•  191
    How to do philosophy informationally
    with Gian Maria Greco, Gianluca Paronitti, and Matteo Turilli
    Lecture 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
  •  191
    Energy, risks, and metatechnology
    Philosophy and Technology 24 (2): 89-94. 2011.
    Technologies lower constraints and expand affordances. As a consequence, they tend to redesign the corresponding space of risks in which agents operate and interact. This paper analyses the concept of metatechnological risk from an ethical perspective, arguing that such an approach is necessary in order to mitigate future global energy crises.
  •  189
    Steps forward in the philosophy of information
    Etica E Politica 14 (1): 304-310. 2012.
    This article highlights some of the key lessons learnt from a recent Symposium on the Philosophy of Information. Topics covered include: semantic information, information integration, and epistemic responsibility.
  •  187
    Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in c…Read more
  •  184
    La logica e il pensiero visivo
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 11 (2). 1998.
  •  184
    The problem of the justification of a theory of knowledge—Part II: morphology and diagnosis
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 24 (2). 1993.
    The article analyses the meta- epistemological problem of the justification of a theory of knowledge. The first section is dedicated to the morphological reconstruction of the problem, the second presents a diagnosis of the problem in terms of a metatheoretical and logically non- contradictory "petitio principii" and the third delineates the limits within which strategies for the treatment of the problem could be elaborated.
  •  181
    Information quality, data and philosophy
    In Phyllis Illari & Luciano Floridi (eds.), The Philosophy of Information Quality, Springer International Publishing. 2014.
    In this opening chapter, we review the literature on information quality. Our major aim is to introduce the issues, and trace some of the history of the debates, with a view to situating the chapters in this volume – whose authors come from different disciplines – to help make them accessible to readers with different backgrounds and expertise. We begin in this section by tracing some influential analyses of IQ in computer science. This is a useful basis for examining some examples of developing…Read more
  •  180
    Az elektronikus prevenció lehetőségei az új (szintetikus) drogok használatának megelőzésében: a Rekreációs Drogok Európai Hálózatának (Recreational Drugs European Network …
    with Zsolt Demetrovics, Barbara Mervo, Ornella Corazza, Zoe Davey, Paolo Deluca, Colin Drummond, A. Enea, Jacek Moskalewicz, G. Di Melchiorre, L. Di Furia, Magí Farré, Liv Flesland, Fruzsina Iszáj, N. Scherbaum, Holger Siemann, Arvid Skutle, Marta Torrens, M. Pasinetti, Cinzia Pezzolesi, Agnieszka Pisarska, Harry Shapiro, Elias Sferrazza, Peer Van der Kreeft, and F. Schifano
    Addictologia Hungarica 1. 2010.
    Recreational Drugs European Network (ReDNet) project aims to use the Psychonaut Web Mapping Project database (Psychonaut Web Mapping Group, 2009) containing novel psychoactive compounds usually not mentioned in the scientific literature and thus unknown to clinicians as a unique source of information. The database will be used to develop an integrated ICT prevention approach targeted at vulnerable individuals and focused on novel synthetic and herbal compounds and combinatio…Read more
  •  178
    Perception and testimony as data providers
    Logique Et Analyse 57 (226). 2014.
    This chapter addresses two questions. First, if knowledge is accounted information, how are we supposed (to apply this analysis in order) to understand perceptual knowledge and knowledge by testimony? In the first part of the chapter, I articulate an answer in terms of a re-interpretation of perception and testimony as data providers rather than full-blown cases of knowledge. Second, if perception and testimony are correctly understood as data providers, how are we supposed (to apply this analys…Read more
  •  178
    Information and design: book symposium on Luciano Floridi’s The Logic of Information
    with Tim Gorichanaz, Jonathan Furner, Lai Ma, David Bawden, Liz Robinson, Dominic Dixon, Ken Herold, Sille Obelitz Søe, and Betsy Van der Veer Martens
    Journal of Documentation 76 (2). 2020.
    The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS)
  •  176
    The rediscovery and posthumous influence of scepticism
    In Richard Arnot Home 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
  •  175
    Ethical medical data donation: a pressing issue
    In Peter Dabrock, Matthias Braun & Patrik Hummel (eds.), The Ethics of Medical Data Donation, Springer Verlag. 2019.
  •  174
    La saggezza della vanitas
    In Vanitas. Lotto, Caravaggio, Guercino nella collezione Doria Pamphilj, . 2011.
  •  171
    The renaissance of epistemology: 1914–1945
    In 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
  •  165
    Biblioteconomia e ciência da informação (bci) como filosofia da informação aplicada: uma reavaliação
    InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação E Documentação 1 (2): 37-47. 2010.
