Philosophy as Conceptual Design (1 of 9)

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1

Central Problem

This text confronts a fundamental epistemological question: how do we truly know? Floridi identifies a deep tension in Western philosophy between two competing accounts of knowledge—the “user’s knowledge” tradition stemming from Plato, which privileges passive reception and mimetic representation of pre-existing truths, versus the “maker’s knowledge” tradition, which holds that genuine knowledge arises through active construction, production, and modelling of semantic artefacts.

The central problem is that Plato’s epistemological framework—treating knowledge as passive contemplation of ideal Forms accessed through recollection—has dominated Western philosophy for twenty-five centuries despite being practically untenable and philosophically implausible. This “Platonic dogma” privileges theory over practice, thinking over doing, representations as copies over representations as models. The result is an epistemology divorced from actual epistemic practices: scientists run experiments, engineers design artefacts, children learn by doing, yet our epistemological theories treat knowers as passive receivers of information.

The challenge Floridi identifies is “radically moderate”: neither succumbing to naive realism (Plato) nor collapsing into relativistic constructivism (postmodernism), but charting a middle course through “constructionism”—knowledge as inscription rather than description or prescription.

Main Thesis

Floridi’s main thesis is that Plato’s user’s knowledge tradition should be complemented, if not replaced, by a constructionist approach: “Epistemic agents know something when they are able to build (reproduce, simulate, model, construct etc.) that something and plug the obtained information in the correct network of relations that account for it.”

This thesis has several components:

Philosophy as Conceptual Design: Philosophy, understood as the study of open questions, becomes primarily a form of conceptual design rather than conceptual analysis alone. Philosophers are makers of semantic artefacts—concepts, models, theories—not passive consumers of pre-existing truths.

The Maker’s Knowledge Principle: One can only truly know what one makes. This inverts Plato’s hierarchy: the maker of an artefact (or information) knows it better than the user. The dialectician who knows is “the person who knows how to ask and answer questions”—but as a maker, not a user.

Constructionist Methodology: Floridi outlines six principles: (1) only what is constructible can be known; (2) working hypotheses are investigated through models; (3) models must be controllable; (4) confirmation concerns the model, not the modelled system; (5) economy of conceptual resources; (6) isomorphism between simulation and simulated is only local, not global.

Levels of Abstraction (LoA): Knowledge is always relative to a chosen level of abstraction—a finite set of observables with well-defined values. This enables pluralism without relativism: different LoAs are assessable and comparable against purposes.

Historical Context

Floridi situates his argument within a long-running epistemological debate traceable to ancient Greece. Plato’s dialogues (Cratylus, Republic, Euthydemus) established the priority of user’s over maker’s knowledge, partly from cultural bias against artisans as mere “living tools” and partly from the philosophical agenda of attacking sophists and poets as dangerous imitators.

The maker’s knowledge tradition emerged as a minority report within the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, finding champions in Bacon‘s Novum Organum (“Vere scire, esse per causas scire”—to know truly is to know through causes), Hobbes’s account of demonstrable arts, and Vico’s verum ipsum factum principle. Kant’s transcendental epistemology represents a crucial transformation: we can only know phenomena we are epistemically responsible for constructing.

The scientific revolution intensified this tension: episteme and techne became bedfellows in every lab, yet epistemological orthodoxy remained Platonic. Contemporary information societies—where “the expert and intelligent handling of data and information is the primary value-adding occupation”—make the discrepancy between epistemic practice and epistemological theory increasingly untenable.

The text explicitly engages with computer science’s formal methods tradition, adapting the concept of “levels of abstraction” for philosophical methodology. This represents philosophy learning from poietic disciplines.

Philosophical Lineage

flowchart TD
    Plato --> UserKnowledge[User's Knowledge Tradition]
    Aristotle --> MakerKnowledge[Maker's Knowledge Tradition]
    Bacon --> MakerKnowledge
    Hobbes --> MakerKnowledge
    Vico --> MakerKnowledge
    Locke --> MakerKnowledge
    Kant --> Constructionism
    MakerKnowledge --> Kant
    Kant --> Peirce
    Peirce --> Floridi
    Kant --> Floridi
    Bacon --> Floridi
    Quine --> Floridi
    FormalMethods[Formal Methods] --> Floridi
    Dessauer --> Floridi

    class Plato,Aristotle,Bacon,Hobbes,Vico,Locke,Kant,Peirce,Quine,Floridi,Dessauer internal-link;

