How to Account for Information

In Floridi (2005), I argued that a definition of semantic information in terms of alethically-neutral content – that is, strings of well-formed and meaningful data that can be additionally qualified as true or untrue (false, for the classicists among us), depending on supervening evaluations – provides only necessary but insufficient conditions: if some content is to qualify as semantic information, it must also be true. One speaks of false information in the same way as one qualifies someone as a false friend, i.e. not a friend at all. According to it, semantic information is, strictly speaking, inherently truth-constituted and not a contingent truth-bearer, exactly like knowledge but unlike propositions or beliefs, for example, which are what they are independently of their truth values and then, because of their truth-aptness, may be further qualified alethically.

Knowledge of Necessity: Logical Positivism and Kripkean Essentialism

By the lights of a central logical positivist thesis in modal epistemology, for every necessary truth that we know, we know it a priori and for every contingent truth that we know, we know it a posteriori. Kripke attacks on both flanks, arguing that we know necessary a posteriori truths and that we probably know contingent a priori truths. In a reflection of Kripke's confidence in his own arguments, the first of these Kripkean claims is far more widely accepted than the second. Contrary to received opinion, the paper argues, the considerations Kripke adduces concerning truths purported to be necessary a posteriori do not disprove the logical positivist thesis that necessary truth and a priori truth are co-extensive.

Explanatory Rationalism and Contingent Truths

This paper extends the orthodox bounds of explanatory rationalism by showing there can be an explanation of why there are positive contingent truths. A positive contingent truth is a true proposition that entails that at least one contingent concrete object exists. It is widely thought that it is impossible to explain why there are positive contingent truths. For example, it is thought by Rowe that ‘God created the universe’ is a positive contingent truth and therefore cannot explain why there are positive contingent truths. I show, however, that the reasoning behind this orthodox view is unsound and that it is possible to explain why there are positive contingent truths.

The Independence of moral from Religious Discourse in the Believer's Use of Language

In the continuing debate over the question of the independence of morality and religion there is a set of issues pertaining to the relation of moral obligation and the expressed will of God which would benefit from some further conceptual clarification. Most often the debate amounts to a defense of one form or another of the following alternatives: either it is true by definition that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an expression like “ought to be obeyed” means “willed or commanded by God” (in which case morality is entirely dependent on religion) or it is only a contingent truth that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an antecedent moral judgment as to the goodness of God's will is required for its assertion (in which case morality is entirely independent of religion). It is my contention, however, that so long as the debate is carried on in these limited terms we will necessarily be dissatisfied with whichever way the argument goes, for neither alternative can be made fully to harmonize either with our common moral and religious sensibilities or with the facts of our moral and religious usage.

Persons, Thoughts and Brains

‘Mental processes are brain processes’ is not a logically necessary truth, but nevertheless certain logical conditions must be fulfilled if it is to be a candidate for the role of contingent truth. Not just anything can, conceivably, be contingently identical with anything else: a play cannot be identical with its copies, nor beauty with a beautiful object. The propagation of light may be electromagnetic radiation, but it cannot conceivably be the tri-section of a right-angle. In this paper I shall be concerned with the general question of whether there are any logical barriers to mind-body identification, and I shall approach this via the more particular question of whether the mental processes of persons can conceivably be identical with the physiological processes of brains. It is my contention that identity theorists, by concentrating their attentions upon what were once called the “lower” parts of the soul rather than upon “higher” parts which are more typical of human persons, have paved a logical way for themselves which is artificially straight.