Philosophy of data: Why?

Some people have started talking about “philosophy of data” [1,2]. Is there really such a thing? How could it be different from philosophy of information? And why should anyone working in library and information studies care? In this paper, I provide brief responses to these questions. In the first section that follows, I examine two mid-twentieth-century uses of the phrase “philosophy of data”, downplay their relevance to current concerns, and instead propose a simple way of drawing rough boundaries around subject matter of present interest. Noting, in a second section, the centrality of ontological questions to the area so defined, I review concepts of data that have emerged in three fields for which such conceptualization is especially important, and take a structuralist– rationalist approach to explication of the relationship between the concept of data and that of information, ultimately coming to advocate for a conception of data as representational concreta. The fundamental distinction between data and information is thus revealed to be that between concreta and abstracta. I contend that, analogously, the kinds of philosophical questions that may be asked about concreta are fundamentally different from the ones asked about abstracta, and that it is therefore both possible and desirable to pursue a philosophy of data alongside (rather than as a mere component of) a philosophy of information. Finally, in a third section, I argue for the utility of the results of philosophy of data as potentially foundational for empirical sciences.