I Mean It! (And I Cannot Help It): Cognition and (Semantic) Information

Abstract

In his work, Floridi introduces several notions to describe our relationship with information and technology. According to him, in recent times humanity has experienced a fourth revolution – the Information revolution – starting from the work of Alan Turing. This revolution has deeply affected our understanding of ourselves as agents. Our generation is still a generation of “e-migrants”, but our children will be born in the infosphere and will recognize themselves from their birth as inforgs. In my article I will focus on the notions of infosphere and inforgs, and more generally on the notion of information Floridi makes use of. According to Floridi, in re-ontologizing ourselves as inforgs, we recognize how significantly but not dramatically different we are from smart, engineered artifacts, since we have, as they do, an informational nature. Nevertheless, if one focuses on semantic information, which requires meaning and understanding, then there is still a dramatic difference between ourselves and our artifacts: we are the only agents who spontaneously reason semantically. Finally, I will argue how crucial for philosophy today is to understand how our semantic powers will be affected by us becoming inforgs living in the infosphere.