Provocation forthcoming in Being Profiled. Cogitas Ergo Sum. Edited by Bayamlioglu, Baraliuc, Janssens & Hildebrandt. Based on Questioning Mathematics: Algorithms and Open Texture.
Papers
Talk given at 10 Years of ‘Profiling the European Citizen’: Slow Science Seminar 12-13 June 2018, Brussels City Campus.
Abstract Contemporary data practices, whether we call them data science or AI, statistics or algorithms, are widely perceived to be game changers. They change what is at stake epistemologically as well as ethically. This especially applies to decision-making processes that infer new insights from data, use these insights to decide on the most beneficial action, and refer to the data and inference process to justify the chosen course of action.
Developing a critical epistemology that helps us address these challenges is a non-trivial task. There is a lack of clarity regarding the epistemological norms we should adhere to. Purely formal evaluations of decisions under uncertainty can, for instance, be hard to assess outside of the formalism they rely on. In addition, there is substantial uncertainty with regard to the applicably norms because scientific norms may appear to be in flux (new paradigms, new epistemologies, ...). Finally, dealing with this uncertainty and lack of clarity is further complicated by promises of unprecedented progress and opportunities that invite us to imagine a data-revolution with many guaranteed benefits, but few risks.
As part of this broader epistemological exercise, I want to focus on a small, but largely disregarded—in my view misunderstood—fragment of the problem at hand: The question of the role of mathematics, and the question of how some widely shared beliefs about the nature of mathematical knowledge contribute to the scientific respectability of contemporary data practices.
Paper to be published in Can Baskent & Thomas M. Ferguson (eds.) Graham Priest on Dialetheism and Paraconsistency, Outstanding Contributions in Logic, Springer.
Abstract We present a multi-conclusion natural deduction calculus characterizing the dynamic reasoning typical of Adaptive Logics. The resulting system AdaptiveND is sound and complete with respect to the propositional fragment of adaptive logics based on CLuN. This appears to be the first tree-format presentation of the standard linear dynamic proof system typical of Adaptive Logics. It offers the advantage of full transparency in the formulation of locally derivable rules, a connection between restricted inference rules and their adaptive counterpart, and the formulation of abnormalities as a subtype of well-formed formulas. These features of the proposed calculus allow us to clarify the relation between defeasible and multiple-conclusion approaches to classical recapture.
An extended version (SharedIt-link) of this blog-post has now appeared as a commentary in the journal Philosophy & Technology, 30:541–545.
A few months ago I was invited to enter in a dialogue with Brussels-based artist Rossella Biscotti for the occasion of the exhibition of her installation “Other” from 2015 at the Contour Biennale in Mechelen (Belgium). In this work, she uses the Jacquard weaving technique to visualise data from Belgian census data, and engages in an exploration of data-subjects that are categorised as ‘other’ within this data-set. The resulting installation consists of 4 large carpets that display data of various minority-groups and rest-categories of the Brussels population.
My role in this collaboration was to contribute formal or mathematical insights on how rest-categories like other or none of the above could be understood. In this short piece I reflect on this collaboration. I first discuss how artistic research like Biscotti’s can contribute to the critical evaluation of contemporary data-practices, and then elaborate on how logico-mathematical insights can become part of such inquiries.
Biscotti’s 10×10 installation, the precursor of Other, was originally designed and produced to be exhibited at Haus Esters in Krefeld (Germany)—a modernist villa designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the silk-manufacturer Josef Esters—, and integrates multiple modernist ideals in a single work of art. In this work, Biscotti explores how institutional structures are imposed on individuals by combining features of automated mechanical manufacturing with conceptual and technological aspects of how large data-sets are collected and processed. She focuses in particular on how categories are used to create an overarching structure, and relates this to the punch-cards used to implement such structures within industrial (the Jacquard loom; an early 19th century device that automated the weaving of several complex patterns) and administrative (the Hollerith tabulator) processes that became increasingly automated in the early 20th Century. By showing the resulting work in Haus Esters, it becomes part of a more encompassing modernist narrative exemplified by Mies van der Rohe’s architecture.
