Including Philosophy and/of Information, Logic and Epistemology
The legendary epistemologist, who was a central figure in bringing the concept of information into philosophy, has sadly passed away. As a search for ‘Dretske’ on this blog will reveal, his work has been a major influence on my research and features heavily in my thesis. Here is some information on Dretske at ‘New APPS’: … Continue reading “R.I.P. Fred Dretske”
Knowledge and luck do not mix. Our intuitions and definitions of knowledge suggest and require the absence of luck in cases of knowledge. Edmund Gettier’s landmark 1963 paper ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ not only prompted a revision in epistemological theorising, but gave us the terms Gettier-examples and the related Gettier-luck. Gettier provided his examples … Continue reading “Dretske’s Account of Knowledge Against Some Epistemological Cases”
Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information is ultimately an attempt to use the notion of information to explicate knowledge. As part of this enterprise, several philosophically interesting issues are tackled. The first of these is the development of a semantic theory of information. After establishing a connection between information and knowledge, Dretske goes … Continue reading “Some Offhand Commentary on Fred Dretske’s Knowledge and the Flow of Information“
Title: Explicating a Standard Externalist Argument against the KK Principle Abstract: The KK principle is typically rejected in externalist accounts of knowledge. However, a standard general argument for this rejection is in need of a supportive explication. In a recent paper, Samir Okasha argues that the standard externalist argument in question is fallacious. In this … Continue reading “Explicating a Standard Externalist Argument against the KK Principle”
I am inclined to think that externalist accounts of knowledge such as Dretske’s and Nozick’s lead to a distinction between knowing that p and knowing that p is true. A recent paper prompted me to write a response in which I try to explicate this idea. Does it sound plausible?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11023-013-9310-x Abstract: In this paper I look at Fred Dretske’s account of information and knowledge as developed in Knowledge and The Flow of Information. In particular, I translate Dretske’s probabilistic definition of information to a modal logical framework and subsequently use this to explicate the conception of information and its flow which is central to … Continue reading “The Logic of Knowledge and the Flow of Information”
Towards a Framework for Semantic Information (my PhD thesis) Abstract: This thesis addresses some important questions regarding an account of semantic information. Starting with the contention that semantic information is to be understood as truthful meaningful data, several key elements for an account of semantic information are developed. After an introductory overview of information, the … Continue reading “Towards a Framework for Semantic Information”
Jonathan Cohen and Aaron Meskin (C&M) published a paper several years ago titled `An Objective Counterfactual Theory of Information’. Here is its abstract Philosophers have appealed to information (as understood by [Shannon, 1948] and introduced to philosophers largely by [Dretske, 1981]) in a wide variety of contexts; information has been proffered in the service of … Continue reading “Problems with An Objective Counterfactual Theory of Information”
I am giving a talk next Friday at my department’s logic seminar series. Here are the details: Title: The Logic of Knowledge and the Flow of Information Abstract: In this talk I cover some work still in development which concerns the notions of information and knowledge as exemplified in Fred Dretske’s ‘Knowledge and The Flow … Continue reading “Upcoming Talk”
I was surprised to receive an email today promoting an incipient reading group at The University of Melbourne focusing on theories of information. Here is some information on the group: We aim to explore information in all its facets: from the 1950s mathematical theories of information (Shannon and Weaver, Wiener, Cybernetics etc.), to semiotics (Jakobson … Continue reading “Theories of Information Reading Group”