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Patrick Allo

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Post-Doc

University of Oxford, Oxford Internet Institute, Post-Doc

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Address: Brussels, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium

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Luciano Floridi

Yale University

Quirine Eijkman

University Of Applied Sciences Hoge School Utrecht

Christopher Burr

The Alan Turing Institute

University of Oxford

Tilburg University

Mireille Hildebrandt

Radboud University Nijmegen

Christoph Schulz

University of Hertfordshire

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Papers by Patrick Allo

The Epistemology of Nondistributive Profiles

Philosophy and Technology, 2019

The distinction between distributive and nondistributive profiles figures prominently in current ... more The distinction between distributive and nondistributive profiles figures prominently in current evaluations of the ethical and epistemological risks that are associated with automated profiling-practices. The diagnosis that nondistributive profiles may coincidentally situate an individual in the wrong category is often perceived as the central shortcoming of such profiles. According to this diagnosis, most risks can be retraced to the use of non-universal generalisations and various other statistical associations. This article develops a top-down analysis of nondistributive profiles in which this fallibility of nondistributive profiles is no longer central. Instead, it focuses on how profiling creates various asymmetries between an individual data-subject and a profiler. The emergence of informational, interest, and perspectival asymmetries between data-subject and profiler explains how nondistributive profiles weaken the epistemic position of a profiled individual. This alternative analysis provides a more balanced assessment of the epistemic risks associated with nondistributive profiles.

Mathematical values and the epistemology of data practices

Being Profiled. Cogitas Ergo Sum, 2018

Annotated Natural Deduction for Adaptive Reasoning

by Patrick Allo and Giuseppe Primiero

We present a multi-conclusion natural deduction calculus characterizing the dynamic reasoning typ... more We present a multi-conclusion natural deduction calculus characterizing the dynamic reasoning typical of Adaptive Logics. The resulting system AdaptiveND is sound and complete with respect to the proposi-tional fragment of adaptive logics based on CLuN. This appears to be the first tree-format presentation of the standard linear dynamic proof system typical of Adaptive Logics. It offers the advantage of full transparency in the formulation of locally derivable rules, a connection between restricted inference rules and their adaptive counterpart, and the formulation of abnormalities as a subtype of well-formed formulas. These features of the proposed calculus allow us to clarify the relation between defeasible and multiple-conclusion approaches to classical recapture.

The meaning of 'other' in classifications. Formal methods meet artistic research

A few months ago I was invited to enter in a dialogue with Brussels-based artist Rossella Biscott... more A few months ago I was invited to enter in a dialogue with Brussels-based artist Rossella Biscotti for the occasion of the exhibition of her installation " Other " from 2015 at the Contour Biennale in Mechelen (Belgium). In this work, she uses the Jacquard weaving technique to visualise data from Belgian census data, and engages in an exploration of data-subjects that are categorised as 'other' within this data-set. The resulting installation consists of 4 large carpets that display data of various minority-groups and rest-categories of the Brussels population. My role in this collaboration was to contribute formal or mathematical insights on how rest-categories like other or none of the above could be understood. In this short piece I reflect on this collaboration. I first discuss how artistic research like Biscotti's can contribute to the critical evaluation of contemporary data-practices, and then elaborate on how logico-mathematical insights can become part of such inquiries.

A Constructionist Philosophy of Logic

This paper develops and refines the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts that... more

Hard and Soft Logical Information

In this paper I use the distinction between hard and soft information from the dynamic epistemic ... more In this paper I use the distinction between hard and soft information from the dynamic epistemic logic tradition to extend prior work on informational conceptions of logic to include non-monotonic consequence-relations. In particular , I defend the claim that at least some non-monotonic logics can be understood on the basis of soft or "belief-like" logical information, and thereby question the orthodox view that all logical information is hard, "knowledge-like" , information.

The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate

by Brent Mittelstadt, Patrick Allo, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Sandra Wachter, and Luciano Floridi

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increas... more In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.

The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate

by Brent Mittelstadt, Patrick Allo, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Sandra Wachter, and Luciano Floridi

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increas... more In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.

The Logic of Information

The combination of logic and information is popular as we as controversial. It is, in fact, not e... more The combination of logic and information is popular as we as controversial. It is, in fact, not even clear what their juxtaposition, for instance in the title of this chapter, should mean, and indeed different authors have a given a different interpretation to what a or the logic of information might be. Throughout this chapter, I will embrace the plurality of ways in which logic and information can be related and try to individuate a number of fruitful lines of research. In doing so, I want to explain why we should care about the combination, where the controversy comes from, and how certain common themes emerge in different settings.

