Summary |
Predominantly (but not exclusively), the contemporary philosophical
analysis of information and misinformation has focused on animal signalling and
specifically on contexts analogous to Lewisian signalling games. ‘Sender’ and
‘receiver’ are players in Lewisian signalling games. In their simplest version,
the two players face a set of situations (‘states’), only the sender can
observe these states, and each of them gets a certain payoff depending on the
response given to these states. Considering his potential payoff, the sender
chooses a signal, observed by the receiver, who then chooses a response (based
on his potential payoff). Typically, it is considered that the sender
determines the content of the signal in this situation.
However, in these settings, what counts as misinformation is
notoriously difficult to define. The reason is that whether a signal counts as
information or misinformation depends on many factors, such as which measure of
accuracy one decides to use, or which partition one uses to determine the
content of the signals (in determining the content, we ‘partition’ i.e., divide
the possible states of the world), or whether one understands signals as having
propositional content or changing probabilities of states, and so on. It is no
wonder, then, that this sets grounds for a very fruitful and interesting philosophical
debate. |