The G7 should address new, unprecedented and highly disruptive issues that characterize our complex world, rather than well-understood international problems that fit into existing categories. We argue that the G7 can do this by playing to its strengths – informality and like-mindedness in particular – in addressing emerging and transversal issues such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrencies.

The Editors express their gratitude and appreciation to the indi-viduals listed below who served as referees for Informal Logic for Volumes 31 (2011) and 32 (2012).

This article seeks to reconceptualize the notion of informality in the post-war context in order to investigate the neglected aspect of inequality which is associated with this kind of practice. It locates the problem of widespread informality in the social transformation triggered by a war that has been sustained by the post-war elite accommodation. Inequities created by a routine resort to informal arrangements in accessing assets and resources generate mistrust at the interpersonal, inter-group and institutional levels, sharpen a (...) sense of discrimination and social injustice, and in the end, undermine post-war social reintegration. The argument draws on observations from Bosnia-Herzegovina. (shrink)

This thesis is about the nature of proofs in mathematics as it is practiced, contrasting the informal proofs found in practice with formal proofs in formal systems. In the first chapter I present a new argument against the Formalist-Reductionist view that informal proofs are justified as rigorous and correct by corresponding to formal counterparts. The second chapter builds on this to reject arguments from Gödel's paradox and incompleteness theorems to the claim that mathematics is inherently inconsistent, basing my objections on (...) the complexities of the process of formalisation. Chapter 3 looks into the relationship between proofs and the development of the mathematical concepts that feature in them. I deploy Waismann's notion of open texture in the case of mathematical concepts, and discuss both Lakatos and Kneebone's dialectical philosophies of mathematics. I then argue that we can apply work from conceptual engineering to the relationship between formal and informal mathematics. The fourth chapter argues for the importance of mathematical knowledge-how and emphasises the primary role of the activity of proving in securing mathematical knowledge. In the final chapter I develop an account of mathematical knowledge based on virtue epistemology, which I argue provides a better view of proofs and mathematical rigour. (shrink)

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world.

Arguing that the fruitful approach to a reworking of the social depends upon forging an alliance between sociological theory and feminist theory, the paper analyses strands in sociological thinking which are responsible for renewed interest in the ‘social’. The first perspective, as developed by Touraine, Urry, Bauman and Castells, formulates a new agenda for ‘sociology beyond the social’ and emphasizes the limitations of the concept of ‘the social as society’. The second orientation, represented here by Richard Sennett, tracks the shifting (...) relationships between public and private. The third strand, illustrated by the recent work of Robert Putnam, focuses on the notion of social capital. A comparison between these perspectives introduces my argument that we should search for a new balance not only between local and global, and private and public, but also between formality and informality as only such an approach has the potential to capture the complexity of and the interdependence between conditions responsible for the production of demands for trust and ways of generating trust. The paper argues that how actors strike the optimal balance between formality and informality in interactions depends on the specific characteristics of different realms of interaction. Therefore, in conclusion, I describe three styles of interaction: civility, sociability and intimacy, which represent the essential basis for an enhanced quality of social and personal life. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

This Article examines the ways in which market vendors in Kampala, Uganda, responded to plans to redevelop their markets through the concession of long-term leases to private investors. These plans met with massive resistance from the marketers, with significant outcomes. The Article uncovers how the marketers actively negotiated a “gray space” between legality and illegality and creatively used the law, with a view to asserting themselves as the legitimate rulers of their markets. It shows how the marketers engaged in highly (...) diverse modalities of struggle, stretching across the legal/illegal boundary. They organized in multiple configurations which were flexible, hybrid and mutant in character, rather than being fixed in particular organizational categories. In their struggles, the marketers engaged in shifting alliances and with a disparate range of political allies. Their politics were fluid, untamed and pragmatic, but also contradictory and fractured. This flexibility and pragmatism enabled them to navigate a complex political landscape and to make instrumental use of a generally unfavorable legal environment. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1-2, January–December 2024.