On when a disjunction is informative

In this paper we investigate the topic of ambiguous connectives, as it was recently explored by P... more In this paper we investigate the topic of ambiguous connectives, as it was recently explored by Paoli, from an informational perspective. That is, starting from the framework of informational pluralism (Allo, 2007a, 2007b), we ask what it means for a message of the form ‘A or B’, to be informative.
Using these disjunctive messages as an example, we answer three traditional objections to substructural logic and logical pluralism, and eventually show that the linear or relevant logician’s road to unambiguous connectives is consistent with informational pluralism.

Noisy vs Merely Equivocal Logics

Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view t... more Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the am- biguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to fill this gap. First, I argue that substructural logicians should care about these connectives; next, I describe a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and review the logical properties of ambiguous connectives; finally, I highlight how ambiguous connectives might explain our intuitions about logical rivalry.

A modal perspective on proof dynamics

Proc. European Conference on Philosophy and …

Core aim of this paper is to focus on the dynamics of real proofs by introducing the block-semant... more Core aim of this paper is to focus on the dynamics of real proofs by introducing the block-semantics from Batens (1995) as a dynamical counterpart for classical semantics. This approach reveals an informational dynamics unknown to most dynamical logical systems. Viz. it adds an internal dynamics -due to deduction -to the better known external dynamics which is due to new information.

Logisch Pluralisme en Informatie

Ondanks recente aandacht voor het veelzijdige karakter van het concept semantische informatie (Fl... more Ondanks recente aandacht voor het veelzijdige karakter van het concept semantische informatie (Floridi, 2003), blijven de meeste pogingen om dit begrip te formaliseren (Carnap & Bar-Hillel, 1952; Hintikka, 1970) binnen het kader van het logisch monisme steken (de idee dat er slechts één ware logica is). Het doel van deze bijdrage is om een aanpak te formuleren die uitgaat van het zogenaamde logisch pluralisme (Beall & Restall, 2000). Het voorgestelde alternatief is bedoeld als een minder dogmatische aanpak van logica en informatie en sluit bovendien beter aan bij het dagelijks gebruik van de term informatie. In een eerste deel van de bijdrage worden de basisinzichten van het logisch pluralisme uiteengezet. Een volgend deel bespreekt enkele verschillende invullingen van de het begrip ‘semantische informatie’ en gaat meer in detail in op het impliciete logisch monisme in de klassieke theorie van Carnap en Bar-Hillel (1952). Daarna worden een aantal op communicatie gebaseerde situaties...

LOCAL INFORMATION AND ADAPTIVE CONSEQUENCE

In this paper we provide a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial inform... more In this paper we provide a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial information-state. Starting from the notion of locality in a relational structure, we dene so-called adaptive gen- erated submodels. The latter are then shown to yield an adaptive logic wherein the derivability of 2 is naturally interpreted as a core property of being in a state in which one holds the information that .

Review of "Three Views of Logic" by Loveland, Hodel and Sterrett

The Many Faces of Closure and Introspection

In this paper I present a more refined analysis of the principles of deductive closure and positi... more In this paper I present a more refined analysis of the principles of deductive closure and positive introspection. This analysis uses the expressive resources of logics for different types of group knowledge, and discriminates between aspects of closure and computation that are often conflated. The resulting model also yields a more fine-grained distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, and places Hintikka’s original argument for positive introspection in a new perspective.

Synonymy And Intra-Theoretical Pluralism

The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical (logical) pluralism that was r... more The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical (logical) pluralism that was recently proposed by Hjortland [2013]. In a first move, I use synonymy-relations to formulate an intuitively compelling objection against Hjortland’s claim that, if one uses a single calculus to characterise the consequence relations of the paraconsistent logic LP and the paracomplete logic K3, one immediately obtains multiple consequence relations for a single language and hence a reply to the Quinean charge of meaning variance. In a second move, I explain how a natural generalisation of the notion of synonymy (adapted to the 3-sided sequent-calculus used by Hjortland) can be used to counter this objection, but I also show how the solution can be turned into an equally devastating ‘one logic after all’ type of objection. Finally, I propose the general diagnosis that these problems could only arise in the presence of conceptual distinctions that are too coarse to accommodate coherent pluralist theses. The latter leads to the general methodological recommendation that the conceptual resources used to think and talk about logic should be kept in line with the formal resources that are used to define and describe a logical theory.

