The Philosophy of Information is a new area of research at the intersection of philosophy and computer science [4]. It concerns (a) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics (especially computation), utilization (especially computer ethics) and sciences; and (b) the elaboration and application of computational and information-theoretic methodologies to philosophical problems. Past work by members of our group has concentrated on (a), and in this paper we explore (b). In a nutshell, we (...) ask what computer science can do for philosophy, rather than what the latter can do for the former. -/- . (shrink)

This article offers an account and defence of constructionism, both as a metaphilosophical approach and as a philosophical methodology, with references to the so-called maker's knowledge tradition. Its main thesis is that Plato's “user's knowledge” tradition should be complemented, if not replaced, by a constructionist approach to philosophical problems in general and to knowledge in particular. Epistemic agents know something when they are able to build (reproduce, simulate, model, construct, etc.) that something and plug the obtained information into the correct (...) network of relations that account for it. Their epistemic expertise increases with the scope and depth of the questions that they are able to ask and answer. Thus, constructionism deprioritises mimetic, passive, and declarative knowledge that something is the case, in favour of poietic, interactive, and practical knowledge of something being the case. Metaphilosophically, constructionism suggests adding conceptual engineering to conceptual analysis as a fundamental method. (shrink)

En los inicios del siglo XXI está desarrollándose una e-ciencia, una ciencia electrónica y altamente computarizada que exige un replanteamiento sobre la epistemología científica. A través del ejemplo de la Bioinformática y las Biotecnologías, el autor muestra algunas características de esta nueva e-ciencia e indica algunos de los problemas con los que deben enfrentarse los filósofos de la ciencia contemporáneos. Right at the beginning of the 21st century an e-Science is emerging, a highly computerized electronic science which demands a new (...) way of understanding scientific epistemology. Through Bioinformatics and Biotechnologies, the author analyzes some of the characteristics of this new e-Science and shows several problems which contemporary philosophers of science must face. (shrink)

A encyclopedia entry on the moral impacts that happen when information technologies are used to record, communicate and organize information. including the moral challenges of information technology, specific moral and cultural challenges such as online games, virtual worlds, malware, the technology transparency paradox, ethical issues in AI and robotics, and the acceleration of change in technologies. It concludes with a look at information technology as a model for moral change, moral systems and moral agents.

Some scholars claim that epistemology of science and machine learning are actually overlapping disciplines studying induction, respectively affected by Hume's problem of induction and its formal machine-learning counterpart, the “no-free-lunch” (NFL) theorems, to which even advanced AI systems such as LLMs are not immune. Extending Kevin Korb's view, this paper envisions a hierarchy of disciplines where the lowermost is a basic science, and, recursively, the metascience at each level inductively learns which methods work best at the immediately lower level. Due (...) to Hume's dictum and NFL theorems, no exact metanorms for the good performance of each object science can be obtained after just a finite number of levels up the hierarchy, and the progressive abstractness of each metadiscipline and consequent ill-definability of its methods and objects makes science—as defined by a minimal standard of scientificity—cease to exist above a certain metalevel, allowing for a still rational style of inquiry into science that can be called “philosophical.” Philosophical levels, transitively reflecting on science, peculiarly manifest a non–empirically learned urge to self-reflection constituting the properly normative aspect of philosophy of science. (shrink)