30th International Wittgenstein Symposium: Friday

Friday, penultimate day at the Wittgenstein Symposium. It's raining. Several people have already left.

First corrigendum: I failed to mention that I missed some talks at the beginning of the meeting. In particular, I was told by reliable sources that two were very interesting: Fred Dretske's and Allen Renear's.

I cannot comment on either, but I heard that the audience was apparently unable to accept Fred's point that something may count as semantic information only if it is true. It must be people who also think that whales are fish, since they live in water. Intuitions can be a great point of departure, but they are certainly an awful point of arrival. We had a similar difficulty today, during the pannel session (see below).

Second corrigendum: I was wrong, yesterday (see previous post below). There was another poor (I'm being kind) talk today, on ethical challenges posed by the internet. I've seen this done so many times. Someone wakes up and bang, he suddenly realises that there is an ongoing revolution, something must be done or said, and so he seats tightly in his studio and speculates. Forget about the fact that we have more than half a century of advanced research in information and computer ethics and that most of it is just a click away precisely because of that revolution the philosopher is now so excited about. The speculator will follow some intellectual game of his own creation and come up with a confabulation that will seek to make sense of everything and more, reconstruct the past and predict the future. Aren't you glad that scientists are sweating under the pressure of their experiments and databases on well-defined issues?

Back to the paper. It was divided into two parts, one on kowledge the other on challenges.

It was hard to tell where (actually, whether) one could start fixing it. The proposal to replace the classic tripartite account of knowledge (which, like democracy, may be faulty and disappointing, but it's still better than any other option we have seen so far) with a bunch of vague and foggy suggestions, randomly extracted from a wimsical choice of quotations from mainly sociological literature (stuff like: knowledge is valuable information) failed to raise to the level of being worth a refutation.

The suggestions, in the second half, were largely lifted from well-known literature (without references, most unfortunately; for example, it was odd to recognise bits of my own work, including stuff on the infosphere) partly vague and uninteresting. A simple example of how badly things went? The discussion of "permanent beta" failed to mention Google and its software-release strategy.

I asked why we should abandon the tripartite definition (and hence attempts to improve it) in favour of the author's preferred salad of socio-cultural perspectives. The answer: we as philosophers shouldn't really go out and teach people what "knowledge" is or isn't, we should listen and participate in the intercultural, interdisciplinary discourse about it. Which in a way makes sense, if you really do not care to understand the nature of "knowledge", but rather why people say the silly things they say. So, next time someone asks what we mean by "inflation", "energy", "algorithm", "gene", "demonstration" or any other technical concepts, run a sociological analysis of your own taste. It's so much easier than doing some scientific work about it.

Luckily, there was the very good talk of Charles Ess to redress the situation. Charles spoke extensively on the cultural and ethical implications brought about ICTs at a global level. I enjoyed the refreshing informativeness of his analysis of the actual development of the Internet (accurate and recent data) and of the relevant ethical concepts in non-EU non-US cultures. His point about the lack of ethical neutrality of ICTs, and especially his well-chosen references to African and Buddhist literature, were very convincing. The debate centred largely on how pluralism and individualism might be reconciled without running into some form of relativism. We do not have an answer, but Charles' efforts seem to me to be going in the right direction.

The panel session in the afternoon (I took part) was interesting. We spent far too much time on the "veridicality" issue (x qualifies as semantic information only if x is true) without making any progress: arguments on one side (pro), expressions of dislike on the other. Next time you go to the doctor and you ask how is your health, would you like to get some information in the strong sense (which includes truth) or in the weak sense (which is mere content, basically anything that makes sense)? No brainer right? So do Fred Dretske and I think, but we seemed to be a very small minority.

During the rest of the session, tentative questions and suggestions were aired. The interactions seemed overall fruitful. Many felt that we are onto something, when speaking of this new philosophy of information. I couldn't agree more, of course. So I offered the following analogy, to try to coalesce the discussion around something in common.

Every now and then, philosophy moves house. The new place looks a bit familiar, because it contains some old furniture (problems, theories, methods, conceptual constructs). But it is also new, extraneous, somewhat disorienting: new rooms, newly bought furniture and everything is in a different place, perhaps in less (or even more) fitting locations. Moreover, as I was very nicely reminded, we should take the opportunity to throw away all the rubbish we have accumulated in the previous house. Fresh start, as it were. The new place looks partly familiar, party entirely new. We try to find our new balance, adapt it to your needs, while also adapting ourselves to it. In practice, we develop a new philosophy.

In offering the analogy I had in mind Wittgenstein's architectural interest (and the house he designed in Vienna). I also hoped to convey a sense of the importance of our new informational environmentalism. We are constructing our new environment, it would be great to do it properly.