Contributors

• Allo Patrick: Local Information and Adaptive Consequence
• Floridi, Luciano: The Logic of ‘Being Informed’
• Frápolli, María J. and Francesc Camós: The Informational Content of Necessary Truths
• Jago, Mark: Imagine the Possibilities: Information without Overload
• Mares, Ed: Relevant Logic, Probabilistic Information, and Conditionals
• Sequoiah-Grayson, Sebastian: Information Flow and Impossible Situations

Outline

A core problem in the Philosophy of Information (PI) — when the latter is understood as the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information Floridi (2002) — is the elaboration of a formal theory of information. This broad question, explicitly listed by Floridi (2004) as one of the main open problems in PI, invites the careful investigation of the role of formal logic in such a theory.

Although the research area concerning the relations between logic and information has been very lively for many years, several key issues remain unexplored. On the one hand, investigations in the conceptual nature of information, conducted mainly by philosophers (e.g. Dretske), have focused on topics such as truthfulness, meaning, perception and the relations between information and knowledge. On the other hand, the so-called dynamical turn in logic has put information high on logicians’ and computer scientists’ agenda (Van Benthem, 2003), but runs the risk of reducing its scope to its communicational and epistemic features.

Recent work in relating the several notions of information — as highlighted, for example, by The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information (Floridi, 2003) and by JoLLI’s special issue on Connecting the Different Faces of Information (Van Benthem and van Rooy, 2003) — has begun to address the need of bridging the gap between philosophers’ and logicians’ interests in information. Certainly, there is a need for a better understanding of the connections between different approaches to information (quantitative vs. qualitative; semantic vs. probabilistic vs. algorithmic and so forth), a project central to Van Benthem and Adriaans (forthcomming). But, most importantly, there is also a need for a more intense dialogue between the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of information.

References

Floridi, L., 2002, What is the Philosophy of Information?, Metaphilosophy, 33 (1/2): 123—145.

Floridi, L., 2003, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information. Blackwell, Oxford.

Floridi, L., 2004, Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information, Metaphilosophy, 35(4): 554—582.

Floridi, L., 2005, Is Information Meaningful Data?, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70(2): 351—370.

Van Benthem, J., 2003, Logic and the Dynamics of Information, Minds & Machines, 13(4): 503—519.

Van Benthem, J. and R. van Rooy, 2003, Connecting the Different Faces of Information, Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 12(4): 375—379.

Van Benthem, J. and P. Adriaans, ed., forthcomming, Handbook on the Philosophy of Information. Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Schedule

• Deadline for contributors: April 1st 2006
• Deadline for referees’/editors’ reports: June 1st 2006
• Deadline revised papers: July 15th 2006
• Final papers to typesetter: September 1st 2006
• Publication: December 2006 in Vol. 49 Issue 196

Typesetting

• Final versions are preferred in LaTeX article-format.

If necessary, include additional packages, illustrations, and bib-files.

• If LaTeX is not an option, MS Word is also acceptable

(in that case, include a pdf-version).

• The paper should include a 200/300 word abstract.