Metapattern > interdisciplinary foundations > information metatheory
[I]nformation metatheory is indispensable to meet increasingly variable, dynamic requirements.
Information metatheory should provide a system of information concepts.
Please note that, as a sign, the semiotic ennead provides a context for clearly distinguishing between context and situation. They simply belong to different categories.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
A model of (dialogical) communication can now be taken as two enneads, one for each participant.
in: On "nil" modality and Metapattern
[Metapattern’s] only three metaconcepts are context, object and relationship. Context is then defined as a particular structure of object and relationship — there can never be positive proof that such a structure really exists. To look for such proof misses the point. Context, object and relationship have axiomatic status in Metapattern. They are fictions in the service of understanding the rest of reality.
in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection
Metapattern offers a general procedure to express any context in terms of instances of its other metaconcept objects and relationships. This pervasive functional nature of context — its (meta)concept — makes Metapattern fundamentally different from other known metamodels for conceptual information modeling. Elsewhere, the fiction of context is not a function, but a completely independent (type of) object/entity.
Metapattern’s functional approach to context is the key to simplicity in conceptual modeling. This holds true even for information requirements of extremely complex variety. Powerful tool construction technology may be derived from this functional concept of context, too.
in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection
What distinguishes Metapattern from so many other approaches to modeling is the ontological principle — the context having the privileged status in knowledge. Modelers unfamiliar with leaving the object’s existence as a first principle in favor of context will be uncomfortable with this approach and with the lack of positive definitions. But it is precisely the assumption of contexts, objects and relationships defining each other that is Metapattern’s deciding quality. The absence of absolute definitions is not a problem; it’s a powerful solution. The relative nature of metaconcepts is a precondition to arriving at the fiction of positive definitions of all other concepts.
in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection
My general idea of a metatheory, or framework, is that it primarily reflects differences, rather than similarities (leave alone identity, or Platonic form), i.e. it helps to control variety. Grounded on differences, a metatheory is essentially about (their) coordination.
Information metatheory should establish a vantage point from where problems can be diagnosed and opportunities recognized. How information metatheory performs this function is by criticizing preset boundaries and limitations.
Information is still not self-sufficient.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
Actually, only after I published Semiosis & Sign Exchange, the importance of starting from such different cause types really sunk in.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 1
[S]ign is a cause, too.
in: Mannoury's significs, or a philosophy of communal individualism
Information management is essentially multidisciplinary, requiring multiple axiomatization. Types of causality provide grounds for a productive framework.
in: Multiple axiomatization in information management
[The] dia-enneadic framework [a]s a generalized framework […] supplies the vantage point from which to determine/locate previous concepts of information annex communication. For example, the information concept of Shannon/Weaver should be recognizable as a particular subset of the dia-enneadic set. The most varied information concept, then, corresponds to the complete framework.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
I don't distinguish information from knowledge. Instead, I throw all terms such as information, data, communication, knowledge ... together. It just depends on which subset of the dia-enneadic framework seems to be implied to suggest which of those terms is most apt. As I myself 'believe' in irreducibility, my own orientation is from the full framework.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
I am the first to understand — well, I hope that I am — that the ennead is not at all a statement of Truth, or of Absolute, Definitive, or whatever. That would even be a contradiction in terms (as terms/signs are all we have, enneadically 'speaking').
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
[E]mergence [involves] crossing to a level of greater variety[. …] I limit emergences to the order of cause types[. ]
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
A model when considered a sign should be placed along, of course, the sign dimension. When a model is treated as an(other) object, ... Then, its metamodel is the model-as-sign. And so on, when required.
in: note 23.19
[T]he conceptual model occupies the critical position for successful translation: it is a model, both to(ward) and before reality. The first reality lies outside the information set. For it is as if information will be shaped as representation of that reality (and in an operational information system the proposition is that information is indeed registered as if it represents reality). The second reality becomes and, through implementation, is the information set.
in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation
The move from analysis to design emphasizes that Metapattern is oriented at human use of technology. When information management is still approached from a limited technological perspective, there simply is no paradigm shift possible and our information space continues to develop into chaos.
in: Open conceptual modeling with Metapattern
Metapattern limits what needs to be adjusted to the particular situated object, only. What Metapattern optimally helps to avoid are changes in information and its structure for which no actual events have occurred as their cause. The paradigm of situated objects and their unambiguous behavior keeps information in as tight as possible correspondence with … facts.
in: Modifying Object-Role Modeling into Situated-Object-Behavior Modeling with Metapattern
Because the favored language mode for developing and communicating models is visual, in the book Metapattern the formalization is to a large extent expressed visually, too.