For the exhibition of this installation at Contour, Biscotti’s team wished to extend their research with a more rigorous expression of the logic behind uses of rest-categories like other, and capture this logic in a single formal expression. This led us to a brief excursion into the meaning of the labels we use to designate such rest-categories, and suggested that we should interpret these labels as semantically empty labels that share certain features with the sentinel values that data-scientists now use to signal that certain data are missing. By asking how such empty labels interact with the generation (and ensuing reification) of categories, for instance when data are aggregated, we came to an interpretation of rest-categories as sets of data-subjects whose members should not, due to the lack of positive evidence of their similarity, be subsumed under a single kind or profile.
The recurrent attention for minority-groups and rest-categories, as well as the value accorded to automated and/or mechanical processes, naturally place Biscotti’s work within the scope of current debates on large-scale data-processing and the data-revolution. Mechanical objectivity and data-shadows are, for instance, current topics of interest within the scholarly community that tries to understand and assess the ethical, legal, and social implications of the data-revolution. And yet, the artistic research that led to 10×10 and Other deliberately only investigates historical computational technologies like the punch-card, and remains focused on the functioning of categories in census-data, which is itself a very traditional form of large-scale data-collection and organisation. It is, therefore, not immediately clear how Biscotti’s work, which (unlike the work showed at last year’s Big Bang Data at Somerset House in London) remains silent on matters like Big Data and machine learning, can contribute to our understanding of what we now see as the most salient features of the data-revolution.
What I’d like to suggest is that taking early manifestations of automated data-processes as an object of study can help us to open up new ways of questioning data-centric forms of knowledge-production, for instance by making us aware of practices that have become too familiar to deserve a critical assessment. Punch-cards and tabulators are, in that sense, similar to pre-cinematic processes: they are basic mechanical devices we study to understand the technologies that, respectively, enable contemporary artistic and documentary practices (cinema) or that enable novel epistemic practices. As such, it (re)directs our attention to the technological changes that make epistemic practices possible, or even just conceivable. It becomes a genealogical project, and has the potential to identify the technical and conceptual changes we need to be aware of to understand contemporary practices, by exposing us again to the historical building blocks of our current practices.
Biscotti’s work helps us, at the same time, avoid certain distractions. It can encourage us to look underneath the reigning rhetoric on Big Data, the mythical abilities that are often attributed to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and perhaps even the most rudimentary principles of inferential statistics. It invites us to take a few steps back—back into what we think of as known territory—, and draws our attention to the practices and assumptions that make data-driven inquiry and decision-making possible: recording, organising and processing through counting, categorisation, and automated calculation. Because artistic research like Biscotti’s is situated at the periphery of current scholarly debates, it isn’t bound by a given research-agenda and can reinvestigate familiar and often widely trusted practices, and ask elementary questions anew; from a contemporary (artistic) perspective. This includes questions that may have lost their immediate relevance because they no longer drive our scientific or scholarly curiosity, but also questions that are not aligned with the dominant themes of ongoing debates concerning privacy, fairness, transparency, or responsibility.
What then can a logico-mathematical approach contribute to artistic research concerned with the classification practices on which census-data are built? Two things at least. It can help make the idea of a “logic of classification” more explicit, and develop its implications in purely abstract terms (for instance without associating rest-categories with forms of exclusion). As such, it can reorient our critical attention from how classification-structures affect specific data-subjects in concrete settings to how classification-rules create abstract entities like the profiles or categories that become the primary entities we reason about or use to make decisions. Second, it can be used to explore alternative approaches; in this specific case, different ways of conceptualising how rest-categories should be used in the construction of categories of (in certain respects) similar data-subjects.