Review of "Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness" by Kees van Deemter

Review of "Models of a Man. Essays in Memory of Herbert Simon" by M. Augier and J. G. March

Review of " Mainstream and Formal Epistemology" by Vincent Hendricks

As Vincent Hendricks remarks early on in this book, the formal and mainstream traditions of epist... more As Vincent Hendricks remarks early on in this book, the formal and mainstream traditions of epistemic theorising have mostly evolved independently of each other. This initial impression is confirmed by a comparison of the main problems and methods practitioners in each tradition are concerned with. Mainstream epistemology engages in a dialectical game of proposing and challenging definitions of knowledge. Formal epistemologists proceed differently, as they design a wide variety of axiomatic and model-theoretic methods whose consequences they investigate independently of the need of giving counterexample-free definitions of knowledge. Or at least, this is a common way to explain where both disciplines stand in the larger landscape of epistemic theorising, and why interactions between them remain scarce.

The Epistemology of Nondistributive Profiles

Philosophy and Technology, 2019

The distinction between distributive and nondistributive profiles figures prominently in current ... more The distinction between distributive and nondistributive profiles figures prominently in current evaluations of the ethical and epistemological risks that are associated with automated profiling-practices. The diagnosis that nondistributive profiles may coincidentally situate an individual in the wrong category is often perceived as the central shortcoming of such profiles. According to this diagnosis, most risks can be retraced to the use of non-universal generalisations and various other statistical associations. This article develops a top-down analysis of nondistributive profiles in which this fallibility of nondistributive profiles is no longer central. Instead, it focuses on how profiling creates various asymmetries between an individual data-subject and a profiler. The emergence of informational, interest, and perspectival asymmetries between data-subject and profiler explains how nondistributive profiles weaken the epistemic position of a profiled individual. This alternative analysis provides a more balanced assessment of the epistemic risks associated with nondistributive profiles.

Mathematical values and the epistemology of data practices

Being Profiled. Cogitas Ergo Sum, 2018

Annotated Natural Deduction for Adaptive Reasoning

by Patrick Allo and Giuseppe Primiero

We present a multi-conclusion natural deduction calculus characterizing the dynamic reasoning typ... more We present a multi-conclusion natural deduction calculus characterizing the dynamic reasoning typical of Adaptive Logics. The resulting system AdaptiveND is sound and complete with respect to the proposi-tional fragment of adaptive logics based on CLuN. This appears to be the first tree-format presentation of the standard linear dynamic proof system typical of Adaptive Logics. It offers the advantage of full transparency in the formulation of locally derivable rules, a connection between restricted inference rules and their adaptive counterpart, and the formulation of abnormalities as a subtype of well-formed formulas. These features of the proposed calculus allow us to clarify the relation between defeasible and multiple-conclusion approaches to classical recapture.

The meaning of 'other' in classifications. Formal methods meet artistic research

A few months ago I was invited to enter in a dialogue with Brussels-based artist Rossella Biscott... more A few months ago I was invited to enter in a dialogue with Brussels-based artist Rossella Biscotti for the occasion of the exhibition of her installation " Other " from 2015 at the Contour Biennale in Mechelen (Belgium). In this work, she uses the Jacquard weaving technique to visualise data from Belgian census data, and engages in an exploration of data-subjects that are categorised as 'other' within this data-set. The resulting installation consists of 4 large carpets that display data of various minority-groups and rest-categories of the Brussels population. My role in this collaboration was to contribute formal or mathematical insights on how rest-categories like other or none of the above could be understood. In this short piece I reflect on this collaboration. I first discuss how artistic research like Biscotti's can contribute to the critical evaluation of contemporary data-practices, and then elaborate on how logico-mathematical insights can become part of such inquiries.

A Constructionist Philosophy of Logic

This paper develops and refines the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts that... more

Hard and Soft Logical Information

In this paper I use the distinction between hard and soft information from the dynamic epistemic ... more In this paper I use the distinction between hard and soft information from the dynamic epistemic logic tradition to extend prior work on informational conceptions of logic to include non-monotonic consequence-relations. In particular , I defend the claim that at least some non-monotonic logics can be understood on the basis of soft or "belief-like" logical information, and thereby question the orthodox view that all logical information is hard, "knowledge-like" , information.

