PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION William A. Bauer, Ph.D.

wabauer@ncsu.edu Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies

North Carolina State University

(Image: Modern Abstract Background (freedigitalphotos.net) by fotographic1980)

PLAN

• What is philosophy?

• What is information?

• Philosophy of information (theories, examples, problems)

• Ask me questions along the way

• Respond to my questions along the way

• Discussion

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

What do you think?

Wisdom-seeking (philosophia: love of wisdom) Persistent question-asking (and answer-seeking) Making, critiquing arguments about uncertain topics

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

Rodin, The Thinker (Image courtesy pixabay.com)

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? “I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions. Progress in philosophy consists, I think, in a clearer delineation of the conceptual options, not in reaching determinate conclusions.” – Kwame Anthony Appiah [my emphasis]

Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954) (image courtesy wikipedia.com)

“A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” – Albert Einstein (1944) [my emphasis] (Correspondence between Einstein and Robert Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61-574) [quoted at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/notes.html#1, from the Einstein Archive (EA)]

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) (Image: Ferdinand Schmutzer

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? Systematic investigation of concepts and problems of REALITY, KNOWLEDGE, VALUES, and LOGIC

EPISTEMOLOGY Theory of KNOWLEDGE: belief, justification, evidence What can I know? Phil Info: Does knowledge involve the flow of information?

METAPHYSICS Theory of REALITY: mind, god, freedom, persons, laws of nature What am I? What is the world? Phil Info: Might fundamental reality consist of information?

LOGIC Theory of reasoning: inductive logic, deductive logic How should I think? Phil Info: What is the relation between logic and information?

ETHICS Theory of VALUES: rights, the Good, morality What should I do? Phil Info: How should we use data? Who owns data?

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

WHAT IS INFORMATION?

[rough conceptions, not definitions]

• Semantic information: a state of affairs carrying meaning for us (highest level, complex information, beyond syntax) – An event, a term, an object can carry meaning

– Interpretation-dependent: e.g., ‘water’ H20, lakes, etc.

• Biological information: a state of affairs aimed at molecular production—genetic coding with A, T, G, C

• Physical information (physics): a state of affairs in which differences and relations amongst ‘objects’ generate possible outcomes

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

WHAT IS INFORMATION?

• Bateson (1972, p. 381): information is “a difference that makes a difference”

• Difference: a state of affairs involving two entities, X and Y, that are not identical, thus producing non-uniformity (uncertainty)

– Data (raw data), a set of relations between things

– May be represented by 1/0, yes/no, etc. A light shining from the left versus the right is a difference that makes a difference in the output or manifestation (the projection of the shadow)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

WHAT IS INFORMATION?

• Shannon information (1948): a mathematical theory of information and communication

– Signal source Noise across channel Signal receiver

– Revolutionary: internet, mobile phones, Voyager, etc.

Image from Google search (original Shannon diagram)

• Certainty and information increase certainty decrease information

Tossing a coin with identical faces Tossing a two-faced coin Tossing a six-sided die

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

Claude Shannon (1916-2001) (Image credit: see below)

(Image: By mcapdevila - Photo of the graffiti: thierry ehrmann [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

INFORMATION & REALITY

• What is reality?

– Materialism (Democritus, Aristotle) [matter w/properties]

– Idealism (Berkeley) [minds w/ideas]

– Dualism (Descartes) [matter and minds]

• What if reality is fundamentally just computational processing (i.e., information processing)?

(Images courtesy pixabay.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION & REALITY

• ‘It from bit’ (Wheeler 1990)

• Davies (2010, p. 75): “information is regarded as the primary entity from which physical reality is built.”

Question for you What does “bit” stand for?

