On truth, belief and knowledge

  • Authors:
  • Flemming Topsøe

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  • Venue:
  • ISIT'09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Symposium on Information Theory - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Truth, belief and knowledge are important aspects of the overall concept of information. Speculating over the possible connections between these entities, new concepts come up naturally and also, specific relationships among them are derived. In particular, a relatively narrow class of measures of entropy and divergence are isolated which have special interpretations related to the world of which we are a part. The classical Shannon world and the world of a black hole may be conceived as extreme examples. Emphasis is on the underlying philosophy and the resulting cognitive paradigm which allows for an interaction between truth, belief and knowledge. The specific concepts which emerge are basically known and, apart from the central concepts related to Shannon theory, they were introduced by Havrda and Charvát, by Daróczy, by Lindhard and Nielsen and by Tsallis.