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The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS).

Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions.

Floridi’s PI, including this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects.

Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS.

The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the proposal that Luciano Floridi’s philosphy of information (PI) may be an appropriate conceptual foundation for the discipline of library and information science (LIS).

A selective literature review and analysis are carried out.

It is concluded that LIS is in need of a new conceptual framework, and that PI is appropriate for this purpose.

Floridi proposed a close relationship between PI and LIS more than a decade ago. Although various authors have addressed the aspects of this relationship since then, this is the first proposal from an LIS perspective that PI be adopted as a basis for LIS.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the philosophy of information, specifically the work of Luciano Floridi, to argue that digital civics must fully comprehend the implications of the digital environment, and consequently an informational ontology, to deliver to students an education that will prepare them for full participation as citizens in the infosphere.

Introducing this philosophy for use in education, the research discusses the ethical implications of ontological change in the digital age; informational organisms and their interconnectivity; and concepts of agency, both organic and artificial in digitally mediated civic interactions and civic education.

With the provision of a structural framework rooted in the philosophy of information, robust mechanisms for civics initiatives can be enacted.

The paper allows policy makers and practitioners to formulate healthy responses to digital age challenges in civics and civics education.

1. Overture: the problem Nobody could seriously doubt that the unidirectional mass media can be very powerful instruments of disinformation. History has already witnessed too many horrible events for us to allow ourselves the luxury of such futile speculation any longer. What we might do instead is to turn our attention to the brave new world of the Internet, and ask whether the problem of disinformation might soon afflict the new interactive media as well. Suppose that in years to come there will still be a significant dissimilarity between passive (one way, or ‘W’) and interactive (two way, or ‘WW’) media. The management of information online is going to affect many aspects of our life with increasing regularity, and the following three questions will become crucial:

This paper is the second half of an invited paper given by the author to the international conference, promoted by the UNESCO Philosophy Forum, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the organisation (Paris, 14–17 March 1995). The first half, which deals with a slightly different theme, is published as an Article earlier in this issue.

This paper is the first half of an invited paper given by the author to the international conference, promoted by the UNESCO Philosophy Forum, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the organisation (Paris, 14–17 March 1995). The second half, which deals with a slightly different theme, is published as a Brief Communication later in this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze how the development and utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for social responsibility are defined in the national AI strategies of the USA, Russia and China.

The notion of responsibility concerning AI is currently not legally defined by any country in the world. The authors of this research are going to use the methodology, based on Luciano Floridi’s Unified framework of five principles for AI in society, to determine how social responsibility is implemented in the AI strategies of the USA, Russia and China.

All three strategies for the development of AI in the USA, Russia and China, as evaluated in the paper, contain some or other components aimed at achieving public responsibility and responsible use of AI. The Unified framework of five principles for AI in society, developed by L. Floridi, can be used as a viable assessment tool to determine at least in general terms how social responsibility is implied and implemented in national strategic documents in the field of AI. However, authors of the paper call for further development in the field of mutually recognizable ethical models for socially beneficial AI.

This study allows us to better understand the linkages, overlaps and differences between modern philosophy of information, AI-ethics, social responsibility and government regulation. The analysis provided in this paper can serve as a basic blueprint for future attempts to define how social responsibility is understood and implied by government decision-makers.

The analysis provided in the paper, however general and empirical it may be, is a first-time example of how the Unified framework of five principles for AI in society can be applied as an assessment tool to determine social responsibility in AI-related official documents.

In an intriguing and provocative paper in Social Epistemology, Luciano Floridi (2002) seeks to define library and information science as applied philosophy of information. In his examination of what the philosophy of information is, Floridi notes: The subsequent growth of the information society and the appearance of the infosphere (the semantic environment in which millions of people spend their time nowadays) have further influenced the development of contemporary philosophy. This has moved from focusing on the domain represented by the memory and languages or organized knowledge – the instruments whereby the infosphere is managed – to focusing on the nature of its very fabric and essence, information itself. Information has thus arisen as a concept as fundamental and philosophically important as ‘being’, ‘knowledge’, ‘life’, ‘intelligence’, ‘meaning’ or ‘moral good and evil’ – all pivotal concepts with which it is interdependent – and so equally worthy of autonomous investigation (p. 42).Floridi goes on to state that “The philosophy of information revitalizes old philosophical questions and poses, or rather identifies, new crucial problems. It also helps us to revise our world-view” (p. 42).

The self should not be understood atomistically; indeed, the very concept of the self is only necessary in social contexts. There is a link, then, between self and world. In my view, this can be conceptualized through Luciano Floridi's concept of the ontic trust. This concept was named after the legal concept of the trust, in which one party (the trustor) settles some property on a second party (the trustee) for the benefit of a third party (the beneficiary). The ontic trust is entered unwillingly and inescapably, but it is not coercive; rather, it constitutes a caring bond, an invitation to respect and appreciate others (including other people and all organisms and things). The concept has seen some discussion, but no one has yet commented on the role of the self in the ontic trust. Selves are clusters of experience – we are all little corners of the universe. As participants in the ontic trust, we can see that we must take care of ourselves because that is tantamount to taking care of the universe. Thus, self-care is an important ethical directive in the information society. This is not a solipsistic or egotistical claim; rather, it is the recognition that without a good self, good work for others is not possible. It is the recognition that all beings are connected, but that certain actions must be directed by agents toward themselves for the subsequent betterment of all.

With the outset of automatic detection of information, misinformation, and disinformation, the purpose of this paper is to examine and discuss various conceptions of information, misinformation, and disinformation within philosophy of information.

The examinations are conducted within a Gricean framework in order to account for the communicative aspects of information, misinformation, and disinformation as well as the detection enterprise.

While there often is an exclusive focus on truth and falsity as that which distinguish information from misinformation and disinformation, this paper finds that the distinguishing features are actually intention/intentionality and non-misleadingness/misleadingness – with non-misleadingness/misleadingness as the primary feature. Further, the paper rehearses the argument in favor of a true variety of disinformation and extends this argument to include true misinformation.

The findings are novel and pose a challenge to the possibility of automatic detection of misinformation and disinformation. Especially the notions of true disinformation and true misinformation, as varieties of disinformation and misinformation, which force the true/false dichotomy for information vs mis-/disinformation to collapse.