introduction. Authored by Manuel Bremer and Daniel Cohnitz, it is based on a series of lectures they gave some years ago.

When I first started looking at information, I found this book to be very helpful and informative. One issue I have with the book though is that it seems to have been put together a little too hastily and as a result is somewhere in between a collection of lecture notes and a refined, replete book. Primarily it suffers from some inadequate explanations and some awkward material flow.

Paraconsistent Semantic Information

One 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 Bar-Hillel-Carnap Paradox. What happens if we replace the underlying classical logic and probability with the paraconsistent LP (Logic of Paradox)? Does it resolve the Bar-Hillel-Carnap Paradox? Here is an investigation into the matter:

Paraconsistent Semantic Information

Information: A Very Short Introduction is Available

Information: A Very Short Introduction, Luciano Floridi’s contribution to the ‘Very Short Introductions’ series is now available for purchase:

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199551378.do?keyword=floridi&sortby=bestMatches

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199551375