The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate

by Brent Mittelstadt, Patrick Allo, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Sandra Wachter, and Luciano Floridi

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increas... more In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.

The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate

by Brent Mittelstadt, Patrick Allo, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Sandra Wachter, and Luciano Floridi

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increas... more In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.

The Logic of Information

The combination of logic and information is popular as we as controversial. It is, in fact, not e... more The combination of logic and information is popular as we as controversial. It is, in fact, not even clear what their juxtaposition, for instance in the title of this chapter, should mean, and indeed different authors have a given a different interpretation to what a or the logic of information might be. Throughout this chapter, I will embrace the plurality of ways in which logic and information can be related and try to individuate a number of fruitful lines of research. In doing so, I want to explain why we should care about the combination, where the controversy comes from, and how certain common themes emerge in different settings.

On when a disjunction is informative

In this paper we investigate the topic of ambiguous connectives, as it was recently explored by P... more In this paper we investigate the topic of ambiguous connectives, as it was recently explored by Paoli, from an informational perspective. That is, starting from the framework of informational pluralism (Allo, 2007a, 2007b), we ask what it means for a message of the form ‘A or B’, to be informative.
Using these disjunctive messages as an example, we answer three traditional objections to substructural logic and logical pluralism, and eventually show that the linear or relevant logician’s road to unambiguous connectives is consistent with informational pluralism.

Noisy vs Merely Equivocal Logics

Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view t... more Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the am- biguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to fill this gap. First, I argue that substructural logicians should care about these connectives; next, I describe a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and review the logical properties of ambiguous connectives; finally, I highlight how ambiguous connectives might explain our intuitions about logical rivalry.

A modal perspective on proof dynamics

Proc. European Conference on Philosophy and …

Core aim of this paper is to focus on the dynamics of real proofs by introducing the block-semant... more Core aim of this paper is to focus on the dynamics of real proofs by introducing the block-semantics from Batens (1995) as a dynamical counterpart for classical semantics. This approach reveals an informational dynamics unknown to most dynamical logical systems. Viz. it adds an internal dynamics -due to deduction -to the better known external dynamics which is due to new information.

Logisch Pluralisme en Informatie

Ondanks recente aandacht voor het veelzijdige karakter van het concept semantische informatie (Fl... more Ondanks recente aandacht voor het veelzijdige karakter van het concept semantische informatie (Floridi, 2003), blijven de meeste pogingen om dit begrip te formaliseren (Carnap & Bar-Hillel, 1952; Hintikka, 1970) binnen het kader van het logisch monisme steken (de idee dat er slechts één ware logica is). Het doel van deze bijdrage is om een aanpak te formuleren die uitgaat van het zogenaamde logisch pluralisme (Beall & Restall, 2000). Het voorgestelde alternatief is bedoeld als een minder dogmatische aanpak van logica en informatie en sluit bovendien beter aan bij het dagelijks gebruik van de term informatie. In een eerste deel van de bijdrage worden de basisinzichten van het logisch pluralisme uiteengezet. Een volgend deel bespreekt enkele verschillende invullingen van de het begrip ‘semantische informatie’ en gaat meer in detail in op het impliciete logisch monisme in de klassieke theorie van Carnap en Bar-Hillel (1952). Daarna worden een aantal op communicatie gebaseerde situaties...

LOCAL INFORMATION AND ADAPTIVE CONSEQUENCE

In this paper we provide a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial inform... more In this paper we provide a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial information-state. Starting from the notion of locality in a relational structure, we dene so-called adaptive gen- erated submodels. The latter are then shown to yield an adaptive logic wherein the derivability of 2 is naturally interpreted as a core property of being in a state in which one holds the information that .

Review of "Three Views of Logic" by Loveland, Hodel and Sterrett

The Many Faces of Closure and Introspection

In this paper I present a more refined analysis of the principles of deductive closure and positi... more In this paper I present a more refined analysis of the principles of deductive closure and positive introspection. This analysis uses the expressive resources of logics for different types of group knowledge, and discriminates between aspects of closure and computation that are often conflated. The resulting model also yields a more fine-grained distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, and places Hintikka’s original argument for positive introspection in a new perspective.