In relation to the focus on “other”, I specifically contrasted two different ways in which the membership of a rest-category could be conceptualised. The basic principle that underlies both is that data-subjects belong to the same category (or fall under the same profile) if and only if for all the relevant data-dimensions we have attributed them the same values (or values within the same range). In this way, we can construct categories of, say, all the children of ages between 6 and 10 that have at least one sibling. Similarly, we seem to be able to construct the category of all the data-subjects categorised as “other” in the data-dimension “household position,” and this even if the actual household-roles of the presumed members of this category do not have anything in common apart from the fact that they do not conform to any of the roles privileged by the designers of the census, and that their place or role within a household probably isn’t very common (as in the case of “other nationalities”). Treating such rest-categories as bona fide categories makes sense if we think of labels like “other” or “none of the above” as semantically significant labels; labels that provide sufficient ground for identification because they indicate that we have sufficient evidence to identify the data-subjects that were so-labelled.
If, however, we think of such labels as a mere indication of the absence of any information, this strategy quickly becomes questionable. In the context of the mentioned household positions, being categorised as “other” results from negative answers to 4 consecutive yes/no-questions, but does not need to carry any positive information. At least for some rest-categories it thus makes more sense to treat the labels we use to denote these categories along the same lines of the sentinel-values that are customarily used to signal missing data, like 9999 or the NaN (not a number) numeric data-type described by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. Let us stipulate that two data-subjects fall under the same profile or belong to the same category if and only if, first, there is no information that indicates that they are different in a relevant respect (a potentially vacuous sense of being similar), and, in addition, there is also positive evidence that they are similar in the relevant respects. By the second requirement, the label “other” then no longer leads to the creation of a category of others. Because explicit sentinel-values like NaN have the property of not being equal to themselves (the expression NaN==NaN will typically evaluate to False), this requirement for positive information can be simulated by using such values to denote rest-categories.
Using a randomly generated data-set similar to the data used by Biscotti, the difference between the two types of approaches can easily be visualised. In the figures below the sizes of categories are displayed as bubbles; the figure on the left uses the number 10 to denote “other” (and 10==10 evaluates to True), whereas the figure on the right uses NaN.
Here, we immediately see that the presence of data-subjects labelled as “other” leads to the creation of a large periphery of different (because unknown) data-subjects whenever the label used to denote rest-categories indicates the absence of information. As such, this leads to a minimal sense in which we can understand how the meaning we assign to the labels we use to denote categories interacts with the process of creating categories or profiles and the subsequent use of these categories as an ontology used to describe a given subject-matter.
Published in Minds and Machines (Online First)
Abstract This paper develops and refines the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts that are the outcome of a design-process by exploring how a constructionist epistemology and meta-philosophy can be integrated within the philosophy of logic.
doi: 10.1007/s11023-017-9430-9 (Open Access)
Published in the Journal of Logic and Computation — Logic and Philosophy of Information Corner (Advance Article).
Abstract In this paper I use the distinction between hard and soft information from the dynamic epistemic logic tradition to extend prior work on informational conceptions of logic to include non-monotonic consequence-relations. In particular, I defend the claim that at least some non-monotonic logics can be understood on the basis of soft or “belief-like” logical information, and thereby question the orthodox view that all logical information is hard, “knowledge-like”, information.
Paper published in Big Data & Society, Dec 2016.
authored by Brent Mittelstadt, Patrick Allo, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Sandra Wachter, and Luciano Floridi.
Abstract In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.
doi:10.1177/2053951716679679 (open access)
Published in The Routledge Handbook on Philosophy of Information (Floridi, ed.).
Abstract The combination of logic and information is popular as we as controversial. It is, in fact, not even clear what their juxtaposition, for instance in the title of this chapter, should mean, and indeed different authors have a given a different interpretation to what a or the logic of information might be. Throughout this chapter, I will embrace the plurality of ways in which logic and information can be related and try to individuate a number of fruitful lines of research. In doing so, I want to explain why we should care about the combination, where the controversy comes from, and how certain common themes emerge in different settings.