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(Image courtesy pixabay.com)

INFORMATION & REALITY

• Illustration of a fundamental computational reality: Conway’s Game of Life [let’s play] (http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/)

• Physical reality might be a cellular automaton (Wolfram 2002)

Question for you Can information be instantiated without matter? [Can matter be instantiated w/o information (or something)?] Red: “puffer-type breeder”

Green: “glider guns” Blue: “gliders”

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(Image: By Hyperdeath (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)

INFORMATION & REALITY Does the universe literally compute? Lloyd (2010, p. 96): “Starting from its very earliest moments, every piece of the universe was processing information”

Total number of “elementary events or bit flips” that have occurred since the start of the universe “is not greater than 10120” (or, approximately 2400) (Lloyd 2010, p. 101)

Seth Lloyd (b. 1960), MIT A ‘quantum mechanic’ Image credit (see below)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(Image: By Dmitry Rozhkov (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE • What is knowledge? • Plato (Theaetetus): knowledge = true belief with

an account of the reason why it is true • This requires the subject has access to the

justifying reasons (internalism) • It makes knowledge explicitly linguistic

S knows there is an apple at L if and only if (i) S believes there is an apple at L (ii) there is in fact an apple at L (iii) S has an account of the complex nature (components) of the apple that justifies S’s belief (so the justification is NOT just perceptual evidence)

WORLD

location L MIND

(images courtesy pixabay.com)

Plato 427-347 B.C.E. (image: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Plato 427-347 B.C.E.

(image credit: see below)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(Plato image: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plato_Silanion_Musei_Capitolini_MC1377.jpg#file

INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE Does a knower need the kind of account Plato postulates, in other word, to ‘know why’ she knows?

Dretske (1981, preface; my emphasis): “In the beginning there was information. The word came later. The transition was achieved by the development of organisms with the capacity for selectively exploiting this information in order to survive and perpetuate their kind.” [word: account, reason, justification]

Fred Dretske (1932-2013) (image courtesy wikipedia.com)

So maybe information, not an account, is what is needed to know

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE

Dretske (1981, pp. 65, 86) proposes an information-theoretic analysis of knowledge

Question for you You might be dreaming right now. So, can you know anything about external reality?

signal s carries info that a is R

apple (a) is red (R) s causes, or causally sustains, your belief that a is R

Thermometer analogy (Armstrong 1973)

(images courtesy pixabay.com) Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION & LOGIC

• Logic: the study of arguments

• Argument: a set of 2 or more statements in which 1 statement is a conclusion and the others are premises supporting the conclusion

• Information flows from the premises to the conclusion

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION & LOGIC

(1) All cells undergo apoptosis. (1) + (2)

(2) Erythrocytes are cells.

(3) Thus, erythrocytes undergo apoptosis. (3)

• Do (1) and (2) guarantee (3)? YES, if (1) and (2) are true

• This deductive argument is VALID

• VALID: the premises, if true, guarantee the conclusion

• However, the conclusion carries no information beyond the collective information of the premises

• Yet, the argument might convince us of something

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION & LOGIC • Inductive arguments, unlike deductive arguments, cannot

guarantee their conclusions—if good, they make the conclusion more probable

• The premises can produce new information by reaching beyond their own claims

• Here is a controversial example, in which a normative conclusion is drawn from a factual premise

Question for you: In the example, what do you infer is the cause?

Question for you: Is the argument valid?

Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodyte)

(1) Humans and chimpanzees share 99% of genes (2) Thus, chimpanzees should have legal rights

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

Image: By Thomas Lersch (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

INFORMATION & LOGIC

• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British philosopher: Harm Principle, Utilitarianism, Feminism, Empiricism

• Mill’s methods are reliable approaches to determining causal factors for some effect E, but will not guarantee what factor (or set of factors) is E’s cause

• They establish evidence of causal connections between some factors and E

• 5 methods: – agreement – difference – joint method (agreement and difference) – concomitant variations – residues

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

British philosopher Harm Principle

Principle of Utility Feminism

Empiricism Mill’s methods

(image courtesy wikipedia.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

INFORMATION & LOGIC

“In a sample of pea plants grown under ultraviolet light, 80% of the seeds sprouted within a week, as against 60% of a control group, grown in normal conditions. Thus ultraviolet light fosters growth.” (Example from Kelley 2013, p. 474)

Independent variable? Lighting condition or growth? Dependent variable? Lighting condition or growth? Type of statistic?

