How should philosophers understand “information” in the digital age, and can thinking of ourselves as informational organisms reshape ethics, privacy, and the self?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Luciano Floridi is John K. Castle Professor in the Practice of Cognitive Science and Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University.
2. Interview Summary
Floridi argues that a philosophy of information became unavoidable once “information” stopped being merely a silent tool philosophers used in the background and instead became a central object of inquiry in its own right—especially under the pressure of the digital/information revolution. He also emphasizes that philosophy shouldn’t be a purely descriptive exercise: it should help us make a difference in how we live and organize society (invoking Socrates as a model of philosophy with public stakes). To make sense of that ambition, he frames philosophy as an inescapable blend of model (how things are) and blueprint (how they should be), and he characterizes good theorizing as “conceptual design”: not just analyzing problems, but designing solutions under constraints—like designing different kinds of chairs for different purposes.
A big chunk of the interview then clarifies what “information” even is. Floridi distinguishes the quantitative, engineering-oriented notion associated with Claude Shannon from richer notions that involve meaning: Shannon-style information can measure how many yes/no “answers to questions” a channel can carry, but by itself it doesn’t tell you what is being said or why it matters. From there he pushes a taxonomy that helps prevent people from talking past each other: we may mean information about the world (e.g., timetables), information in the world (signals embodied in physical systems), or information for the world (instructions/affordances for agents). And when the topic is semantic information about the world, he defends a truth requirement: well-formed, meaningful data that’s false is better classified as misinformation/disinformation—he illustrates this with the absurdity of a doctor “answering” a diagnosis by coin-flip. He also stresses that everyday looseness about words is fine, but philosophy/science need sharper distinctions.
Finally, Floridi connects information to the self and to privacy. From an explicitly Immanuel Kant-inspired angle, he treats “what we are” talk as less helpful than asking how we should model ourselves given our epistemic situation and current historical conditions; today, he suggests, the most fruitful model is of humans as informational organisms. That shift dovetails with thinking in terms of networks rather than mechanisms: nodes don’t come first and then get linked—rather, nodes (including selves) emerge from patterns of relations. This, he says, reframes privacy away from a simple ownership/economics picture (“my data is my property”) and toward protecting the informational profile that partly constitutes personal identity and autonomy (e.g., against manipulation, coercion, or misuse). He closes with a direct call to philosophers—especially newcomers—to stop merely extending inherited frameworks and instead write the “new chapter” that the 21st century’s digital transformation demands.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:04 - What does “information” mean?
07:34 - Conceptual engineering
11:45 - Descriptive and prescriptive
12:30 - Philosophy as conceptual design
18:13 - Design vs. invention
21:39 - Shannon information and more
33:27 - Semantic information
37:43 - Information and the self
44:24 - Philosophy going forward
45:59 - Conclusion