The major global challenges of our time, like climate and environmental crises, rising inequality, the emergence of disruptive technologies, etc., demand interdisciplinary research for effective solutions. A clear understanding of value is essential for guiding socio-cultural and economic transitions to address these issues. Despite numerous attempts to define value, existing approaches remain inconsistent across disciplines and lack a comprehensive framework. This paper introduces a novel perspective on value through the lens of granular interaction thinking theory, proposing an informational entropy-based notion (...) of value. Grounded on quantum mechanics, Shannon’s information theory, and the mindsponge theory, this framework integrates both subjective and objective considerations and is highly compatible with interdisciplinary research. The informational entropy-based notion of value effectively bridges diverse concepts of value, including use and exchange value in economics, personal values in psychology, and cultural, moral, ethical, and aesthetic values in society. By offering a unifying perspective, granular interaction thinking theory provides a valuable framework for translating insights from quantum mechanics into socio-cultural, economic, and psychological contexts, enriching theoretical discourse and enhancing analytical effectiveness. (shrink)

A recent study suggests that value and quantum states seem to be governed by the same underlying mechanisms. In our recent book titled "Better economics for the Earth: A lesson from quantum and information theories," specifically Chapter 5, we have proposed an informational entropy-based notion of value, grounded in Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT), which integrates granular worldview and primary features of quantum mechanics, Shannon’s information theory, and the mindsponge theory. Specifically, the notion suggests that values are created through the (...) interactions of information. But how do information and its interactions lead to values? This research note aims to contribute to the answer to this question. (shrink)

Market crises amplify fear, disrupting rational decision-making of stock investment. This study examines the relationship between investors’ information priorities—such as intuition, company performance, technical analysis, and other factors—and their fear responses (freeze, flight, and hiding) during market crashes. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) to analyze data from 1,526 investors in China and Vietnam, the findings reveal complex dynamics. We found positive associations between investors’ prioritization of social influence and intuition for investment decision-making with being freeze (i.e., not knowing what (...) to do with the owned stock), between prioritization of professionals’ evaluation and intuition with fleeing (i.e. giving up stock investment permanently), and between prioritization of professionals’ evaluation and social influence with hiding (i.e., stopping investing in stock for a while). In contrast, prioritization of companies’ performance metrics (e.g., net profit, debt, etc.) was negatively associated with being freeze, fleeing, and hiding. Meanwhile, prioritization of professionals’ evaluation, technical analysis, and liquidity was negatively associated with being freeze, fleeing, and hiding, respectively. The study highlights the importance of disseminating transparent, accurate information through government and media channels, along with implementing financial education programs, to promote rational investment decisions and reduce fear-driven behaviors. (shrink)

Scholars and policy makers often refer to the “information society”. And yet, it is more accurate to speak of societies, each different, some of which may qualify as information ones at different levels of maturity. Through exploration of the concepts of expectations, education and innovation, this paper explores what it means for an information society to be more or less mature than others, and the impact of this on the ongoing digital revolution.

Periodical reports are important information sources for investors and society to monitor, contribute to, and allocate resources to listed companies contributing to environmental sustainability. This article provides a preliminary investigation into environment-related information disclosure in annual reports of 61 representative companies in Vietnam, a country that has a rapidly developing stock market and is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It was found that although most of the companies’ reports disclosed the goals to pursue sustainability and environmental protection (...) (over 93%), only one-third of them genuinely reported investment in or research on environmental directions. The proportion of companies reporting detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, and waste production is relatively low; even among leading companies in sustainable development, the reporting rates for these indicators remained below 60%. We suggest that a separate mandatory annual report on environmental issues will increase businesses’ and society’s consciousness of environmental impacts. Transparent disclosure of environmental information will also offer an avenue to empower society to monitor, participate, and steer businesses toward sustainable development, thereby fostering an eco-surplus culture throughout the economic system. (shrink)

Maynard Smith is right that one of the most striking features of contemporary biology is the ever-increasing prominence of the concept of information, along with related concepts like representation, programming, and coding. Maynard Smith is also right that this is surely a phenomenon which philosophers of science should examine closely. We should try to understand exactly what sorts of theoretical commitment are made when biological systems are described in these terms, and what connection there is between semantic descriptions in biology (...) and in other domains. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Evolution of IT Understanding IT IT in the Information Society Conclusion References and Further Reading.

Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by which (...) other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law. (shrink)

In an article recently published in this journal, I raised a puzzle about the control of genetic information, suggesting a situation in which it might turn out that we have a duty to remain in ignorance about at least some aspects of our own genome. In this article, I propose a way that would make sense of how the puzzle arises, and offer a way to resolve it and similar puzzles in future: in essence, we would consider genetic information to (...) be something the distribution of which may be more or less just. We would not know in advance what a just distribution would be, though, and in some cases there might still be a justice-based reason to deny a person genetic information about himself. However, others might also have justice-based claims to be able to access that information. This suggests that there is a possible world in which one person is entitled to at least some genetic information about another, while that other person—to whom the information refers—is not, and that this world would be just. (shrink)

One of the most important objections to information-based semantic theories is that they are incapable of explaining Frege cases. The worry is that if a concept’s intentional content is a function of its informational content, as such theories propose, then it would appear that coreferring expressions have to be synonymous, and if this is true, it’s difficult to see how an agent could believe that a is F without believing that b is F whenever a and b are identical. I (...) argue that this appearance is deceptive. If we heed the distinction between the analog and digital contents of a signal, it is actually possible to reconstruct something akin to Frege’s sense/reference distinction in purely information-theoretic terms. This allows informational semanticists to treat coreferring expressions as semantically distinct and to solve Frege cases in the same way that Frege did—namely, by appealing to the different contents of coreferring expressions. (shrink)

Importance Informed consent is essential to ethical, rigorous research and is important to recruitment and retention in cancer trials.Objective To examine cancer clinical trial (CCT) participants’ perceptions of informed consent processes and variations in perceptions by cancer type.Design and Setting and Participants Cross-sectional survey from mixed-methods study at National Cancer Institute–designated Northeast comprehensive cancer center. Open-ended and forced-choice items addressed: (1) enrollment and informed consent experiences and (2) decision-making processes, including risk-benefit assessment. Eligibility: CCT participant with gastro-intestinal or genitourinary, hematologic-lymphatic (...) malignancies, lung cancer, and breast or gynecological cancer (N = 334).Main Outcome Measures Percentages satisfied with consent process and information provided; and assessing participation’s perceptions of risks/benefits. Multivariable logistic or ordinal regression examined differences by cancer type.Results Most patient-participants felt well informed by the consent process (more than 90% overall and by cancer type) and. most (87.4%) reported that the consent form provided all the information they wanted, although nearly half (44.8%) reported that they read the form somewhat carefully or less. More than half (57.9%) said that talking to research staff (i.e., the consent process) had a greater impact on participation decisions than reading the consent form (2.1%). A third (31.1%) were very sure of joining in research studies before the informed consent process (almost half of lung cancer patients did—47.1%). Most patients personally assessed the risks and benefits before consenting. However, trust in physicians played an important role in the decision to enroll in CCT.Conclusions and Relevance Cancer patients rely less on written features of the informed consent process than on information obtained from the research staff and their own physicians. Research should focus on information and communication strategies that support informed consent from referring physicians, researchers, and others to improve patient risk-benefit assessment and decision-making. (shrink)

Urban spaces, often emerging outside formal, recognized boundaries, underscore the pivotal role women play in shaping these environments. Despite the enduring influence of patriarchal and hierarchical structures that render these spaces overtly gendered, it is within these contexts that women’s actions become particularly transformative. Drawing from feminist urban theories of the global south, this paper investigates informal placemaking, feminist urban activism, revolutionary placemaking, online protest movements, and the networks that support women’s solidarity groups. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes case (...) studies, interviews with activists, and social media analysis, this research focuses on Iran, with a specific emphasis on the recent ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. This study not only highlights how women navigate, contest, and reshape urban spaces through feminist urban activism and informal revolutionary placemaking but also anticipates the broader implications of these actions for urban planning and policy. By analyzing and comparing these case studies, we aim to uncover the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between informal/formal, state-led/bottom-up, and revolutionary feminist placemaking practices in Iran. The findings of this paper are expected to contribute valuable insights into the dynamics of feminist urbanism and suggest avenues for future research in enhancing the inclusivity and responsiveness of urban spaces to gendered needs and activism. (shrink)

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the (...) physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler's famous phrase "it from bit." After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view. (shrink)

In recent years, an old challenge to informed consent has been rediscovered: the challenge of ignorance. Several authors argue that due to the presence of irreducible ignorance in certain treatments, giving informed consent to these treatments is not possible. The present paper examines in what ways ignorance is believed to prevent informed consent and which treatments are affected by that. At this, it becomes clear that if the challenge of ignorance truly holds, it poses a major problem to informed consent. (...) The paper argues, however, that from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view, it is not convincing that ignorance prevents informed consent. Still, it seems important that the presence of irreducible ignorance is openly discussed during the informed consent process. (shrink)

