What is a Philosophical Question?

Luciano Floridi (Oxford University)

Cerberus, the Balliol College PPE Society is very pleased to announce that Prof. Luciano Floridi will be speaking at Balliol College (LR 23) on “What is a Philosophical Question?” at 18.30 on Tuesday 29th October 2013. For further information please contact Marc Pacitti ([email protected]).

Abstract
There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. In this paper, I introduce a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but which require noetic resources to be answered. In the conclusion, I discuss some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as conceptual design.
The talk is based on “What is a Philosophical Question?”, Metaphilosophy, 44.3, 195–221. Preprint: http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/publications/pdf/wiapq.pdf

Profile

Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Among his recognitions, he was the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics, Gauss Professor of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, and is recipient of the APA's Barwise Prize, the IACAP's Covey Award, and the INSEIT's Weizenbaum Award. He is an AISB and BCS Fellow, and Editor in Chief of Philosophy & Technology and of the Synthese Library. He was Chairman of EU Commission's "Onlife Initiative". Floridi's research concerns primarily the Philosophy of Information, Information and Computer Ethics, and the Philosophy of Technolgy. Other research interests include Epistemology, Philosophy of Logic, and the History and Philosophy of Scepticism. He has published over a 150 papers in these areas, in many anthologies and peer-reviewed journals. His works have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Greek, Japanese, Italian, Hungarian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. His most recent books are: The Ethics of Information (OUP, 2013), The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (editor, CUP, 2010), and Information: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2010).

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