Philosophy and information studies

Abstract

IntroductionSeveral scholarly activities and practices coalesce at the intersection of, on one hand, the interdisciplinary field that is sometimes known as information studies, and on the other, the discipline of philosophy. This chapter aims to distinguish among some of these practices, to identify and review some of the most interesting products of those practices, and to point to ways of assessing the significance of those products-for information studies, for philosophy, and for our general understanding of the world.In the first section following this introduction, an attempt is made to characterize, in a few paragraphs, the subject matter, methods, and goals of philosophy. Suffice it to say, any such attempt runs the risk of gross oversimplification as well as of inappropriate prioritization. That such an attempt be made is nevertheless a necessary adjunct to the short statement of scope that concludes this introduction. In succeeding sections, a distinction is drawn between philosophical questions asked about information studies and philosophical questions asked in information studies (cf. Floridi, 2002c, pp. 136-137) and the goals and subject matter of philosophy of information studies and philosophy of information are respectively described. This distinction is made in the spirit of conceptual clarity, rather than to reflect a division that is rigorously respected in actual scholarly practice: people interested in philosophy (or, indeed, in information studies) are likely to be interested in questions of both of these kinds. A concluding section poses questions about the reciprocal impact of each field.Notwithstanding the publication in recent ARIST volumes of reviews of specific areas of philosophical interest (e.g., M. M. Smith [1997] on information ethics; Cornelius [2002] and Capurro & Hjørland [2003] on conceptions of information; Blair [2003] on information retrieval and the philosophy of language; Day [2005] on poststructuralism and information studies; and Fallis [2006] on social epistemology and information science), the present chapter is the first general review of its kind to appear in these pages. Consequently, its scope is not deliberately limited to a review of the work done in any particular time period; but an emphasis is nevertheless placed on contributions to the literature of the twenty-first century. No attempt has been made to be comprehensive in coverage; the bibliography is rather a selective one that represents the author's personal judgments as to which are some of the more interesting, illuminating, or insightful contributions. The bias is toward CHAPTER 4 161 work that is informed by what is often characterized as the "analytic" tradition in western philosophy-with the caveat that it has become increasingly difficult and (some would say) in any case misguided and unhelpful to distinguish between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy as currently practiced (cf. Moran, 2008b, pp. 13-16). Otherwise, some additional care has been taken to avoid covering too much of the s...

Curating the infosphere

“…Others who have argued for the need for studies of the philosophical foundations of LIS from various perspectives are Compton (2015), Furner (2014), Robinson and Bawden (2014), Furner (2010), Burton (2009), Carlin (2009 and Labaree and Scimeca (2008); the last give several reasons for the importance of philosophy for LIS, including the generation of self-understanding about the purpose and guiding principles of the discipline and profession, and the provision of a basis for ethical decision making in practice.…”

Digital Philosophy

“…Information ethics has emerged as the most visible of subdiscipline of philosophy of information [5]. The social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow users to create their own profiles with some forms of information or contribute comments on their friends' profiles [6].…”

Information Science Is Neither

“…4. See, for example, Furner (2010) for an interpretation of the distinction between philosophy of information and philosophy of information studies. 5.…”

“…8. See, for example, Furner (2010) for a review of work at the intersection of philosophy and information studies. 9.…”