The course of five lectures and classes will be concentrated on the following five issues and problems:

1. The concepts of information in physics, computer sciences, psychology, and sociology. Information as: (a) "difference that makes the difference", (b) the measure of events? probability (c) quantitative versus qualitative concept of information. 

2. Technological mediation of cognition and communication. Signals, signs, and symbols coded, conveyed and interpreted in human-machine communication. Distinctions among data bases, knowledge-based systems, expert systems, and human knowledge.

3. Human processes of perception, cognition, and  communication.  Human information behaviour - information needs, information seeking and browsing, reducing uncertainty, decision making, and problem solving.

4. Epistemological analysis of cognition and knowledge - its sources, nature, and development. The concept of knowledge as true justified belief and its limits. The problem of reliability (many types of justification) of human knowledge and communication..

5. Philosophical dilemmas of the "digital turn" and networked society. What is the essence of human being's self-reflectivity and self-identity in the age of mediated and depersonalized cognition and communication? Is it still possible?

Bibliography:

D. Case, Looking for Information, Elsevier, Amsterdam 2007.

C. Davies, Finding and Knowing. Routledge, London 2005.

F, Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1981.