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What is Information?

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Abstract

The main aim of this work is to contribute tothe elucidation of the concept of informationby comparing three different views about thismatter: the view of Fred Dretske's semantictheory of information, the perspective adoptedby Peter Kosso in his interaction-informationaccount of scientific observation, and thesyntactic approach of Thomas Cover and JoyThomas. We will see that these views involvevery different concepts of information, eachone useful in its own field of application. This comparison will allow us to argue in favorof a terminological `cleansing': it is necessaryto make a terminological distinction among thedifferent concepts of information, in order toavoid conceptual confusions when the word`information' is used to elucidate relatedconcepts as knowledge, observation orentropy.

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Lombardi, O. What is Information?. Foundations of Science 9, 105–134 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:FODA.0000025034.53313.7c

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:FODA.0000025034.53313.7c

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