Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

*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.*

I agree with you.

*But you must NOT invoke any of the mathematics of information theory
because it simply put, does not apply.*

I do not, however, entirely agree with this. The mathematics of information
theory have potential philosophical consequences. Read the blurb from
Floridi and check out his resources on Philosophy and Ethics of
Information. It's a burgeoning field that has nothing directly to do with
ID, and it most certainly draws on Shannon, Weiner, etc.

On 4/13/07, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:
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> On Apr 13, 2007, at 7:07 AM, David Opderbeck wrote:
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> Information theory does not define information that way at all.
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> 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/
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> That's right you do need to be precise about what you mean by "information
theory". For example,
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> 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.
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> 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 10:16:55 2007