My recently published review of Sandra D. Mitchell's excellent "Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity and Policy" is available from Springerlink in the journal Metascience: I will publish a pre-release version of the review here in the next couple of weeks. In "Unsimple Truths", Mitchell defends a version of pragmatic scientific pluralism that she calls integrative pluralism. It retains but limits the role of reduction in scientific practice, and suggests that complex natural systems - especially those which exhibit dynamic feedback and emergence - are not amenable to reductive and universalist analyses. While I do no agree with the author's stance on Jaegwon Kim's assessment of emergent properties, nor her assertion of the mutual exclusivity of emergence and reducibility in complex systems, the book gives and excellent introduction to pluralist philosophy of science. It also provides a good coverage of the role of computer simulation in replacing predict and act models of scientific policy making with robust adaptive planning: the latter being more conducive to responding to contingent findings in complex sciences. Integrative pluralism is Mitchell's response to what she refers to as deep uncertainty: the uncertainty involved in trying to predict the behaviour of complex non-linear dynamical systems. You can purchase Sandra Mitchell's book (including the Kindle Edition) on line from Amazon:

Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy by Sandra D. Mitchell

You can download a copy of my MPhil thesis "Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science Fiction" from the ePublishing Service of The University of Sydney. It is a foray into the informational aesthetics and information content of SF texts and narratives.

Abstract:

In this thesis I present an informational theory of textual analysis that can be applied to any text - fictional or scientific - to determine its information profile. The information profile of an SF text is based on the heterogeneity of the information that is represented in the text by encoding and the information that is used for representation. Information is differentiated on the basis of the source with which it is associated or from which it originated: real external entities, scientific theories, cognitive synthesis of internal information sources. I present an informational aesthetics of SF texts that explains the connection between heterogeneous information profiles and the aesthetic of complexity. In the second chapter there is an easy to consume introduction to Shannon's conception of information as presented in his Mathematical Theory of Communication. The thesis argues that SF texts and the narratives encoded upon them are unique in terms of their information profiles. SF information profiles are, I suggest,  heterogeneous because the information content of SF texts originates from various types of informaiton sources - veridical (material), pseudo-informational (abstract) and counterfactual pseudo-informational - in characteristic proportions.

In later chapters I give an informational interpretation of the works of William Gibson (The Bridge Trilogy), Vernor Vinge (A Fire Upon the Deep) and Iain M Banks (The Algebraist). I suggest that Darko Suvin's SF novum necessarily involves naturalistic mechanism as a source of information, and that it is is correspondingly high information (following Shippey). I analyse SF texts in terms of what I call informational anti-simulacra.Philosophical background includes the possible worlds logic of David Lewis, Jean Baudrillard's thesis of the simulacra and the hyperreal, Fred Dretske's naturalistic theory of semantic information, and Goodman's philosophy of aesthetics. I suggest a link between Lewis' possible worlds thesis, SF information profiles, and Rudy Rucker's Transrealism.  Throughout I suggest that the premiere pioneering theorist in the field is in fact Samuel R. Delany, who investigated the link between information, the novum, and the subjunctive mode of SF as early as the 1960s (if not earlier). The interpretation of the SF megatext as presented by Damien Broderick is exploited for the notion of the set of external contributing information sources. I investigate the connection between Claude E Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications and the notion of repertoire in Wolfgang Iser's reader response theory (via little known French philosopher Abraham A. Moles). I suggest that SF is The Fiction of Veridical, Counterfactual and Heterogeneous Information.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

My many thanks go to my supervisor Dr Peter Marks, who suggested that leveraging my honours work in the philosophy of information theory might bear fruit. I am also indebted to the eminent Dr Andrew Milner of Monash University whose patient editiorial diligence saved me from my ignorance of French. 

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.