What is information, that we should be mindful of it?

ILCIC, ANDRÉS A.

Saig

Otro; Summer School: The Nature of Entropy I: From Thermodynamics to Black Holes.; 2019

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München y Université de Lausanne

Even though the concept of information is widely used within certain sciences, both natural ones like biology and physics and more formal ones like computer science and mathematics, it is quite unusual to find it used in the literature concerned with the nature of scientific knowledge. This seems odd given that information has not only been treated by the philosophies of the special sciences but also by philosophers working on general epistemology and, naturally, quite directly by those working on the emerging field of philosophy of information per se.In this talk, I present a brief review of different ways in which the concept of information can be interpreted and how this concept can be used to provide insight into some philosophical issues that follow from our current understanding of scientific knowledge, broadly conceived. My discussion is motivated by the important role information theory has within the so-called sciences of complexity, where it complements methods that come mostly from dynamical systems theory, computer science, and statistical physics in order to explain the behavior of complex phenomena found in nature. The core argument will show how the method of level of abstraction (the fundamental tool for philosophy of information according to Floridi) can be used together with our understanding of structure within both natural and artificial complex systems to understand the epistemic notions of level and hierarchy, as well as the dynamic between those level, which roughly corresponds to what has been traditionally called reduction and emergence by the philosophical tradition.