Key Thinkers

Thinker	Dates	Movement	Main Work	Core Concept
Plato	428–348 BCE	Ancient Philosophy	Republic, Cratylus	User’s knowledge, mimesis
Bacon	1561–1626	Empiricism	Novum Organum	Vere scire per causas scire
Hobbes	1588–1679	Materialism	Six Lessons	Demonstrable vs indemonstrable arts
Vico	1668–1744	Historicism	New Science	Verum ipsum factum
Kant	1724–1804	Transcendental Idealism	Critique of Pure Reason	Conditions of possibility
Peirce	1839–1914	Pragmatism	Collected Papers	Pragmatic constructionism

Key Concepts

Concept	Definition	Related to
User’s Knowledge	Passive, mimetic reception of pre-existing information; the user knows an artefact better than its maker	Plato, Platonic Dogma
Maker’s Knowledge	Active, poietic construction; one knows what one builds, reproduces, simulates, or models	Bacon, Vico, Hobbes
Constructionism	Epistemological position that knowledge is acquired through creating semantic artefacts, not passive reception	Floridi, Philosophy of Information
Level of Abstraction (LoA)	A finite set of observables with well-defined values that constitutes the conceptual interface for analysing a system	Formal Methods, Floridi
Semantic Artefact	Information as a constructed, human-made product; reality as we experience it	Floridi, Conceptual Design
Minimalism	Erotetic principle: choose starting problems that rely minimally on other open problems	Descartes, Quine
Ontological Commitment	What a theory commits to exist through its choice of LoA (types) and models (tokens)	Quine, Floridi
Poiesis vs Mimesis	Creating/making vs imitating/copying as epistemic modes	Aristotle, Plato

Authors Comparison

Theme	Floridi	Plato
Who knows best?	The maker of an artefact	The user of an artefact
Nature of knowledge	Poietic construction	Mimetic reception
Role of artisan	Epistemic authority	Inferior to user, near slave
Reality access	Through models at LoAs	Through recollection of Forms
Epistemology	Constructionist, Kantian	Realist, transcendent
Philosophy’s method	Conceptual design	Dialectic contemplation
Knowledge-that	Conclusion of process	Foundational starting point

Influences & Connections

• Predecessors: Floridi ← influenced by ← Kant, Bacon, Vico, Hobbes, Peirce, Quine
• Contemporaries: Floridi ↔ dialogue with ↔ Dretske, Hintikka
• Opposing views: Floridi ← criticizes ← Plato (user’s knowledge), Postmodern Constructivism (relativism)
• Methodological sources: Computer Science Formal Methods → Levels of Abstraction → Floridi
• Philosophical descendants: Philosophy of Information → Conceptual Design methodology

Summary Formulas

• Plato: The user of an artefact knows it better than its maker; knowledge is passive reception of ideal Forms through mimetic representation and recollection.

• Bacon: “Vere scire, esse per causas scire”—to know truly is to know through causes; we as epistemic agents can only know what we make as Ur-makers.

• Vico: Verum ipsum factum—what is true and what is made are interchangeable; knowledge requires the ability to produce and reproduce the known.

• Floridi: Philosophy is conceptual design; knowledge is construction of semantic artefacts at explicit levels of abstraction; constructionism steers between naive realism and relativistic constructivism.

Timeline

Year	Event
c. 380 BCE	Plato establishes user’s knowledge priority in Republic and Cratylus
1620	Bacon publishes Novum Organum, articulating maker’s knowledge
1656	Hobbes distinguishes demonstrable from indemonstrable arts
1725	Vico formulates verum ipsum factum in New Science
1781	Kant publishes Critique of Pure Reason, transcendental constructionism
1900	Pearson publishes The Grammar of Science, statistical epistemology
2008	Floridi formalizes method of levels of abstraction
2011	Floridi develops constructionist philosophy of information

Notable Quotes

“Epistemic agents know something when they are able to build (reproduce, simulate, model, construct etc.) that something and plug the obtained information in the correct network of relations that account for it.” — Floridi

“Knowledge is not about getting the message from the world; it is first and foremost about negotiating the right sort of communication with it.” — Floridi

“Reality as we experience it is a semantic artefact. Any talk of things in themselves is just metaphysics.” — Floridi

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Warning

This annotation was normalised using a large language model and may contain inaccuracies. These texts serve as preliminary study resources rather than exhaustive references.