
The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design - raleighm
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-logic-of-information-a-theory-of-philosophy-as-conceptual-design/
======
voidhorse
Thank’s for sharing! I’ve been meaning to check out Luciano Floridi’s work for
a long time.

I’m a bit skeptical of the whole program because philosophy is one of the last
bastions of resistance to the overall informationalization of life, and one of
the few disciplines that’s managed to remain somewhat free of a reduction to
the concept of information; I don’t want it to be messed with. That said this
sounds like quite the work. The reviewer has some interesting criticisms
though.

~~~
lidHanteyk
I mean, if Wittgenstein and Gödel haven't already hollowed out the possibility
that language could have some innate non-information-theoretic meaning...

For those who aren't really aware of what's going on, right now the bedrock of
science is mathematics, and the hardest science is physics, and both are fully
information-theoretic. "it from bit" theories are not just common, but fully
compatible with our ways of looking at the world.

In order to transcend information theory, one would have to abandon
mathematics, and probably abandon logic as well. This more or less closes the
door to a lot of the gibbering low-quality metaphysical pandering that is
common in philosophical foundations. Another way of putting it is that, just
like with empiricism and science, we have realized in mathematics a way to
move forward, and that movement forward is creating _pseudologic_ , in the
same way that empiricism highlights pseudoscience. Mathematics is logic is
metaphysics is mathematics, and deities really cannot be omnipotent.

As a final note, who are we to deny that life is informational? We're made of
DNA and RNA, of proteins and cellular messages, of neuronal configurations and
connectomes, and your entire reply is that it's uncomfortable to imagine.

~~~
igravious
> I mean, if Wittgenstein and Gödel haven't already hollowed out the
> possibility that language could have some innate non-information-theoretic
> meaning...

Can't unpack this.

> For those who aren't really aware of what's going on, right now the bedrock
> of science is mathematics, and the hardest science is physics, and both are
> fully information-theoretic. "it from bit" theories are not just common, but
> fully compatible with our ways of looking at the world.

Never know what is meant by bedrock (or foundation) in these cases and I can
never understand the reductive desire to swap philosophy out for science and
to single out physics as the go-to science.

Is is incorrect to call Floridi's work an "it from bit" theory, if that's what
you're doing. See my longer response elsewhere here.

> In order to transcend information theory, one would have to abandon
> mathematics, and probably abandon logic as well. This more or less closes
> the door to a lot of the gibbering low-quality metaphysical pandering that
> is common in philosophical foundations. Another way of putting it is that,
> just like with empiricism and science, we have realized in mathematics a way
> to move forward, and that movement forward is creating pseudologic, in the
> same way that empiricism highlights pseudoscience. Mathematics is logic is
> metaphysics is mathematics, and deities really cannot be omnipotent.

Information theory and the Philosophy of Information are distintc though
tangential subjects.

>> Mathematics is logic is metaphysics is mathematics, and deities really
cannot be omnipotent.

??? False equivalences and then an odd non-sequitur.

> As a final note, who are we to deny that life is informational? We're made
> of DNA and RNA, of proteins and cellular messages, of neuronal
> configurations and connectomes, and your entire reply is that it's
> uncomfortable to imagine.

Nobody would deny that. Life is order from chaos (struggling against the
tyranny of entropy), that order is information-bearing, we are information
processing beings, as are our digital offspring.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Okay, let's try again. We're talking about information theory, a hard science.
Specifically, information theory is a subfield of computer science, itself a
subfield of mathematics.

To say that information theory is a hard science, then, is actually to tell a
slight lie, because mathematics is harder than the sciences: Without maths, it
is not possible to express scientific models nor hypotheses.

I can't quite read Floridi's work (I'm not paying for books when there is a
digital commons in need of enrichment), but after reading a few abstracts and
a few passages, I've got a gist. You're right that Floridi isn't it-from-bit,
and that's something of a problem, since it-from-bit reasoning is so solid and
useful in quantum mechanics and computer science.

Floridi's definitions are contrasted with others at Wikipedia. [0] Shannon's
definitions are empty, but he at least gave us some maths and a strong
connection to thermodynamics and computer science. My main problem with
Floridi's definition is that it doesn't give a strong clear way to tell what
_lack of information_ is like. For example, it is well-known physics folklore
that electrons are hard to tell apart. To be pedantic, there does not exist
any information which would allow an observer to distinguish electrons, beyond
their basic identifying information (momenta and spin). How would Floridi
explain the physical idea that such information _cannot_ exist?