The theories of information ethics articulated by Luciano Floridi and his collaborators have clear implications for law. Information law, including the law of privacy and of intellectual property, is especially likely to benefit from a coherent and comprehensive theory of information ethics. This article illustrates how information ethics might apply to legal doctrine, by examining legal questions related to the ownership and control of the personal data representations, including photographs, game avatars, and consumer profiles, that have become ubiquitous with the (...) proliferation of information and communication technologies. Recent controversy over the control of player performance statistics in “fantasy” sports leagues provides a limiting case for the analysis. Such data representations will in many instances constitute the kind of personal data that information ethics asserts constitutes an information entity. Legal doctrine in some instances proves sympathetic to such an assertion, but remains largely inchoate as to which data might constitute a given information entity in a given instance. Neither is information ethics, in its current state of development, entirely helpful in answering this critical question. While information ethics holds some promise to bring coherence to this area of the law, further work articulating a richer theory of information ethics will be necessary before it can do so. (shrink)

Why are computers so smart these days? And why are humans apparently still a bit smarter? Does this have something to do with the difference between data and meaning? Does this in turn mean that at least some abstract entities, such as numbers, exist independently of human thought? Wouldn’t that require an expansion of our scientific world view? And would that at all be compatible with what we know about our world from physics and chemistry, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and the (...) theory of evolution? Finally, what would this tell us about ethical and aesthetic value theories? These and related questions will be discussed in this book. We will find that the difference between data and meaning, i.e. quantitative and qualitative information, does indeed appear to be of central importance for understanding both artificial and natural intelligence. And then the independent existence of abstract entities not only appears to be a particularly promising hypothesis, but also one that is entirely compatible with the sum of our scientific knowledge, especially with regard to value theories. The book thus arrives at the exploration of a scientifically tenable, panpsychistically inspired, objective idealism that can be derived from our most fundamental intuitions as subjects that perceive qualities, but that can also take into account the structuring of the world already at the micro-scale, found in the modern natural sciences. The result is a Platonic, but in a second step also a scientific realism and a naturalism in the sense that it is informed by the natural sciences in terms of an inductive metaphysics. An objective idealism, not in a rationalistic maximum form, but in a pragmatic minimum form; without eternal truths, but dependent on the continued philosophical-scientific and also philosophicalsocial dialog. The proposed model could offer interesting solutions to a number of problems at and near the mind/matter boundary: Proposals are being considered for the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the problem of molecular symmetry, the neuronal code and the binding problem in neuroscience, mental causation, a more holistic understanding of mental processes, and so on and so forth. However, the extent to which the model threatens to promise far too much is also being discussed. In sum, the core question is how we can imagine human thinking beyond physically conceived information processing. An alternative model of human thinking is then put up for discussion, for which not only machine-like cognitive performance, but above all the intentional perception of qualitative information, i.e. of abstract entities, would be central, as well as the free, ultimately creative linking of patterns of quantitative information (signals, data) with such qualities (meanings). (shrink)

The semantic concept of information is one of the most important, and one of the most problematical concepts in biology. I suggest a broad definition of biological information: a source becomes an informational input when an interpreting receiver can react to the form of the source (and variations in this form) in a functional manner. The definition accommodates information stemming from environmental cues as well as from evolved signals, and calls for a comparison between information‐transmission in different types of inheritance (...) systems—the genetic, the epigenetic, the behavioral, and the cultural‐symbolic. This comparative perspective highlights the different ways in which information is acquired and transmitted, and the role that such information plays in heredity and evolution. Focusing on the special properties of the transfer of information, which are very different from those associated with the transfer of materials or energy, also helps to uncover interesting evolutionary effects and suggests better explanations for some aspects of the evolution of communication. (shrink)

