[Air-l] information and knowledge - II

[Charles Ess]

More for the philosophically inclined...

For the philosophical community that has emerged in the past 15 years or so
around the Computers and Philosophy conferences, originally in North America
but now more spread about the planet (the 2nd Asian-Pacific CAP conference
was held this month in Bangkok, for example), much of this is discussed in
terms of a "computational turn" in philosophy, which in part means a focus
on how computation and the new venues / experiences / interactions made
possible by computing technologies helps / forces philosophers to re-examine
old questions and raise new ones.
Broadly speaking, there is some consensus among this group (so far) that
"wisdom" would include an Aristotelian sense of _phronesis_ or "practical
wisdom" - a sense of wisdom that is apparently fairly cross-cultural, for
example, as it at least resonates with notions of wisdom found in Confucian
thought, some African traditions, etc.
The discussion gets even more interesting in the work of Luciano Floridi
(Wolfson College, Oxford), whose information ontology turns traditional
philosophical ontology upside down and takes information as the basic
building block of reality.

1. See Floridi's chapter in his Blackwell's Guide to the Philosophy of
Information, titled, appropriately enough, "Information":
http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/blackwell/chapters/chapter5.pdf

2.  Floridi has more recently argued for a specific view about the relation
between data and information in an article titled "Is Information Meaningful
Data?", 
that can be downloaded at
http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/pdf/iimd.pdf

2.5  Finally, I've put up a modest documentation of a panel on Information
Ethics held in August, 2004, as part of the Computers and Philosophy
Conference (CAP) at Carnegie Mellon, in which Floridi, Terrell Ward Bynum,
Bernd Carsten Stahl, Wallace Kohler, Kay Mathiesen, and May Thorseth
represented their perspectives on information ethics and helped collectively
develop something of a cognitive map of the relationships between
information ethics and other disciplines both within and beyond the
boundaries of philosophy.

<http://www.drury.edu/ess/CAP04/cap04infoethics.html>

This map and overview will grow and change, of course, most immediately as
we pursue conversations with colleagues in Asia regarding expectations of
privacy and emerging data privacy protection guidelines - but as I note
there, participation and dialogue with many other geographical and cultural
domains of the globe are needed as well.  Nonetheless, I hope this is at
least a useful sketch and initial orientation for those interested in
especially philosophical approaches to information ethics and allied issues.

Charles Ess

Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.              Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA       FAX: 417-873-7435
Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html

Co-chair, CATaC'06: http://www.catacconference.org
Co-chair, ECAP'06: http://www.eu-cap.org

Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23