    O autor responde às críticas feitas a sua proposta de que a Filosofia da Information (FI) deveria substituir a Epistemologia Social como uma disciplina filosófica que melhor atende os fundamentos conceituais para a Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação (BCI). Sugere que a crise de identidade por que tem passado a BCI é oresultado natural de uma busca justificada mas ociosa por uma parceria filosófica que emergiu só recentemente: nomeadamente, FI. O desenvolvimento da BCI não deveria depender d…Read more
  •  165
    From the philosophy of AI to the philosophy of information
    The Philosophers’ Magazine 28 (4): 56-60. 2004.
    Computational and information-theoretic research in philosophy has become increasingly fertile and pervasive, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results. Consequently, a new and vitally important field has emerged, the philosophy of information (PI). This paper introduces PI as the philosophical field concerned with (i) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences, and with (ii) the elaboration and a…Read more
  •  165
    Semantic conceptions of information
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
  •  163
    Digital Health Tools (DHTs), also known as patient self-surveilling strategies, have increasingly been promoted by health-care policy makers as technologies that have the capacity to transform patients’ lives. At the heart of the debate is the notion of empowerment. In this paper, we argue that what is required is not so much empowerment but rather a shift to enabling DHTs as digital companions. This will enable policy makers and health-care system designers to provide a more balanced view—one t…Read more
  •  162
    This article is a review of R.L Park's Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud.
  •  160
    Library information science (LIS) should develop its foundation in terms of a philosophy of information (PI). This seems a rather harmless suggestion. Where else could information science look for its conceptual foundations if not in PI? However, accepting this proposal means moving away from one of the few solid alternatives currently available in the field, namely, providing LIS with a foundation in terms of social epistemology (SE). This is no trivial move, so some reasonable reluctance is to…Read more
  •  156
    Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi r…Read more
  •  156
    A defence of the principle of information closure against the sceptical objection
    In Hanne Andersen, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao González, Thomas Uebel & Gregory Wheeler (eds.), New Challenges to Philosophy of Science, Springer Verlag. pp. 35--47. 2013.
    The topic of this paper may be introduced by fast zooming in and out of the philosophy of information. In recent years, philosophical interest in the nature of information has been increasing steadily. This has led to a focus on semantic information, and then on the logic of being informed, which has attracted analyses concentrating both on the statal sense in which S holds the information that p (this is what I mean by logic of being informed in the rest of this article) and on the actional sen…Read more
  •  154
    Ethics in the infosphere
    The Philosophers' Magazine 16 18-19. 2001.
  •  154
    What is the philosophy of information?
    In James Moor & Terrell Ward Bynum (eds.), Metaphilosophy, Blackwell. pp. 123-145. 2002.
  •  152
    Scepticism and the search for knowledge: a Peirceish answer to a Kantian doubt
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 30 (3). 1994.
    This paper explores a fundamental issue in epistemology, namely, that the world is completely different in general from the way our sensory impacts and our internal makeup lead us to believe (Stroud 1994). Three hypotheses are considered: first, that there is something like an independent external reality; second, that the epistemic relationship occurring between this reality and the knowing subject is somehow such as not to allow the latter to know the intrinsic nature of the former; and finall…Read more
  •  147
    The philosophy of presence: from epistemic failure to successful observability
    Presence Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 14 (6). 2005.
    The paper introduces a new model of telepresence. First, it criticises the standard model of presence as epistemic failure, showing it to be inadequate. It then replaces it with a new model of presence as successful observability. It further provides reasons to distinguish between two types of presence, backward and forward. The new model is then tested against two ethical issues whose nature has been modified by the development of digital information and communication technologies, namely porno…Read more
  •  145
    This paper focuses on what Peirce means by scepticism, with particular reference to the anticartesian nature of his philosophy and the question of whether Peirce constantly shows a univocal and consistent attitude towards all types of scepticism. It argues that Peirce can be described as an antisceptic, and then goes on to discuss the extent to which Peirce’s fallibilism can claim to succeed in entirely divorcing itself from a sceptical outlook.
  •  142
    Even good bots fight: the case of Wikipedia
    with Milena Tsvetkova, Ruth García-Gavilanes, and Taha Yasseri
    PLoS ONE 12 (2). 2017.
    In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the number of bots online, varying from Web crawlers for search engines, to chatbots for online customer service, spambots on social media, and content-editing bots in online collaboration communities. The online world has turned into an ecosystem of bots. However, our knowledge of how these automated agents are interacting with each other is rather poor. Bots are predictable automatons that do not have the capacity for emotions, meaning-making,…Read more