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Published in Theoria, 82(1): 3-31.
This is a descendant of the conference presentation with the same title.
Abstract The traditional connection between logic and reasoning has been under pressure ever since Gilbert Harman attacked the received view that logic yields norms for what we should believe. In this paper I first place Harman’s challenge in the broader context of the dialectic between logical revisionists like Bob Meyer and sceptics about the role of logic in reasoning like Harman. I then develop a formal model based on contemporary epistemic and doxastic logic in which the relation between logic and norms for belief can be captured.
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Talk given at the Fourth World Congress on Universal Logic (Rio, Brasil).
Published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93(1): 77-91.
Abstract The upshot of this paper is to use the formal notion of synonymy to scrutinize the case for intra-theoretical pluralism defended in Hjortland's "Logical pluralism, meaning-variance, and verbal disputes".
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Published in Minds and Machines 24(1): 71-83.
Symposium on Luciano Floridi's “The Philosophy of Information” edited by Anthony Beavers.
Abstract. Floridi’s chapter on relevant information bridges the analysis of “being informed” with the analysis of knowledge as “relevant information that is accounted for” by analysing subjective or epistemic relevance in terms of the questions that an agent might ask in certain circumstances. In this paper, I scrutinise this analysis, identify a number of problems with it, and finally propose an improvement. By way of epilogue, I offer some more general remarks on the relation between (bounded) rationality, the need to ask the right questions, and the ability to ask the right questions.
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Published in Studia Logica 101(5): 933-58.
Abstract. Modal logics have in the past been used as a unifying framework for the minimality semantics used in defeasible inference, conditional logic, and belief revision. The main aim of the present paper is to add adaptive logics, a general framework for a wide range of defeasible reasoning forms developed by Diderik Batens and his co-workers, to the growing list of formalisms that can be studied with the tools and methods of contemporary modal logic. By characterising the class of adaptive preference models, this aim is achieved at the level of the model-theory. By proposing formulae that express the consequence relation of adaptive logic in the object-language, the same aim is also partially achieved at the syntactical level.
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Published in Aberdein, A. & I. Dove (eds.), The Argument of Mathematics. Dordrecht, Springer: 339–60.
Presented at CLPS13 Conference on Logic and Philosophy of Science (Ghent).
Abstract. Because the conclusion of a correct proof follows by necessity from its premises, and is thus independent of the mathematician’s beliefs about that conclusion, understanding how different pieces of mathematical knowledge can be distributed within a larger community is rarely considered an issue in the epistemology of mathematical proofs. In the present paper, we set out to question the received view expressed by the previous sentence. To that end, we study a prime example of collaborative mathematics, namely the Polymath Project, and propose a simple formal model based on epistemic logics to bring out some of the core features of this case-study.
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Paper based on The Dynamics of Adaptive Proofs: A Modal Perspective
Published in G. Bezhanishvili, S. Loebner, V. Marra & F. Richter (Eds.), TbiLLC 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 7758: 155–65.
Abstract Standard refinements of epistemic and doxastic logics that avoid the problems of logical and deductive omniscience cannot easily be generalised to default reasoning. This is even more so when defeasible reasoning is understood as tentative reasoning; an understanding that is inspired by the dynamic proofs of adaptive logic. In the present paper we extend the abnormality (preference) models for adaptive consequence with a set of open worlds to account for this type of inferential dynamics. In doing so, we argue that unlike for mere deductive reasoning, tentative inference cannot be modelled without such open worlds.
This paper supersedes Interactive Models of Closure and Computation
Published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic. 42(1): 91–124.
Abstract. In this paper I present a more refined analysis of the principles of deductive closure and positive introspection. This analysis uses the expressive resources of logics for different types of group knowledge, and discriminates between aspects of closure and computation that are often conflated. The resulting model also yields a more fine-grained distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, and places Hintikka’s original argument for positive introspection in a new perspective.
