Abstract
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 sense in which S becomes informed that p. One of the consequences of the logic debate has been a renewed epistemological interest in the principle of information closure (henceforth PIC), which finally has motivated a revival of a sceptical objection against its tenability first made popular by Dretske. This is the topic of the paper, in which I seek to defend PIC against the sceptical objection. If I am successful, this means – and we are now zooming out – that the plausibility of PIC is not undermined by the sceptical objection, and therefore that a major epistemological argument against the formalization of the logic of being informed based on the axiom of distribution in modal logic is removed. But since the axiom of distribution discriminates between normal and non-normal modal logics, this means that a potentially good reason to look for a formalization of the logic of being informed among the non-normal modal logics, which reject the axiom, is also removed. And this in turn means that a formalization of the logic of being informed in terms of the normal modal logic B (also known as KTB) is still very plausible, at least insofar as this specific obstacle is concerned. In short, I shall argue that the sceptical objection against PIC fails, so it is not a good reason to abandon the normal modal logic B as a good formalization of the logic of being informed.
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Notes
- 1.
See (Floridi 2011b).
- 2.
For an early overviews see (Floridi 2004).
- 3.
- 4.
See (Floridi 2006), revised as chapter 10 of (Floridi 2011b).
- 5.
The statal condition of being informed is that enjoyed by S once S has acquired the information (actional state of being informed) that p. It is the sense in which a witness, for example, is informed (holds the information) that the suspect was with her at the time when the crime was committed. The distinction is standard among grammarians, who speak of passive verbal forms or states as “statal” (e.g. “the door was shut (state) when I last checked it”) or “actional” (e.g. “but I don’t know when the door was shut (act)”).
- 6.
On the debate see (White 1991), (Jäger 2004), (Baumann 2006), (Luper 2006), (Shackel 2006), (Dretske 2006). At the time of writing, the most recent contribution is (Adams et al.), which defends Dretske’s position. In two recent articles, Genia Schoenbaumsfeld (Schoenbaumsfeld submitted-a, submitted-b) has defended the principle of epistemic closure from a Wittgensteinian perspective that converges with some of the conclusions reached in the following pages. I am grateful to her for sharing her research.
- 7.
The analysis of the logic of being informed in terms of a non-normal modal logic is developed by (Allo 2011).
- 8.
The interested reader is referred to the excellent review in (Luper 2010). In this article I use K and SP in the way in which they are used in the epistemological literature rather than in modal logic one (see below).
- 9.
- 10.
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Floridi, L. (2013). A Defence of the Principle of Information Closure against the Sceptical Objection. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_4
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