Philosophy

of Information HSS 301

Jeffrey White instructor (drwhite@kaist.ac.kr)

Haewon Seo TA team supervisor (shw0928@kaist.ac.kr)

What is information? Why are some things significant and other things insignificant? What
can information theory tell us about online morality? Who owns information? What is the relationship between personal
identity and information? How can someone's identity be "stolen"? Can the information that we create tell us if we are good,
or evil? Is the universe a great cosmic information processor? Do we live in a simulation? Can we measure the efficiency of an
information source? All of these questions arise in the context of the Philosophy of Information, and in this class we will
answer these questions and others even more interesting , including contemporary current events.

The class will build on last Summer's successful Information Ethics class with content redeveloped for the longer Spring
semester. We will look from the smallest to the biggest, the here-est to the there-est. Here is a tentative schedule:

The only reading indicated in the syllabus is a classic from Kenneth Boulding. The class is designed so that you WILL
be able to understand this paper when we reach week 9.
If you cannot understand it now, no trouble. Don't know what a complex system is no problem. You will.
You can see this here and download from the library easily:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0377221787900877

I will create and distribute all class materials. We will study professional journal articles and
conference proceedings, as well as some book chapters that are now held in course reserves in the Library. You
need not buy a book.

Grading involves group and independent research activities, quizzes (some surprise quizzes) and some reading assignments. We will
review everything from ancient to cutting-edge research in philosophy and the cognitive sciences, and discover some amazing
relationships between what we think we understand, now, and what they thought they understood more than two thousand years ago.
The TA team will decide how to weight the various assignments. Usually, this is something like 40% exams/projects and 60%
in-class and independent work. You might expect one of each, in-class and take-home work, most weeks.
Typically, the class chooses to have a take-home final exam. Sometimes, we have in-class mid-term exams, sometimes they
are take-home. This depends on the class.

We are open to input from class members about scheduling and assignments and so on. This is very different from other
classes maybe, but this is how we do it and

we think that it is important to do things this way.

Most everything is open-book, but we do cover a great many different ideas from a great many different sources, so "open-

book" does not mean "I don't have to read"!!!

Regardless, we work very hard to try to provide a most stimulating, challenging, encouraging
environment for you to take control of your own education, so that with our guidance you can develop
a robust and sophisticated fundamental understanding of some of the most fascinating questions and answers

thinks for a moment about what it means to be informed.

If this describes you, then you should love this class. See you there!
confronting anyone who