Essay Competition: The Metaphysics of Information

Announcing the inaugural Institute for Informational Metaphysics essay competition.

Deadline for submissions: July 31st, 2019.

If you would like to enter the competition, please register as an essay contestant by paying the fee and submitting a closed abstract to research.director@iimx.info

Word Limits:

4000 < Word count < 5000 including references

Details

The inaugural competition has four divisions. The first is about informational metaphysics and the metaphysics of information. The second is about scientific metaphysics and the relationship between science and philosophy. The third division is about informationist culture and informationism as a cultural trope. The fourth division focusses upon the impact of informationism and Web based social technologies upon social cognition and individual and group psychology.

Fees:

Postgraduate candidate: $AUD10

Appointed/Professional academic: $AUD25

Topic Division 1 - Informational metaphysics and the metaphysics of information

Is the world literally informational at bottom. If so, how? If not, why not?

Topic Division 2 - Scientific metaphysics and the relationship between science and philosophy

What should a scientific metaphysics look like? Does philosophy still have a role to play in science with respect to metaphysical questions, and how would it do so with appropriate reference to science? What role do information theory, theories of the nature of information, and the metaphysics of information play, if any?

Topic Division 3 - Informationist culture and informationism as a cultural trope and movement

What is a significant way in which the networked information and data age, and the informationism that accompanies it, has affected some aspect of our worldwide culture, including any impact on any specific important kind of cultural capital, globally, or regionally, or both? What is a good definition of informationism in this context?

Topic Division 4 - Social Cognition and Information

In what significant ways has the development and uptake of social media and social networking systems impacted humanity in terms of the effects on the social cognition and psychology of groups and individuals? What is its effect on group moral cognition or other cognition, or group and individual psychology?