Information and its philosophy

Library Trends, Wntr, 2004 by Ian Cornelius

THREE PROBLEMS IN RELATION TO Luciano Floridi's work on the Philosophy of Information (PI) and the relationship of PI to Library and Information Science (LIS) are considered: the claim that LIS is a materials-based discipline, Floridi's claim about Information as a message transfer system, and his downgrading of Social Epistemology to be a subset of PI. The recent history of LIS and the practice of professional library work are examined for evidence of the basis for making claims about LIS. A view of information based on individual interpretations is preferred to Floridi's account, which is found to be too innocent of LIS practice to be accepted without revision, as is his view of LIS as an applied PI.

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Luciano Floridi has provided us with a sweeping review of work on Information. He has, in particular, advanced claims for a Philosophy of Information (PI), and has identified Library and Information Science (LIS) as applied PI. He has labeled us thus contra the claims of Shera and others that LIS is based on a social epistemology. If we accept Floridi's claims, we will see ourselves as part of a larger PI movement whose problems and program have been identified by Floridi in his forthcoming Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information (OPPI) (Floridi, in press-b). Many of these problems and several parts of the program will be familiar to LIS readers, especially those concerned with work in information retrieval. Much of Floridi's work is commendable on several counts. In particular, he has proposed a philosophical grounding to support much of what we in the LIS community do. His work reveals a deep structure of support in straight philosophy and in logic for many of our research concerns. It would be convenient to be able to use his work as the philosophical foundation some have sought for so long.

However, there are three main concerns that make it more difficult to take Floridi's claims without some further work. First, is the kind of idea he has about information, as a root concept for his philosophy of information (which he labels PI). Second, is the view he takes, entirely consistent with his view about information, of LIS that allows him to call it an applied PI, which effectively settles LIS as a materials-based discipline. Third, there is room for debate about the way Floridi downgrades Social Epistemology to be a sibling of LIS rather than a grounding explanation for it. Floridi allows that:

   a good test for a "foundational" candidate is to check whether it is
   able to learn from its applied counterpart ... LIS does not need to
   acquire some ready-made philosophical foundation, it can play a key
   role in shaping one. (Floridi, 2002, p. 38).

We shall see that Floridi's account of LIS needs some amendment, and perhaps if an enhanced view of LIS is accepted, then we can secure a more advanced PI as a more fruitful base for LIS. In this article I shall be taking up some of Floridi's claims about defining information and the scope of LIS. There is also an alternative view of how the politics of LIS operate to produce the kind of field and profession that it is. First, we must consider how LIS constructs itself.

LIS AND PROFESSIONALISM

I claim first that the broad field of LIS separated itself from philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century. By "broad field" I mean both the academic discipline of LIS and the practice of librarianship--the business of running libraries and providing information. Broad LIS has been a profession equipped with professional tools that quintessentially solve the practical task in hand rather than construct a philosophically acceptable arrangement of knowledge. Since Dewey, and some others, we have the tools to arrange books on shelves and describe what they are and where they originated, and we have concentrated on being good at that. A concern for the true relationship of any item to knowledge, or of the exact information content of any item, has remained the domain of specialists. The claims of LIS to be normative are muted and specific to the professional apparatus of LIS--the classification and description of materials, the identification of information-seeking behaviors, and the control (that is, universal awareness of the existence) of information materials. LIS is not normative about knowledge or its epistemology--we shall return to this later--but it operates within a cultural frame that gives purpose to its professional devices. LIS, I maintain, has a dual focus: first toward the rest of the academy, producing the work on information retrieval and information-seeking behavior, the history of books, and the dissemination of ideas; and second toward the practice of running libraries and other information agencies, where LIS works to produce the working tools and devices of the practice. The practice of librarianship is closely related to but not co-extensive with LIS.

Second, in the twentieth century, LIS has reconstructed itself away from an overwhelming concern with information materials (documents) and their organizational systems to an equal concern with the behavior of individual people who use libraries, and documents. This concern with individual information use reflects an ambiguity about library service, which is a public community facility provided for individual use. Everyone entering a library has his or her own program in mind: there is no common social goal, but the cumulative practice of these individuals is a social act. Librarianship is a social practice, and any social epistemology must account for this individual behavior within the social practice, and any philosophy of LIS must account for it too. The close relationship between the way people construct their own individual identity and individual information seeking must be reflected in the concept of information that LIS embraces.