Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

On Apr 13, 2007, at 7:07 AM, David Opderbeck wrote:

>
> Information theory does not define information that way at all.
>
> You have to be more precise about what you mean by "information
> theory." If you mean simply Shannon, you're right. If you mean
> the Philosophy of Information and the Ethics of Information
> Technology, the issue is wide open. Both of these fields build on
> Shannon's insights but have gone far beyond them. There is most
> certainly a lively debate in this fields, which BTW tend to be
> hostile to ID in general, about the ontology of information. See
> generally, http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/

That's right you do need to be precise about what you mean by
"information theory". For example,

Information theory is a discipline in applied mathematics involving
the quantification of data with the goal of enabling as much data as
possible to be reliably stored on a medium or communicated over a
channel.

If you want to debate philosophical realism, be my guest. But you
must NOT invoke any of the mathematics of information theory because
it simply put, does not apply. So, if ID wants to be philosophical I
say great but don't pretend they have any mathematical basis for what
they are doing because they don't. They are in no way "building on
Shannon". It's not like others haven't successfully done that, e.g.
quantum information theory. But, you have to really base it on
Shannon and not hand wave. On the other hand, if they said, "we are
building on Plato" then I would not have any quibble whatsoever. The
problem is they apparently want the credibility of being "scientific"
when they are really "philosophical". That intellectual honesty would
be good because the evidence for intelligent design is in the
philosophical and theological realm anyway.

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Received on Fri Apr 13 10:02:58 2007