SuchThatCast Episode 1: Luciano Floridi

In the first episode of SuchThatCast, I sit down with Luciano Floridi – who currently holds the Research Chair in philosophy of information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy. He is also a Fellow by Special Election of St Cross College, Oxford University, Senior Member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy at OUCL (the Department of Computer Science), University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on two areas of philosophical research: the philosophy of information and information ethics. In this episode, Floridi takes the opportunity to reveal a driving force behind his philosophy that has never been publicly announced before. For anyone with some knowledge of Floridi’s philosophy, this will come as a huge surprise, and it will change how you perceive his theories from now on. We also discuss the state of computer and information ethics as a field, and how philosophy and academia needs to change radically in order to stay relevant and timely. We also discuss Kant’s noumenon, especially the possibility to get a glimpse of it — and what that ‘it’ may signify, which is connected to the aforementioned revelation and its importance to ethics. We conclude by looking at what lies ahead for Floridi and a philosophical system that is increasingly taking on Germanic proportions.