Browsing by Author "Mäkinen, Joonas"

This thesis is an attempt to explore the conceptual relations between the notions of knowledge and information by trying to present and argue for an analysis of knowledge in terms of information. Much of the work is done in the footsteps of Luciano Floridi, although in the end we end up criticizing his epistemology. I begin by introducing and arguing for Floridi’s strongly semantic conception of information, according to which information is well-formed, meaningful and truthful data. We also touch on the reasons for it being the prime candidate for being a starting point for information-based epistemology, e.g. the way it already encapsulates truth. Then, we continue our discussion about Floridi’s epistemology. The substantial features of its conditions, namely the notion of being informed, epistemic relevance and the network theory of account are discussed one by one in moderate length. After putting his analysis together, we took a critical look at it, the conclusion being that Floridi’s jump straight from the informational terms of his conditions to knowing seems unwarranted, given our intuitive grasp on what knowing means. There seems to be an unwarranted conflation of the notions of knowledge and knowing, i.e. that a definition of knowing also contains the full definition of knowledge. However, this conflation is not limited only to Floridi’s analysis but can be found also in much of contemporary epistemology. It is hypothesized that this is partly due to them favouring the third person point of view in their analyses, but if we combine the third person view on knowledge and knowing with e.g. the first person one, the distinction becomes clearer. Another possible reason for the confusion might be a certain equivocation of two senses of knowledge. First, knowledge is often thought of as a kind of extension of knowing: all that is known constitutes knowledge. Here, knowledge is defined through the intension of knowing. The other sense refers to knowledge on its own terms and equates it more closely with its content. While the former sense is more natural in mainstream epistemology and the latter when approached from the point of view of information, the equivocation can still be found in mainstream epistemology. The suggested solution is to make the distinctions between knowledge, having knowledge and knowing clearer. Now, Floridi’s analysis can be taken as a decent attempt at capturing the meaning of ‘S holds the knowledge that i’, but to define actual knowing something additional is required. Some very tentative thoughts are given with regards to what that might be, boiling mostly down to it having to be something providing conscious access, or transparency, to the knowledge we hold. This distinction is the result of approaching knowledge and knowing in informational terms. What ultimately validates making the distinction, and thus also indirectly the framework from it grew out of, is the insight it provides to existing epistemological problems and discussions.