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161What is a philosophical question?Metaphilosophy 44 (3): 195-221. 2013.There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This article introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empir…Read more
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154The tragedy of the digital commonsEthics and Information Technology 6 (2): 73-81. 2004.In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may not be en…Read more
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99Web 2.0 vs. the semantic web: a philosophical assessmentEpisteme 6 (1): 25-37. 2009.The paper develops some of the conclusions, reached in Floridi (2007), concerning the future developments of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their impact on our lives. The two main theses supported in that article were that, as the information society develops, the threshold between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred, and that once there won't be any significant difference, we shall gradually re-conceptualise ourselves not as cyborgs but rather as inforgs, …Read more
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182What the near future of artificial intelligence could bePhilosophy and Technology 32 (1): 1-15. 2019.In this article, I shall argue that AI’s likely developments and possible challenges are best understood if we interpret AI not as a marriage between some biological-like intelligence and engineered artefacts, but as a divorce between agency and intelligence, that is, the ability to solve problems successfully and the necessity of being intelligent in doing so. I shall then look at five developments: (1) the growing shift from logic to statistics, (2) the progressive adaptation of the environmen…Read more
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92How to do philosophy informationallyLecture Notes in Computer Science 3782. 2005.In this paper we introduce three methods to approach philosophical problems informationally: Minimalism, the Method of Abstraction and Constructionism. Minimalism considers the specifications of the starting problems and systems that are tractable for a philosophical analysis. The Method of Abstraction describes the process of making explicit the level of abstraction at which a system is observed and investigated. Constructionism provides a series of principles that the investigation of the prob…Read more
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11What is the philosophy of information?In James Moor & Terrell Ward Bynum (eds.), Cyberphilosophy: the intersection of philosophy and computing, Blackwell. pp. 123-145. 2002.
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3What is the Philosophy of Information?Metaphilosophy 33 (1‐2): 123-145. 2002.Computational and information‐theoretic research in philosophy has become increasingly fertile and pervasive, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results. In consequence, a new and vitally important field has emerged, the philosophy of information (PI). This essay is the first attempt to analyse the nature of PI systematically. PI is defined as the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics…Read more
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82What a maker’s knowledge could beSynthese 195 (1): 465-481. 2018.Three classic distinctions specify that truths can be necessary versus contingent,analytic versus synthetic, and a priori versus a posteriori. The philosopher reading this article knows very well both how useful and ordinary such distinctions are in our conceptual work and that they have been subject to many and detailed debates, especially the last two. In the following pages, I do not wish to discuss how far they may be tenable. I shall assume that, if they are reasonable and non problematic i…Read more
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7Time travel offers a whole new vista, or vice-versa..The Philosophers' Magazine 37 (37): 18-18. 2007.
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4The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information (edited book)Routledge. 2016.Information and communication technology occupies a central place in the modern world, with society becoming increasingly dependent on it every day. It is therefore unsurprising that it has become a growing subject area in contemporary philosophy, which relies heavily on informational concepts. _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information_ is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thi…Read more
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80The rediscovery and posthumous influence of scepticismIn Richard Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 267. 2010.The history of the transmission, recovery and posthumous influence of ancient scepticism is a fascinating chapter in the history of ideas. An extraordinary collection of philosophical texts and some of the most challenging arguments ever devised were first lost, then only partly recovered philologically, and finally rediscovered conceptually, leaving Cicero and Sextus Empiricus as the main champions of Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism respectively. This chapter outlines what we know about this…Read more
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109The renaissance of epistemology: 1914–1945In Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge history of philosophy, 1870-1945, Cambridge University Press. 2003.The renaissance of epistemology between the two world wars forms a bridge between early modern and contemporary philosophy of knowledge. This paper traces the resurgence of interest in epistemology at the turn of the century, as a reaction against the nineteenth-century development of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealism, through the interwar renaissance of epistemology, prompted by major advances in mathematics, logic, and physics, and its ultimate transformation from a theory of ideas and jud…Read more
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162The philosophy of information as a conceptual frameworkKnowledge, Technology & Policy 23 (1-2): 1-31. 2010.The article contains the replies to the collection of contributions discussing my research on the philosophy of information
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21The aim of the thesis is to defend the hypothesis that an anti- Aristotelian interpretation of the genesis of the process of knowing provides an interesting and fruitful means to understand the human never-ending search for knowledge and to answer doubts concerning the reliability of human knowledge of external reality. Such statement requires an explanation
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133The philosophy of information: ten years laterMetaphilosophy 41 (3). 2010.: This article provides replies to, and comments on, the contributions to the special issue on the philosophy of information. It seeks to highlight con‐vergences and points of potential agreement, while offering clarifications and further details. It also answers some criticisms and replies to some objections articulated in the special issue.
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128The ontological interpretation of informational privacyEthics and Information Technology 7 (4). 2005.The paper outlines a new interpretation of informational privacy and of its moral value. The main theses defended are: (a) informational privacy is a function of the ontological friction in the infosphere, that is, of the forces that oppose the information flow within the space of information; (b) digital ICTs (information and communication technologies) affect the ontological friction by changing the nature of the infosphere (re-ontologization); (c) digital ICTs can therefore both decrease and …Read more
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50The philosophy of informationOxford University Press. 2011.Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It d…Read more
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39The new grey powerPhilosophy and Technology 28 (3): 329-332. 2015.Grey power may be characterised as the ability to control events and people’s behaviour by influencing the influencers, behind the scenes. Grey power exists in every type of society and the two change together, as concauses, via a complex interchange of economic, technological and societal factors. This paper discusses the emergence of éminences grises in the modern digital age and the pressing need to gain a better understanding of their likely nature and development. The article concludes that…Read more
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201The method of levels of abstractionMinds and Machines 18 (3). 2008.The use of “levels of abstraction” in philosophical analysis (levelism) has recently come under attack. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of epistemological levelism should be retained as a fundamental method, called the method of levels of abstraction. After a brief introduction, in section “Some Definitions and Preliminary Examples” the nature and applicability of the epistemological method of levels of abstraction is clarified. In section “A Classic Application of the Method ofion…Read more
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72The new ethical responsibilities of internet service providersPhilosophy and Technology 24 (4): 369-370. 2011.The exponential developments of internet services and resources have brought enormous benefits, but also enormous moral and ethical challenges. This paper introduces the contributions from a research workshop, tasked with defining new ethical responsibilities for Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
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52The logic of being informedLogique Et Analyse 49 (196): 433-460. 2006.One of the open problems in the philosophy of information is whether there is an information logic (IL), different from epistemic (EL) and doxastic logic (DL), which formalises the relation “a is informed that p” (Iap) satisfactorily. In this paper, the problem is solved by arguing that the axiom schemata of the normal modal logic (NML) KTB (also known as B or Br or Brouwer’s system) are well suited to formalise the relation of “being informed”. After having shown that IL can be constructed as a…Read more
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110The logic of design as a conceptual logic of informationMinds and Machines 27 (3): 495-519. 2017.In this article, I outline a logic of design of a system as a specific kind of conceptual logic of the design of the model of a system, that is, the blueprint that provides information about the system to be created. In section two, I introduce the method of levels of abstraction as a modelling tool borrowed from computer science. In section three, I use this method to clarify two main conceptual logics of information inherited from modernity: Kant’s transcendental logic of conditions of possibi…Read more
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