Abstract
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 analysis in order) to understand the semantic value of the data provided by such processes? In the second part of the chapter, I argue in favour of a constructionist hypothesis about how data may become meaningful for human cognitive agents through a process of repurposing of natural data/signals. The conclusion of the chapter is that human agents are natural-born data hackers.
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- 1.
Of course, Leibniz’s qualification “excipe, nisi ipse intellectus” (“except the intellect itself”) remains correct.
- 2.
“Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators”, see the official website http://www.arduino.cc/
- 3.
[Socrates]: Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing [they are unary devices, in our terminology]. And every word, when [275e] once it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself.
- 4.
Part V: […] parrots can emit words, as we can, but nonetheless cannot talk the way we can, that is to say, giving evidence that they are thinking about what they are uttering.
- 5.
In American English, the two-handled tool known in British English as a “vice” is known as a “vise”. In order to avoid the potential for unfortunate homonymous associations “vice (tool)” vs. “vice (moral quality)”, I use the American spelling “vise” in this section. Thanks to Thomas Mark Dousa for this “wise” suggestion (pun irresistible).
- 6.
Grice adds here a footnote to Stevenson (1944: ch. iii).
- 7.
Grice adds here a footnote to Stevenson (1944: 57).
- 8.
Mutual information, indicated as I (X; Y), is a measure of how dependent two random variables X and Y are, for example, the dependency between the information X = the dish washer is running out of salt (that is, the average reduction in uncertainty or the expected reduction in yes/no questions needed to guess X) and the information Y = the low salt yellow light indicator is flashing. The higher the dependence is the higher the degree of mutual information is. Mutual information satisfies the properties I (X; Y) = I (Y; X); I (X; Y) ≥ 0; if X and Y are independent, then I (X; Y) = 0; highest I when X = Y (ideal, noiseless channel).
- 9.
The principle states that there is an inverse relation between the probability of p—where p may be a proposition, a sentence of a given language, a situation, or a possible world—and the amount of semantic information carried by p. Thus, a biased coin provides increasingly less information the more likely one of its outcomes is. The principle, though very plausible, runs into two problems, the “scandal of deduction” (Hintikka 1973) and the “Bar-Hillel-Carnap Paradox” (Floridi 2004a, 2005b).
- 10.
The model states that if two systems a and b are coupled in such a way that a’s being (of type, or in state) F is correlated to b being (of type, or in state) G, then such correlation carries for the observer of a the information that b is G. For example, the dishwasher’s yellow light (a) flashing (F) is triggered by, and hence is informative about, the dishwasher (b) running out of salt (G) for an observer O, like Alice, informed about the correlation. See Barwise and Seligman (1997), Dretske (1999), Floridi (2010b).
- 11.
- 12.
The theory that schizophrenia might be a consequence of the human evolution of language is scientifically associated to the research of Tim Crow, a professor of psychiatry at Oxford University. A close view, according to which schizophrenia contributed to the evolution of Homo sapiens, was popularised rather controversially, by David Horrobin (Horrobin 2001). More recently, the publication of Faulks (2005), a novel in which the theory is presented in a fictional scenario, “sparked an academic feud” (Thorpe 2005).
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Acknowledgements
I discussed previous versions of this article as invited speaker at the “Séminaire, ‘Philosophie de l’informatique, de la logique et de leurs interfaces”’ (École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 3–4 April, 2012), the “Colloquium, Epistemology of Information and Communication” (University of Lyon, Lyon, 8 April 2011), the “Third International Workshop on the Philosophy of Information” (Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts, Paleis der Academiën, Brussels, 18–19 November 2010), and the “Research Seminar, ICTs in the Contemporary World” (London School of Economics, London, 2 November, 2010). I am indebted to Jean-Baptiste Joinet and the École Normale Supérieure; Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan and the University of Lyon; Patrick Allo, Giuseppe Primiero, and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts; Jannis Kallinikos and the London School of Economics; and to the participants in such meetings for the fruitful opportunity to discuss my ideas and to receive so much helpful feedback. Penny Driscoll kindly copyedited the final version.
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Floridi, L. (2014). Perception and Testimony as Data Providers. In: Ibekwe-SanJuan, F., Dousa, T. (eds) Theories of Information, Communication and Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6973-1_4
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