Synonymy And Intra-Theoretical Pluralism

The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical (logical) pluralism that was r... more The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical (logical) pluralism that was recently proposed by Hjortland [2013]. In a first move, I use synonymy-relations to formulate an intuitively compelling objection against Hjortland’s claim that, if one uses a single calculus to characterise the consequence relations of the paraconsistent logic LP and the paracomplete logic K3, one immediately obtains multiple consequence relations for a single language and hence a reply to the Quinean charge of meaning variance. In a second move, I explain how a natural generalisation of the notion of synonymy (adapted to the 3-sided sequent-calculus used by Hjortland) can be used to counter this objection, but I also show how the solution can be turned into an equally devastating ‘one logic after all’ type of objection. Finally, I propose the general diagnosis that these problems could only arise in the presence of conceptual distinctions that are too coarse to accommodate coherent pluralist theses. The latter leads to the general methodological recommendation that the conceptual resources used to think and talk about logic should be kept in line with the formal resources that are used to define and describe a logical theory.

Review of "Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness" by Kees van Deemter

Review of "Models of a Man. Essays in Memory of Herbert Simon" by M. Augier and J. G. March

Review of " Mainstream and Formal Epistemology" by Vincent Hendricks

As Vincent Hendricks remarks early on in this book, the formal and mainstream traditions of epist... more As Vincent Hendricks remarks early on in this book, the formal and mainstream traditions of epistemic theorising have mostly evolved independently of each other. This initial impression is confirmed by a comparison of the main problems and methods practitioners in each tradition are concerned with. Mainstream epistemology engages in a dialectical game of proposing and challenging definitions of knowledge. Formal epistemologists proceed differently, as they design a wide variety of axiomatic and model-theoretic methods whose consequences they investigate independently of the need of giving counterexample-free definitions of knowledge. Or at least, this is a common way to explain where both disciplines stand in the larger landscape of epistemic theorising, and why interactions between them remain scarce.

Philosophy of Information - a Simple Introduction

by Eric Kerr, Simon D'Alfonso, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Patrick Allo, Phyllis Illari, Christoph Schulz, and Matteo Turilli

This book serves as the main reference for an undergraduate course on Philosophy of Information. ... more This book serves as the main reference for an undergraduate course on Philosophy of Information. The book is written to be accessible to the typical undergraduate student of Philosophy and does not require propaedeutic courses in Logic, Epistemology or Ethics. Each chapter includes a rich collection of references for the student interested in furthering her understanding of the topics reviewed in the book.

The book covers all the main topics of the Philosophy of Information and it should be considered an overview and not a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of a philosophical area. As a consequence, 'The Philosophy of Information: a Simple Introduction' does not contain research material as it is not aimed at graduate students or researchers.

The book is available for free in multiple formats and it is updated every twelve months by the team of the π Research Network: Patrick Allo, Bert Baumgaertner, Simon D'Alfonso, Penny Driscoll, Luciano Floridi, Nir Fresco, Carson Grubaugh, Phyllis Illari, Eric Kerr, Giuseppe Primiero, Federica Russo, Christoph Schulz, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Matteo Turilli, Orlin Vakarelov.

Introduction to the Philosophy of Information

by Patrick Allo, Phyllis Illari, Eric Kerr, Christoph Schulz, Nir Fresco, Federico Gobbo, Carson Grubaugh, and Hector Zenil

This book introduces key topics in the philosophy of information, written by the PI research netw... more

Mathematical Values in Data Science: Three Conjectures to Explain Mathwashing

Data, Security, Values: Vocations and Visions of Data Analysis. Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)., 2018

With the development of a critical research agenda on contemporary data practices we gradually bu... more With the development of a critical research agenda on contemporary data practices we gradually build the tools that are needed to overcome the uncertainty, lack of clarity, and impact of misleading narratives concerning the epistemology of data science. Without such a reflection, we cannot understand the kind of knowledge data analysis produces. More importantly, we then also lack the ability to evaluate specific knowledge-claims as well as more general affirmations of the epistemic superiority (smarter, more objective, ...) of the knowledge, decisions, or insights that data analysis produces. This is why it is important to recognise that data is never just data (e.g. Gitelman 2013, Kitchin 2014), or that the development of algorithms (as any advanced scientific or engineering practice) cannot fully be understood in terms of a well-defined internal logic.

The starting point of this contribution is that we should start asking similar questions about mathematics: We need to understand how mathematics contributes to scientific respectability and authority of data science. To do so, we cannot limit our attention to mathematics as a body of mathematical truths or mathematical techniques. Instead, we should focus on mathematical thought and beliefs about the nature of mathematical thought. I propose to develop this critical inquiry through a dedicated consideration of how mathematical values shape data science.