This paper suggests an epistemic interpretation of Belnap’s branching space-times theory based on Everett’s relative state formulation of the measurement operation in quantum mechanics. The informational branching models of the universe are evolving structures defined from a partial ordering relation on the set of memory states of the impersonal observer. The totally ordered set of their information contents defines a linear “time” scale to which the decoherent alternative histories of the informational universe can be referred—which is quite necessary for assigning (...) them a probability distribution. The “historical” state of a physical system is represented in an appropriate extended Hilbert space and an algebra of multi-branch operators is developed. An age operator computes the informational depth of historical states and its standard deviation can be used to provide a universal information/energy uncertainty relation. An information operator computes the encoding complexity of historical states, the rate of change of its average value accounting for the process of correlation destruction inherent to the branching dynamics. In the informational branching models of the universe, the asymmetry of phenomena in nature appears as a mere consequence of the subject’s activity of measuring, which defines the flow of time-information. (shrink)

It has been suggested that, in addition to individual level decision-making, informed consent procedures could be used in collective decision-making too. One of the main criticisms directed at this suggestion concerns decision-making power. It is maintained that consent is a veto power concept and that, as such, it is not appropriate for collective decision-making. This paper examines this objection to collective informed consent. It argues that veto power informed consent can have some uses in the collective level and that when (...) it is not appropriate the decision power a concerned party ought to have in connection with an arrangement should be made relative to the interest she has at stake in it. It concludes that the objection examined does not undermine collective informed consent. (shrink)

Informing others about the world is often a helpful act. In this paper, I study agents who conduct experiments to gather information about the world, committing in advance to fully disclose the nature of the experiment together with all experimental findings. While this appears to be a benign activity, I characterize a type of exploitative informing that is possible even within this restricted setup. I show how exploitative informants use public experiments to predictably manipulate interlocutors’ beliefs and actions to their (...) own advantage. I discuss epistemic and practical grounds on which it may be permissible for agents to resist acts of exploitative informing, then conclude by discussing implications for epistemic injustice and duties to gather evidence. (shrink)

In this paper, we showcase our research on the use of ontologies and information extraction for the purpose of modeling damages incurred on car bodies. With the increasing use of technology in the...

This article presents a normative epistemological argument for unions, developed from libertarian premises. According to Friedman, the state should set up rules for the market, whereas managers should focus on profits. On this view, business ethics can be handled by regulations, but Hayek’s theory of the market indicates that this position is problematic, since it relies on the state being able to collect the relevant ethical information. Hayek argued that a market system is more efficient than planned economies, since it (...) handles information more efficiently. However, there is also reason to doubt that markets can provide the needed information. The price mechanism carries information solely about preferences, but ethics also concerns rights, voluntariness and needs. Moreover, Coase showed that inside firms there are no Hayekian price mechanisms. Firms are characterized by hierarchy, which means that both employers and employees may have incentives to not be forthcoming with information relevant information. The moral epistemology of Anderson, with an important role for civil society, is used to identify solutions to these informational problems. As a part of civil society, unions complement the market as a source of ethical information, and inside the firm they balance power and provide an avenue for voice. (shrink)

Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics is a conceptual analysis of one of the most prominent and exciting new areas of physics, providing the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. -/- Beginning from a careful, revisionary, analysis of the concepts of information in the everyday and classical information-theory settings, Christopher G. Timpson argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information. (...) Against what many have supposed, quantum information can be clearly defined (it is not a primitive or vague notion) but it is not part of the material contents of the world. Timpson's account sheds light on the nature of nonlocality and information flow in the presence of entanglement and, in particular, dissolves puzzles surrounding the remarkable process of quantum teleportation. In addition it permits a clear view of what the ontological and methodological lessons provided by quantum information theory are; lessons which bear on the gripping question of what role a concept like information has to play in fundamental physics. Topics discussed include the slogan 'Information is Physical', the prospects for an informational immaterialism (the view that information rather than matter might fundamentally constitute the world), and the status of the Church-Turing hypothesis in light of quantum computation. -/- With a clear grasp of the concept of information in hand, Timpson turns his attention to the pressing question of whether advances in quantum information theory pave the way for the resolution of the traditional conceptual problems of quantum mechanics: the deep problems which loom over measurement, nonlocality and the general nature of quantum ontology. He marks out a number of common pitfalls to be avoided before analysing in detail some concrete proposals, including the radical quantum Bayesian programme of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. One central moral which is drawn is that, for all the interest that the quantum information-inspired approaches hold, no cheap resolutions to the traditional problems of quantum mechanics are to be had. (shrink)