Talk given at the Conference on the Foundations of Logical Consequence (Arché Centre for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology, University of Saint Andrews.)
Published in Erkenntnis. 77(2): 167-85.
(joint work with Edwin Mares)
Abstract. The prima facie case for considering “informational semantics” as an alternative explication of the notion of logical consequence alongside the model-theoretical and the proof-theoretical one is easily summarised. Where the model-theory is standardly associated with a defence of classical logic, and proof-theory with a defence of intuitionist logic, informational semantics seems to wedded to relevant and other substructural logics. As such, if the CL, IL, RL trio is a representative chunk of a broader range of logical options, informational semantics surely has its place. Yet, it is even easier to dismiss the suggestion that informational semantics provides an apparently missing third conception of logical consequence. After all, isn't it just a variant of the usual interpretation of the Routley-Meyer relational semantics rather than a genuine alternative to a model-theoretic account? Or worse, isn't it a mere metaphor? In the present paper, we want to consider a more subtle answer to the question of whether informational semantics is a real alternative for the two more traditional contenders.
Paper based on Paraconsistency and the Logic of Ambiguous Connectives
Published in Paraconsistency: Logic and Applications (Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science) edited by Koji Tanaka, Francesco Berto, Edwin Mares and Francesco Paoli, 2012: 57–79.
Abstract. Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the ambiguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to fill this gap by arguing that substructural logicians should care about these connectives, by describing a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and finally by exhaustively characterising the logical properties of ambiguous connectives.
Invited talk given at the Special Session of CiE on Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information. Cambridge, UK.
Published in S.B. Cooper, A. Dawar, and B. Löwe (Eds.), CiE 2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 7318:17–28.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30870-3_3
Abstract. Informational conceptions of logic are barely novel. We find them in the work of John Corcoran, in several papers on substructural and constructive logics by Heinrich Wansing, and in the interpretation of the Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logics in terms of Barwises and Perrys theory of situations.
Allo & Mares [2] present an informational account of logical consequence that is based on the content-nonexpantion platitude, but that also relies on a double inversion of the standard direction of explanation (in- formation doesnt depend on a prior notion of meaning, but is used to naturalize meaning, and informational content is not defined relative to a pre-existing logical space, but that space is constructed relative to the level of abstraction at which information is assessed).
In this paper I focus directly on one of the main ideas introduced in that paper, namely the contrast between logical discrimination and deductive strength, and use this contrast to (1) illustrate a number of open problems for an informational conception of logical consequence, (2) review its connection with the dynamic turn in logic, and (3) situate it relative to the research agenda of the philosophy of information.
Review of "Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness" (Kees van Deemter)
Published in Minds and Machines. 22(1): 41–45.
Presented at (Anti-)Realisms, Logic and Metaphysics (Nancy, France)
Published in The Realism-Antirealism Debate in the Age of Alternative Logics (Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science) edited by Shahid Rahman, Mathieu Marion and Giuseppe Primiero, 2011: 1-23.
Abstract. Present paper’s aim is to put the notion of ambiguous connectives, as explored in Paoli (2003, 2005), in an informational perspective. That is, starting from the notions of informational content and logical pluralism, we ask what it means for a disjunction, i.e. a message of the form “f or y”, to be informative. The bottom line of this paper is that being a pluralist about informational content can even be defended against those who hold a realist conception of semantic information.
doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-1923-1_1
Published in Philosophical Studies, 153(3): 417–34.
Abstract. The logic of ‘being informed’ gives a formal analysis of a cognitive state that does not coincide with either belief, or knowledge. To Floridi, who first proposed the formal analysis, the latter is supported by the fact that unlike knowledge or belief, being informed is a factive, but not a reflective state. This paper takes a closer look at the formal analysis itself, provides a pure and an applied semantics for the logic of being informed, and tries to find out to what extent the formal analysis can contribute to an information-based epistemology.
