The Site is currently undergoing updates and maintenance to correct problems with the encyclopedia and menu system.

Ed.

Visitors will note that the menu system on the left is a little broken, but (mostly) only if they are using Windows Explorer 8.0. The manufacturer of this browser, who also happens to be the manufacturer of the menu component, built in a special feature to the new browser (or the menu - depending on who is relating the explanation) so that the menu doesn't work with the browser. Mozilla and Safari users should be okay, because these browsers handle the menu component okay. Apparently the onus is on anyone and everyone who has ever developed a web site using this component to fix the problem by altering their website code and recompiling it, which is of course perfectly reasonable :} I will be updating the menu component into the back end system and re-compiling the thing as soon as I have the time. In the meantime, you are not missing much because there is little to no content in the submenu linked pages anyway.

Ed.

'Informationism' is a neologism which refers to a prevailing metaphysical and scientific outlook that is evidenced as a propensity in multiple fields of human endeavor from the sciences to the arts to foreground talk of information in deference to actual or putative principles of information theory and communication theory in explicating real world phenomena and in formulating postulates and theories. In the sciences this is largely an upshot of the increasing importance of information science and information technologies to all fields of scientific endeavor. In the arts, and especially in structuralist and poststructuralist literary studies, it involves the frequently flawed analogical citation of information theoretic principles pace Claude E. Shannon's 1948 The Mathematical Theory of Communcation to provide authority for theories of reader response or cognitive responses in text processing. In philosophy I define informationism to be broadly associated with what some philosophers call the philosophy of information, but which I prefer to call the philosophy of information theory.

I developed the terms informationism and informationist in my recent Master of Philosophy thesis "Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science Fiction." This thesis was the result of an enjoyable foray into the language of information age science fiction texts and literary theory, wherein I investigated the informational basis of the cognitive aesthetic of SF. I am currently working on my PhD in Philosophy, the central topic of which is a naturalistic and nomological metaphysical theory of information for epistemology, logic and the philosophy of mind/cognitive science. Pursuant to this effort, I am currently preparing a paper titled "The Ontology of Information," which I have been working on for well over a year. I intend to have this paper published in a journal fairly soon, and will provide notification of the same in this site.

The term 'information' is not well defined, and has various meanings in different contexts. I take information to be, fundamentally, a natural kind (and 'information' to be a natural kind term,) and one that needs to be better understood and defined. I think that a metaphysically cogent and semantically stable ontology of information will be beneficial for the sciences, including the human sciences.

Ed.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a metaphysics conference at Sydney University organised by Dr. Kristie Miller and entitled Contingentism in Metaphysics. Numerous papers were presented, all of them fascinating. Prof. John Bigelow of Monash University mused on the geometry of Plato and the mereology of Quine to demonstrate the potential of metaphysical theories to meaningfully and validly further knowledge on an a-priori basis. Prof. David Braddon-Mitchell of Sydney University presented a groundbreaking talk suggesting a middle-ground or hybrid approach to metaphysical theorising. Prof. David Chalmers of ANU presented an insightful and stimulating talk (all the more amazing for the fact that I watched him prepare much of it during the lunch break) in which he summarised many of the posits of the previous speakers and added his own unique perspective on contingency and modality for metaphysical theorising and argument. This is the first time I have seen Professor Chalmers speak, and he very much validated his reputation as a superb philosopher possessed of a daunting philosophical perspicacity.

There were numerous other presentations of merit, notably that of Prof. Jonathan Schaffer of ANU, who discussed the modal status of metaphysical disputes, and the contrast between metaphysical and conceptual necessity. All of the presentations provided encouragement for me in my work on the ontology of information, a metaphysical and pre-mathematical theory that I have been developing for 18 months now. In closing, Prof. Braddon-Mitchell rightly praised the efforts of Dr. Kristie Miller in organising a superb and worthwhile conference.

Ed.