Month: July 2016

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information

Recently released: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information.

Information and communication technology occupies a central place in the modern world, with society becoming increasingly dependent on it every day. It is therefore unsurprising that it has become a growing subject area in contemporary philosophy, which relies heavily on informational concepts. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into four parts:

  • basic ideas
  • quantitative and formal aspects
  • natural and physical aspects
  • human and semantic aspects.

Within these sections central issues are examined, including probability, the logic of information, informational metaphysics, the philosophy of data and evidence, and the epistemic value of information.

Weighing the #Brexit vote by age

The Brexit result showed an inverse relationship between the percentage of ‘remain’ voters and age group; the lower a voter’s age, the more likely they were to vote ‘remain’. The following image from the BBC provides a graphical breakdown:



One issue made of this outcome is that the winning decision to leave has been supported more by older people who will be less affected by the decision over time whilst the losing decision to remain has been supported more by younger people who will be more affected by the decision given their greater remaining lifespan.

This got me thinking of a voting system whereby the impact of an individual’s vote is adjusted by a weighting; the younger the voter the greater the weighting. I was going to write up an example of this idea applied to the Brexit vote, but just found the following article which espouses the same idea: Here’s what would have happened if Brexit vote was weighted by age.

Such a voting system would only apply to decisions with direct long term consequences. Some might claim it ageist, but I see it as a perfectly reasonable way to incorporate consideration of the impact a voter has on a decision and the impact the decision will have on them.