Great Article in Acta Analytica cites my article "Information is Intrinsically Semantic and Alethically Neutral"

I really enjoyed Majid Davoody Beni's article  The Downward Path to Epistemic Informational Structural Realism. I don't agree with Beni's findings, but the paper is a well considered and refreshing take on the ontic structural realism debates, and a worthy contribution to the NOSR-ESR-ISR dialectic:

Beni, Majid Davoody. 2017. “The Downward Path to Epistemic Informational Structural Realism.” Acta Analytica, October.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-017-0333-4.

Beni offers an alternative to Floridi's informational structural realism (ISR), and the informational ontic structural realism of James Ladyman and Don Ross.

He suggests a different approach to ISR and informational NOSR (non-eliminative ontic structural realism) which is more ontologically modest. He refers to it as epistemic informational structural realism. He takes a top-down approach starting with the scientific realist conception of structure common in NOSR, but rejects that the naturalisation of information has succeeded as a project, and so elects to deploy an epistemic interpretation that accomodates Floridi's transcendental realism about information and informational structure.

I don't agree with the findings because I am not Kantian enough, and I think that physicalism and reductionism about information in the naturalisation of information are undersold. I think that there are essentially two ways to go regarding the naturalisation of information. One is to bite the bullet on physical reduction of transmission of patterns - like I take it that Ladyman, Ross, and Collier have done (at different points) - and the other is to embrace pluralism about the nature of information in the context of levels of abstraction in a transcendentalist framework like Floridi has done. I favour the former approach because 1. I think that Floridi's realist transcendentalist conception of data and information - which bottoms out at differences de re - is thus inherently redcutionist anyway, 2. I am not so pessimistic about the project of the naturalisation of information and 3. in keeping with (2) I think that only physical causation can sustain real information transmission, and that real information transmission is a necessary condition for the acquisition of actual scientific data, and so physical causation is a necessary condition for the acquisition of scientific data and the representation thereof in models and theories.

Here is an alternative link to Beni's paper:

The Downward Path to Epistemic Informational Structural Realism

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12136-017-0333-4

Beni, Majid Davoody. 2017. “The Downward Path to Epistemic Informational Structural Realism.” Acta Analytica, October. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-017-0333-4.

Floridi, Luciano. 2008. “A Defence of Informational Structural Realism.” Synthese 161 (2):219–53.

Ladyman, James, Don Ross, David Spurrett, and John Collier. 2007. “Rainforest Realism and the Unity of Science.” In Every Thing Must Go. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276196.003.0004.

You can link to Beni's ResearchGate Profile here:

Dialectic and conversation is still the best way to stimulate ideas in philosophy: Information is a proportional truthmaker

I recently increased my participation in academia.edu. I found an interesting looking paper by Gustavo Cevolani of IMT Lucca:

(https://www.academia.edu/31575986/Strongly_Semantic_Information_as_Information_About_the_Truth)

Being that semantic information is a topic close to my heart, I was surprised that I had missed it being that it was published in the same year as my own article about semantic information (second entry in list at bottom.) In that paper, I proposed that information should be regarded as alethically neutral, and as a proportional truthmaker for representations that encode it.

Here's my full reply to Gustavo, for readability:

Hi Gustavo,

I am marking at the moment, and so I will not be able to finish your paper until the end of the week.

Having not had a chance to finish your paper, and based upon your reply, I adduce that your concept of informative falsehoods is supported by my view that information is a proportional truthmaker (the proportion of truthfulness/misleadingness is in the truthbearing encoded representation of the truthmaking information).

According to my thesis, independently of what approach one uses to quantify, discretise, or measure information: there will be varying amounts of truthmaking information available as a truthmaker to encode into a truthbearing representation (on non-standard non-dialethic grounds.) To consitute any proportion of an informative falsehood, it would have to be encoded into a representation that is a truthbearer, but in such as way as the representation is proportionally false. In other words: as long as the falsehood is constituted of an encoded (partly wrong or wrongly encoded) representation of the information, not the information itself, then such could be more or less misleading, in proportion to representing more or less information by faulty encoding. I take it that the encoded representation of the information has to be proportionally (more or less) false to support this outcome/analysis. 

Best Wishes, 

Bruce

Here are some related papers from the search results in my University library page:

1.

Outline of a Theory of Strongly Semantic Information by Floridi, Luciano Minds and Machines, 05/2004, Volume 14, Issue 2 This paper outlines a quantitative theory of strongly semantic information (TSSI) based on truth-values rather than probability distributi...

2.

Information is intrinsically semantic but alethically neutral by Long, Bruce Raymond Synthese, 09/2014, Volume 191, Issue 14 In this paper I argue that, according to a particular physicalist conception of information, information is both alethically neutral or no...

3.

Is Semantic Information Meaningful Data? by Floridi, Luciano Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 03/2005, Volume 70, Issue 2 There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revis...

4.

Semantic Information and the Correctness Theory of Truth by Luciano Floridi Erkenntnis (1975-), 03/2011, Volume 74, Issue 2 Semantic information is usually supposed to satisfy the veridicality thesis: p qualifies as semantic information only if p is true. Howeve...

5.

On Quantifying Semantic Information by D’Alfonso, Simon Information, 01/2011, Volume 2, Issue 4   The purpose of this paper is to look at some existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It b...

6.

Outline of a theory of strongly semantic information by Floridi, Luciano The Philosophy of Information, 01/2011 The chapter applies and further supports the conclusion reached in chapter five by presenting a quantitative theory of strongly semantic i...