Mathematics is logic: The entirety of mathematics can be extracted from topos
theory, and topos theory can subsume the entirety of formal logic. Logic is
metaphysics: [1] has a sketch. Metaphysics is mathematics: The rules that
govern which theories are possible are determined by study of the possible
signatures of theories, leading to model theory and doctrine theory.

You may need the assistance of an old lemma which reminds us that mathematical
abstracta cannot possibly be physical.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_information#Defi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_information#Definitions_of_%22information%22)

[1]
[https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf)

~~~
igravious
To repeat: Information theory and the Philosophy of Information are distinct
though tangential subjects.

So everything you've written here is more or less irrelevant to the main topic
of this entire post :- The Logic of Information: A Theory _of Philosophy_ as
Conceptual Design

That being said, I'll correct a few of your conceptual errors.

Information theory is a formal science, not a hard science.

Information theory is a subfield of mathematics directly, not a subfield of
computer science (I would have thought).

> because mathematics is harder than the sciences

Nonsensical

> Without maths, it is not possible to express scientific models nor
> hypotheses.

So what?

> I can't quite read Floridi's work […] I've got a gist.

Respectfully, I'm not sure do, and I'm even less sure why you feel the need to
comment.

> Mathematics is logic: The entirety of mathematics can be extracted from
> topos theory, and topos theory can subsume the entirety of formal logic.
> Logic is metaphysics: [1] has a sketch. Metaphysics is mathematics: The
> rules that govern which theories are possible are determined by study of the
> possible signatures of theories, leading to model theory and doctrine
> theory.

Pointlessly reductive, and probably nonsensical.

~~~
lidHanteyk
I don't _need_ to comment, and neither do you. We're both just silly people
talking about things that we don't understand, because our egos won't let us
not say anything.

You think that, because I haven't read what you've read, your understanding
exceeds mine. But I also think the same way; I think that you don't grok some
important mathematical concepts. So which of us is right?

It sounds like your mind is still pretty small. Let's try one single exercise
from one of my "pointlessly reductive" points: Since every formal logic can be
expressed in the language of category/topos theory, and topos theory can
express the plumbing of modern mathematics, _and_ since the formalization of
logic is itself mathematical, we have that logic _is_ mathematics; that is,
that any logical expression corresponds to a categorical expression and is
fully mathematical. Making sense yet? At some point, philosophers need to
study maths sincerely; the stereotype that they know nothing but Bayes is
painfully on display today.

You skipped entirely over my question about electrons and information.
Moreover, you admit that science needs maths. I'm going to take these as a
complete concession. Thanks for playing Orange Site.

Finally, as a bonus, here's a metric for hardness in the sciences. A theory is
harder when it predicts more. But theories always predict infinitely many
things, and really we want to know how accurate a prediction is. And a theory
is harder when it is smaller; that's Occam's Razor. So we'll take the sum of
(the squares of) inaccuracies over all predictions, and scale it by opposite
of (the logarithm of) the size of the theory. Of course, we'll have to use
bits to measure both the accuracy of predictions and the size of the theory.
This may remind you of certain equations in thermodynamics or statistics.

~~~
ukj
>I don't need to comment, and neither do you. We're both just silly people
talking about things that we don't understand, because our egos won't let us
not say anything.

This reply made me laugh. You get 10 points for self-awareness, and a free
beer if we ever meet.

Because ego (under the guise of Philosophy), I feel the need to point out that
if Mathematics is just a language (an idea we both seem to be agreeing with)
then you can't ignore the fact that it falls under the Chomsky Hierarchy.

So whether Mathematicians need to study Formal Language Theory, or Formal
Language Theorists need to study Mathematics is really just a stand-off
between finitists and infinitists Philosophers. And even more precisely than
that - it's a stand-off between people who believe in Time and feasibility
(computer scientists) and people who don't care about such details
(Mathematicians).

Obviously (because I am a finitist, and therefore all infinitists are wrong -
according to my ego errr.. I mean Philosophy ) I shall post a paper that
agrees with me.

"Confessions of an Apostate Mathematician" by Edward Nelson
[https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/rome.pdf](https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/rome.pdf)

------
ukj
Digital Philosophy [1] is not a new idea. As per the Wikipedia article it's a
re-interpretation of Monist metaphysics.

There's no easier way to say this without triggering people who haven't yet
reasoned their way to these positions so I am just going to say it.

The concept of a Monad[2] in digital philosophy corresponds to the concept of
God in Christian philosophy.

See Computational Trinitarianism for more [3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_philosophy)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_\(philosophy\))

[3]
[https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trinitarianism](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trinitarianism)

