The Philosophy of Information

Front Cover
OUP Oxford, Jan 27, 2011 - Philosophy - 426 pages
Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with (1) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and (2) 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 does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information.

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About the author (2011)


Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire -- where he holds the Research Chair in Philosophy of Information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics -- and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford, where he is the founder and director of the IEG, Oxford University interdepartmental research group on the philosophy of information. His research areas are the philosophy of computing and information, information/computer ethics, philosophy of technology, epistemology and philosophy of logic. For his work Floridi has received various prizes, awards and fellowships, including the APA Barwise Prize and the election as Fellow of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB). He is the first philosopher to have been awarded the Gauss Professorship by the Gottingen Academy of Sciences. For more information, please visit his website: (http://www.philosophyofinformation.net)

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