Talk given at the Formal Epistemology Workshop 2010 (Konstanz, Germany).
Abstract. In this paper I give a more refined account of deductive closure and positive introspection by using the expressive resources of logics for different types of group knowledge.
Published in Knowledge, Technology and Policy, 23(1): 25–40.
Abstract. In this paper I reassess Floridi's solution to the Bar-Hillel-Carnap paradox (the information-yield of inconsistent propositions is maximal) by questioning the orthodox view that contradictions cannot be true. The main part of the paper is devoted to showing that the veridicality thesis (semantic information has to be true) is compatible with dialetheism (there are true contradictions), and that unless we accept the additional non-falsity thesis (information cannot be false) there is no reason to presuppose that there is no such thing like contradictory information.
This paper supersedes Logic in Epistemic Perspective. Adaptive Logic as Conditional Belief.
Abstract. In this paper we reconstruct the final derivability relation of adaptive logic within the framework of conditional doxastic logic (CDL). On the formal level, this is achieved by generalising the preference ordering used in CDL in such a way that it can capture the preferential semantics of adaptive logic. The final result is a class of preferential models wherein a boxed formula is valid iff a corresponding formula can be finally derived using a particular adaptive strategy.
Presently being revised.
Paper based on A two-level approach to logics of data and information
Published in Synthese 167(2) (2009): 231-249.
(Knowledge, Rationality, and Action) special issue on the Philosophy of Information and Logic edited by Luciano Floridi and Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson (Online First).
Abstract. Cognitive states as well as cognitive commodities play central though distinct roles in our epistemological theories. By being attentive to how a difference in their roles affects our way of referring to them, we can undoubtedly accrue our understanding of the structure and functioning of our main epistemological theories. In this paper we propose an analysis of the dichotomy between states and commodities in terms of the method of abstraction, and more specifically by means of infomorphisms between different ways to classify states of information, information-bases, and evidential situations.
Review of: “Mainstream and Formal Epistemology” (Vincent Hendricks)
Published in Erkenntnis 69(3) (2008): 427-432.
Paper based on Adaptive Logics presented in ‘almost Amsterdam style’: an outline and an application.
Abstract. In this paper we reconstruct the final derivability relation of adaptive logic (a peculiar kind of nonmonotonic logic developed with the intent to formalise and explicate real-life reasoning) within the framework of modal epistemic logic. On the formal level, this is achieved through the adoption of (i) a modal language with operators labelled with sets of non-modal formulae, and (ii) a model theory which evaluates modal formulae over a contextually restricted range of possible worlds.
Published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic 36(6) (2007): 659-94.
Abstract. Up to now theories of semantic information have implicitly relied on logical monism, or the view that there is one true logic. The latter position has been explicitly challenged by logical pluralists. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we take a suggestion from J.C. Beall and Greg Restall at heart and exploit logical pluralism to recognise another kind of pluralism. The latter is called informational pluralism, a thesis whose implications for a theory of semantic information we explore.
Invited tutorial given at the ILCLI International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy of Knowledge, Communication and Action
Abstract. The tutorial connects two notions of information: the inverse relationship principle which relates informational content to the exclusion of possibilities, and information-structures based on a partial ordering on states of information. Jointly, these allow the formulation of several distinct precise notions of content-individuation.
Presented at CAP in Europe 2007 (Twente, The Netherlands)
Published in Waelbers, Briggle & Brey (eds.), Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, IOS Press.
Abstract. One of the basic principles of the general definition of information is its rejection of dataless information, which is reflected in its endorsement of an ontological neutrality. In general, this principles states that “there can be no information without physical implementation” (Floridi (2005)). Though this is standardly considered a commonsensical assumption, many questions arise with regard to its generalised application. In this paper a combined logic for data and information is elaborated, and specifically used to investigate the consequences of restricted and unrestricted data-implementation-principles.
Published in Logique et Analyse 49(196) (2006): 461–488.
