Problems with An Objective Counterfactual Theory of Information
May 14th, 2012Jonathan 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 understanding knowledge, justification, and mental content, inter alia. While information has been put to diverse philosophical uses, there has been much less diversity in the understanding of information itself. In this paper we’ll offer a novel theory of information that differs from traditional accounts in two main (and orthogonal) respects: (i) it explains information in terms of counterfactuals rather than conditional probabilities, and (ii) it does not make essential reference to doxastic states of subjects, and consequently allows for the sort of objective, reductive explanations of notions in epistemology and philosophy of mind that many have wanted from an account of information.
We’ll first present our counterfactual account of information (1), and show how it sidesteps a problem that has been raised for its traditional, probabilistic competitors (2). Next we’ll compare the counterfactual account against that proposed by Dretske (3), highlighting the differences between the two. After that, we’ll turn to questions about objectivity: we’ll bring out a conflict between the essentially doxastic character of traditional theories of information and the reductive purposes philosophers have had in mind in appealing to information (4), and we’ll show how the account of 1 can be formulated in non-doxastic terms. Finally, we’ll consider objections against the proposed account (5). Ultimately, we’ll suggest, the objective counterfactual account of information should be taken as a serious contender to more traditional rivals.
The central definition of information that they provide is:
(S*) … x’s being F carries information about y’s being G if and only if the counterfactual conditional “if y were not G, then x would not have been F” is non-vacuously true.
Also, in a footnote C&M mention that x’s being F and y’s being G are construed as actual events, so one event carries information about a second only if they are actual.
As outlined in this document, some exploration reveals that using the standard logic of counterfactuals, C&M’s definition gives some results that disagree with what it seems are fairly straightforward properties of information flow.
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Question
April 12th, 2012What is a suitable name for the third property here?
- Monotonicity:
- Conjunction:
- ???:
Posted in Philosophy and/of Information | 2 Comments »
Fourth Workshop on the Philosophy of Information
March 29th, 2012www.philosophyofinformation.net/WPI/4WPI/Home.html
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An Overview of the Mathematical Theory of Communication
March 8th, 2012This is an extract from the first chapter of my thesis:
An Overview of the Mathematical Theory of Communication: Particularly for Philosophers Interested in Information
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Knowledge and Truth Value Gluts
January 16th, 2012The truth condition is embedded in the analysis of propositional knowledge; if S knows that p then p is true.
Whilst a straightforward condition given a classical bivalent system with values true and false, bringing truth value gluts into the picture raises some novel matters.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Truthlikeness and the Conjunction Fallacy
December 30th, 2011Truthlikeness and the Conjunction Fallacy
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Symposium: Luciano Floridi, The Philosophy of Information
December 28th, 2011Etica & Politica
Gustavo Cevolani
Strongly semantic information and verisimilitude
Massimo Durante
Normativity, Constructionism, and Constraining Affordances
Don Fallis
Floridi on Disinformation
David Gamez
Information and Consciousness
Jakob Krebs
Philosophy of Information and Pragmatistic Understanding of Information
Marty J. Wolf
Analysis, Clarification and Extension of the Theory of Strongly Semantic Information
Anthony F. Beavers
Historicizing Floridi
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The Informational Turn in Philosophy
December 17th, 2011The article whence this blog got its name.
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The Future of Philosophy: ‘Information First’
November 25th, 2011philosophy-compass.com/2011/11/23/the-future-of-philosophy-information-first-by-luciano-floridi/
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Computational Philosophy CFP – AISB/IACAP World Congress – July 2012
November 19th, 2011Call for Papers: Symposium on Computational Philosophy
To be held as part of the
AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012
in honour of Alan Turing
July 2nd to 6th, 2012
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
See events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12
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