On Quantifying Semantic Information

The purpose of this paper is to examine existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It begins with an outline of Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s theory of semantic information before going on to look at Floridi’s theory of strongly semantic information. The latter then serves to initiate an in-depth investigation into the idea of utilising the notion of truthlikeness to quantify semantic information. Firstly, a couple of approaches to measuring truthlikeness are drawn from the literature and explored, with a focus on their applicability to semantic information quantification. Secondly, a similar but new approach to measure truthlikeness/information is presented. The term ‘information’ can mean many things. Here information is understood as factual semantic content, where if s is an instance of semantic content then:

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: INFORMATION
• Authors: Simon D'Alfonso
• Keywords: INFORMATION 2011, Semantic Content, Semantic Information, Semantic Information Quantification