Dear Ontologgers (01)
Long ago, teaching information systems at the London School of
Economics, I insisted that my students take care using the vague terms
“data”, “information” and “knowledge” and I joked that some nutter
would soon be writing a paper about wisdom as the next level of
analysis. The following day, just such a person stopped me in
Kingsway with a religious pamphlet containing a flowchart that
included wisdom as one of its flows; a week later an accounting
journal embarked on the same route to enlightenment. What I taught
instead was a kind of hierarchy based on semiotics and it has turned
out to be quite popular among alumni who use it in practice. (02)
I’ll explain briefly. A sign is concrete and makes an ideal starting
point as a primitive concept for an empirical science of information.
Depending upon the things you want to do with signs and relevant
operational procedures, you can find many different, precise meanings
for the term “information”, each of them capturing some but never all
the aspects of information belonging to our common sense treatment of
that abstract notion. I gathered together these ideas from the
literature in my 1973 book “Information”; I had expected them to be
common knowledge by now in the information systems field. To my
dismay they are not and, consequently I have to read works that have
not progress beyond the stage in our scientific domain that
corresponds with mediaeval notions of physics: the DIKW hierarchy is a
good example. I feel pangs of guilt at not keeping that book in print. (03)
It seems obvious to me and, I’m sure to all ontologgers (so I
apologise if I sound naïve), that, to function effectively, any
information system must handle signs correctly on six major levels
(levels?), where the grand abstractions – information, meaning,
relevance etc – have their own appropriate precise definitions. (04)
PHYSICAL – where one operates on particular things that can be used as
sign-tokens to stand for other things. Here you measure amounts of
information in numbers of tokens and all the other grand abstractions
relate to physical properties of signs. (05)
EMPIRIC – where one deals with populations or streams of sign-tokens
with concern for all the problems that interested Shannon, and where
the relative frequency is a key empirical property and information and
other abstraction can mostly be reduced to its terms. (06)
SYNTACTIC – that concerns structures of sign-types and of
manipulations performed on them; Bar Hillel and Carnap defined
information in several ways based on a logical concept of probability
but called these semantic measures. (07)
Most of the effort to build a science of information has
been devoted to these three technical layers to the sad neglect of the
three essentially human and social layers. Even when our colleagues
do venture into them, they attempt to do so in the spirit of their
technical work (and I suspect that applies to some in our community),
so they usually strive, in the spirit of AI, to keep human beings
outside the frame. But people are indispensible (08)
In my own work, I have concentrated on the following
three human and social levels but always aiming at enough formal rigor
to enable default solutions on the technical levels to be arrived at
automatically. This strategy works but it raises a chain of most
interesting problems. Those levels are: (09)
SEMANTIC – where we investigate how sign-types can stand for other
things; this is just one – perhaps the most important – of the
meanings of meaning. The notion of information can be given several
different definitions suited to this level: the use of subjective
probability seems appropriate here but ontology (metaphysical sense)
can also contribute solutions. To use a finite vocabulary to stand
for things in a potentially infinite reality calls for constant
renegotiation of meanings for new purposes. (010)
PRAGMATIC – where investigations concern particular illocutionary acts
using sign-tokens. The use of sign-tokens to produce socially
significant effects suggests definitions of information related to the
potential scope of these effects. Formal or mechanical systems cannot
supply intentions. (011)
SOCIAL – where we are concerned with the perlocutionary acts that
result in changes in the attitudes or the norms (= knowledge) held by
one or more interpreters of particular intention-bearing sign-tokens.
This level is where signs metaphorically inform minds as the potter
materially informs the clay on his wheel. Information concerns the
extent of this alteration of people’s attitudes and norms. (012)
Each of the second group of three levels can be investigated in the
best traditions of empirical science. (Oh that I had another life to
devote to them!) Of special interest is the problem of how to link
the powers of formal methods to the essentials of human conduct.
Signs cannot have meaning or intention without involving people and
signs have no value until they produce changes of attitudes in
people. To retreat into formal methods is just to ignore the
semantic, pragmatic and social aspects of signs. (013)
I have formed a love-hate relationship with ontolog. I love the
interesting ideas that the discussions throw up from time to time; I
hate giving way to displacement activity when I should be writing up
the work I have done. Perhaps, despite withdrawal symptoms, I’d better
opt out of ontolog. (014)
Am I wrong to suspect that many ontologgers would like to keep messy
people and social problems at arms length or totally apart from the
work they are doing? I also feel alienated from so called ontologies
that are largely generic-specific structures that express cognitive
norms and have little to do fundamentally with the nature of what
exists. (015)
I have the comfort that our methods do work so extraordinarily well in
practical information systems analysis, design and implementation that
they are likely to be accepted eventually. Theoreticians will then be
tempted to examine the ideas behind the methods. (016)
Saying such things invites criticism. As a disciple of Popper, with
whom I overlapped briefly at LSE, that is intentional. Might I
provide you with a better target by reworking some standard case study
like those in Appx C of John Sowa’s 2000 KR book? Please give me a
challenge in such concrete terms. (017)
Ronald Stamper (018)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (019)
|