Title: Knowledge and Information
Speaker: Simon D’Alfonso
Date, Time: 31/08/10, 6.15pm
Location: Old Quad common room
Abstract: Information and knowledge are commonly associated with each other; colloquially, in dictionaries, the two terms are often treated as synonymous. Within philosophy however, information-theoretic epistemology goes beyond this casual, colloquial association. It involves the development of specialised accounts of information and furthermore attempts to develop an explication of knowledge with such accounts, to show how information causes or leads to knowledge. In this presentation I outline and discuss a theory of information and how it is used to develop an information-theoretic epistemology. Information is treated as a fundamental precursor to knowledge, with knowledge encapsulating truth because it encapsulates information, which itself is also veridical by definition.