Which of Mill’s methods is used? Here it’s the method of difference Factors a b effect E Group 1: UV light pea plants 80% sprouted w/in a week Group 2: no UV light pea plants 60% sprouted w/in a week

Frequency

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

Lighting condition

Growth

INFORMATION (DATA) ETHICS

As a graduate or faculty researcher, suppose you leave your position at university U1 to take up a new position at university U2. Suppose U1 provided the funding for your research. Most likely, once you officially begin working at U2, what happens to your data from your research at U1?

A. U1 and U2 collectively own the data. B. U2 owns the data. C. U1 owns the data. D. You decide which university owns the data. E. The data becomes off-limits for all involved parties. [Bayh-Dole Act 1980]

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION (DATA) ETHICS

• Why should we use ‘big data’—and models that analyze it?

• In some cases, to maximize good outcomes (by maximizing efficiency)—it helps but not always

• O’Neil (2016, Weapons of Math Destruction) discusses destructive tendencies of some data analysis models or algorithms (which she terms WMDs) (image: Google books)

Question for you: In what ways can data analysis be abused? [algorithm design; input bad data; misinterpret output]

Cathy O’Neil, mathematician, author (image courtesy wikipedia.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

INFORMATION (DATA) ETHICS

• WMD: model or algorithm for analyzing big data sets for socio-political decisions that does significant harm to people

– Overlooks good personal traits and qualitative reports

– Infers guilt by association (in recidivism models)

– Incorporates biased assumptions, etc.

– Codifies past patterns, but what about the future?

• Many WMDs “define their own reality and use it to justify their results” (O’Neil 2016, p. 7)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION (DATA) ETHICS

• Case study: teacher efficiency (O’Neil 2016, pp. 4-8)

– IMPACT in D.C. schools, developed by Mathematica; booted 206 teachers in 2010, but some were very good

– Value-added modeling (or assessment, or analysis): evaluate teachers by comparing current year scores of students to previous years and to other current students

– Sarah Wysocki (5th grade teacher): excellent reviews from principal and parents, but cut based on data analysis

– On IMPACT: “Instead of searching for the truth, the score comes to embody it” (p. 7)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

INFORMATION (DATA) ETHICS

• Principle of Utility (Bentham, Mill) – V1: Do that which maximizes net happiness – V2: Do that which increases average happiness

• Principle of Autonomy (Kant) – Respect individuals’ freedom, dignity, ability to legislate

their own lives

• Lessons – Moral rights seem to get violated by some statistical

models—the numbers game can overlook individuals – Need to be careful in developing algorithms (models) used

to inform socio-political decisions – Consider utility but respect autonomy

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

Questions or observations?

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

(image courtesy pixabay.com)

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

REFERENCES & FURTHER STUDY

Bauer - Philosophy of Information

• Armstrong, D.M. 1973. Belief, Truth and Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. University of Chicago.

• Davies, P. 2010. Universe from Bit. Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics. Eds. Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen. New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Dretske, F. 1981. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. MIT Press.

• Howard, D. 2015. Einstein’s Philosophy of Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/einstein-philscience/>.

• Kelley, D. 2013. The Art of Reasoning. New York: W.W. Norton.

• Lloyd, S. 2010. The Computational Universe. Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics. Eds. Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen. New York: Cambridge University Press.

• O’Neil, C. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction. New York: Crown.

• Shannon, C.E. 1948. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27: 379–423 & 623–656, July & October.

• The Society for the Philosophy of Information. http://socphilinfo.org/

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/

• Wheeler, J. A. 1990. Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Ed. W. H. Zureck. Redwood City, CA: Addison Wesley.

• Wireless Philosophy: http://www.wi-phi.com/

• Wolfram, S. 2002. A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media.