Special issue on Logic and the Philosophy of Information.
Abstract. In this paper we aim at providing a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial information-state. Starting from the notion of locality in a relational structure, we define so-called adaptive generated-submodels. The latter are then shown to yield an adaptive consequence relation such that the derivability of []p is naturally interpreted as a core property of being in a state in which one holds the information that p.
Review of: Models of a Man: Essays in Memory of Herbert Simon (Augier & March, eds.)
Published in Minds & Machines, 16(2) (2006): 221–224.
Presented at CAP in Europe 2005 Conference (Västerås, Sweden)
Published in Computing, Philosophy, and Cognitive, Science, G. Dodig Crnkovic and S. Stuart (eds.), Cambridge Scholars Press.
Abstract. By introducing the notion of logical pluralism, it can be concluded that up to now theories of semantic information have - at least implicitly - relied on logical monism, the view that there is one true logic. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we ought to ask whether logical pluralism could entail informational pluralism. The basic insights from logical pluralism and their implications for a theory of semantic information should therefore be explored.
First, it is shown that (i) the general definition of semantic information as meaningful well-formed data does not favour any logical system, (ii) there are nevertheless good reasons to prefer a given logic above some others, and (iii) preferring a given logic does not contradict logical pluralism.
A genuine informational pluralism is then outlined by arguing that for every true logic the logical pluralist accepts, a corresponding notion of semantic information arises. Relying on connections between these logics, it can be concluded that different logics yield complementary formalisations of information and informational content. The resulting framework can be considered as a more versatile approach to information than its monist counterparts.
Presented at Second International Workshop on Philosophy and Informatics (Kaiserslautern)
Published in: WM2005: Professional Knowledge Management Experiences and Visions, edited by Klaus-Dieter Althoff, Andreas Dengel, Ralph Bergmann, Markus Nick and Thomas Roth-Berghofer, 579-86. Kaiserslautern: DFKI Gmbh, 2005.
Also available in CEUR Online Proceedings Vol. 130
Abstract. The core aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the benefits of a formal approach to information as being informative. It is argued that handling information-like objects can be seen as more fundamental than the notion of information itself. Starting from theories of semantic information, it is shown that these leave being informative out of the picture by choosing a logical framework which is essentially classical. Based on arguments in favour of logical pluralism, a formal approach of information handling inspired by non-classical logics is outlined.
Presented at CAP in Europe 2004 Conference (Pavia, Italy)
Published in Computing, Philosophy, and Cognition. L. Magnani and R. Dossena (eds.). London, College Publications: 313—327.
Abstract. Core aim of this paper is to focus on the dynamics of real proofs by introducing the block-semantics from (Batens, 1995) as a dynamical counterpart for classical semantics. We first look briefly at its original formulation - with respect to natural deduction proofs - and then extend its use to tableau-proofs. This yields a perspective on proof-dynamics that (i) explains proofs as a series of steps providing us with an insight in the premises, and (ii) reveals an informational dynamics in proofs unknown to most dynamical logical systems. As the latter remark especially applies to Amsterdam-style dynamic epistemic logic, we consider a weak modal epistemic logic and combine it with dynamic modal operators expressing the informational proof-dynamics (as a natural companion for the informational dynamics due to new information known from dynamic epistemic logic).
The motivation for this approach is twofold. In a general way it is considered as (a first step in) the reconstruction of the proof-dynamics known from adaptive logics (revealed by its block-formulation) within a modal framework (i.e. using a relational structure); in a more restricted way it aims at the explicit application of some results on omniscience formulated in Batens' paper on block-semantics.
Review of the SLI-2003 Workshop, Brussels, 31st of March 2003.
Published in: Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 95, no. 3 (2003): 225.
Once a photographer, but now a researcher who can't choose between philosophy and logic.
I have worked in philosophical logic and the philosophy of information, with some brief excursions into the philosophy of mathematical practice.
