Thinking about Semantic Information

Avant, Vol. XI, No. 2, doi: 10.26913/avant.2020.02.08
published under license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Marcin Miłkowski
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology
Polish Academy of Sciences
mmilkows @ ifispan.waw.pl

Received 25 February 2019; accepted 4 April 2019; published Online First 23 February 2020

Abstract: In his recent book, Daniel Dennett defends a novel account of semantic information in terms of design worth getting (Dennett, 2017). While this is an interesting proposal in itself, my purpose in this commentary is to challenge several of Dennett’s claims. First, he argues that semantic information can be transferred without encoding and storing it. Second, this lack of encoding is what makes semantic information unmeasurable. However, the argument for both these claims, presented by Dennett as an intuition pump, is invalid.

Keywords: semantic information; information theory; encoding; satisfaction conditions; information measures

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Thinking about Semantic Information

“Avant” journal – the task financed under the contract 711/P-DUN/2019 from the funds of the Minister of Science and Higher Education for the dissemination of science.

Czasopismo „Avant” – zadanie finansowane w ramach umowy 711/P-DUN/2019 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę.