Is Dretske's Theory of Information Naturalistically Grounded? How emergent communication channels reference an abstracted ontic framework

Abstract

By bringing together Dretske’s theory of knowledge, Shannon’s theory of information, and the conceptual framework of statistical physics, this paper explores some of the meta-physical challenges posed by a naturalistic notion of semantical information. It is argued that Dretske’s theory cannot be said to be naturalistically grounded in the world described by classical physics and that Dretske information is not consistent with Shannon information. A possible route to reconciling Dretske’s insights with Shannon’s theory is proposed. Along the way, an attempt is made to clarify several points of possible confusion about the relationships between Dretske information, Shannon information and statistical physics