Floridi, Luciano (2005) Is Information Meaningful Data? [Preprint]

Preview

PDF iimd.pdf Download (345kB)

Abstract

There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information (SDI) as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske-Grice approach: meaningful and well-formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth-values do not supervene on semantic information, and misinformation (that is, false semantic information) is not a type of semantic information, but pseudo-information, that is not semantic information at all. This is shown by arguing that none of the reasons for interpreting misinformation as a type of semantic information is convincing, whilst there are compelling reasons to treat it as pseudo-information. As a consequence, SDI is revised to include a necessary truth-condition. The last section summarises the main results of the paper and indicates some interesting areas of application of the revised definition.

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Floridi, Luciano
Additional Information:	published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2005, 70.2, 351-370
Keywords:	Barwise, Dretske, Geach, Grice, information theory, semantic information, standard definition of semantic information, philosophy of information.
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Computation/Information > Classical
Depositing User:	Luciano Floridi
Date Deposited:	25 Nov 2005
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:13
Item ID:	2536
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Computation/Information > Classical
Date:	November 2005
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2536

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item