~~~
ppod
That's fine in theory but my aunt isn't praying to Monad or declining to get
her kids vaccinated because Monad will protect them.

~~~
ukj
Your aunt has committed a Reification fallacy [1] because she doesn't
understand the recursive/self-referential (e.g computational!) nature of the
human mind.

You aren't going to change her mind by Philosophising her, trying to explain
the fallacy to her; or throwing evidence at her, but you may be able to reach
her on a human level if you learn to talk to her in her language.

The need to believe in a greater power (than the self) is rooted in a fear of
the unknown - she can't cope with uncertainty. Most humans can't - don't holt
it against them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_\(fallacy\))

~~~
friendlybus
This emotional reasoning is not much better than Star War's light side/dark
side logic. Anger turns to hate, hate turns to suffering, ect.

This kind of reasoning acts as if it can remove all else for the sake of a
single revealed hidden feeling that guides belief.

I think there are many factors that go into belief, emotions can have multiple
outcomes and similarities between feelings and observed beliefs do not prove
each other.

~~~
ukj
Strictly and formally speaking "proof" is impossible outside of deductive
systems such as logic/mathematics.

In non-axiomatic systems (such as reality) all you have is inductive
reasoning, and all inductive theories are Underdetermined.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underdetermination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underdetermination)

~~~
friendlybus
The idea that this is reality is a faith-based axiom, including the idea that
all you have is inductive reasoning.

~~~
ukj
Sure. And what about the idea that you have ideas?

This is what I mean by self-reference being inescapable...

You are welcome to perform deduction in practice, but you have no absolute
truths to start deducing with. Everything that you consider to be an "absolute
truth" has been arrived at by induction.

~~~
friendlybus
Assuming your truths are reasoned then yes, but that is not the only way to
have a truth. Second hand truths inherited from others can be instilled by an
emotional relationship or claims of a spiritual experience from drug taking
can generate psychological experiences that are sourced as more true than
reason.

------
ngcc_hk
Need to study a bit more but is it true that iphone user must know less than
Apple. Not true in many software as programmer of say office may know its
level of details but may surprise how users are using their software. In fact
many examples like Visual Basic, HyperCard, Ibm token ring, xerox music and
... sorry maker has more power but understand their own technology and how it
can be used ... why we need to ask users and why many hw/Sw abandon.

But the staging is interesting. Let us hear more.

------
ezequiel-garzon
_With Descartes and became central replacing the old Aristotelian metaphysics.
With Frege 's and Wittgenstein's linguistic turn, logic, in the form of a
theory of meaning, became central as Dummett and Davidson suggested. With
Williamson, metaphysics was again central._

Thoughts on this for those with a philosophy background? Is philosophy so
focused...?

~~~
igravious
“Is philosophy so focused...?”

Philosophy contains within itself the History of Ideas. Just as we can talk
about regular history using grand sweeping narratives broken into epochs we
can also talk about currents of thought that sweep through philosophy and
rough granular eras.

So yes, yes you can: you had the Ancients (Aristotle and the like) and they
had certain ideas about the world – then there was the rise of scholasticism
(religious/theological supremacy) – then came the Renaissance (and humanism),
then the Modern Era (with Descartes) all of which had shifts in focus – then
the Enlightenment – the contemporary philosophy with its emphasis on
representation, Frege's and Wittgenstein's linguistic turn …

None of this does justice to the History of Ideas but you gotta start
somewhere – it's not a coincidence that the great epoch in Western
Civilisation correspond to similar eras in philosophy.

Hope that helps.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
It does help, thank you! I guess I have to stop postponing diving into it...
at least a little.

~~~
igravious
Great! Every journey starts with the first step and you've already taken a few
:)