in: Get into the rhythm of Metapattern
What follows from […] the dia-enneadic framework is that there is no single philosophy of information. As there are different concepts of information, each valid for some — type of — situation, there is a corresponding number of ‘philosophies.’ That’s why for an overview you have to shift to a metaperspective, i.e. a model helping you recognize relevant configurations as various situations demand. As in physics, a paradigm shift into relativity is in order.
in: note 47.17
Indeed, what we now habitually call information has already been studied as a phenomenon albeit ‘under’ a different name. What I take as a synonym is ‘sign’ which both opens much earlier philosophy and widens the current field.
in: note 47.18
[D]efinitions of meaning involve definitions of information, vice versa. The same goes for definitions of sign, communication, et cetera. As the dia-enneadic model suggests a host of definitions of information, it should immediately help you to an inventory of definitions of meaning, too.
in: note 47.20
Are you familiar with Robert Musil’s novel The Man without Qualities? My ‘qualification’ of Metapattern is a.o. that it is a modeling language without qualities. By that I mean that I’ve tried to keep a priori meanings as much as possible out of it. For that is the only way for a language to acquire the potential to express the largest imaginable variety of meanings with it.
in: note 47.29
We can only claim to avoid ambiguity with a model on the basis of a metamodel (also read: framework) suggesting correspondence. Of course, the so-called correspondence theory of language has been rightfully criticized. I assert that it is not the idea of correspondence that is at fault. Instead, the concept of language so far applied has been far too simplistic. [… A] revised, enneadic correspondence theory of language improves both relevance and rigor.
in: Metapattern for complementarity modeling
In fact, the formal expression of relationships between theories with more or less explanatory power is straightforward. [… S]uppose that the metamodel of the theory known as allowing for the most elaborate both scope and precision exhibits n elements (here, also read: categories). Then, every subset entails a more limited theory. There are 2n such subsets, of course in various degrees of relevance and consistency.
in: Contextualism means selectivity
With Metapattern, I had already developed a formalism for contextualism — subjective situationism as I called it, still largely unaware of contextualistic literature — and through Peirce (and Schopenhauer on the will; please note that Schopenhauer takes care of phenomenology, too) I arrived at a metatheory symbolized by the (dia-)ennead. And I am still in the process of figuring out what its gist is …
in: note 53.11
[I]ts balancing potential lies in the concept of context. The requirement of minimalism comes from an emphasis on metatheory. As such it may not run the danger of overlapping with any of the theories it is supposed to allow as object of study. On the other hand, as a theory in its own right it should not entirely lack concepts, or it would be void. Then, what is ‘left’ are primarily, say, metaconcepts form which other theories may be explained and/or constructed. At the ‘level’ of formism, that is why I qualify Metapattern as a language without properties (after the title of the book The Man without Qualities by Robert Musil). Metapattern enables specification of properties, but doesn’t prescribe them in any way. Thus, it can be taken in all directions.
in: note 53.13
I have tried to argue that contextualism should then be fitted with a, say, dual nature. It is both theory and metatheory. Can that be? Well, not as long as we remain committed to a so-called first-order perspective. What we ‘just’ need to do, is to reposition our inescapable irrationality (also read: axioms). Yes, it is irrational to have a theory converge with metatheory. But it helps … You may compare it to zero in a number system. Zero is not ‘really’ a number, but it helps to establish a … system.
in: note 53.14
[S]ubjective situationism supplies necessary and sufficient axioms for a method for conceptual modelling (design of digital facilities for information exchange with full recognition of variety of meanings; also read, disambiguating signs at Internet scale). It’s not just theory, but highly practical. The method is called Metapattern.
in: note 56.17
I prefer to think of the enneadic theme — or schema, as I myself also refer to it as metamodel — as no more than that, an ennead, period.
in: note 56.24
It [i]s the apparent practical absurdity of [the] demand for “everything” that [need] to [be] take[n] seriously, at least for some time when trying to come up with principles for, say, open-ended integrated order for information. [… It led me to] document what I believed to constitute limitlessly practicable modeling principles, indeed, taking a cue from object orientation and pointing out my departure. […] One of my ideas [i]s that, if information is always a sign, vice versa, semiotics should provide the frame of reference. Yes and no. By way of a resounding yes, two sentences by Charles Peirce especially caught my attention. They read: “A sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity […] which I have sometimes called the ground.” Now I had already been reading Arthur Schopenhauer elaborating on will as … ground. And was Metapattern’s concept of context not some … ground, too? […] I felt free to extend [Peirde’s] triad-plus-ground first of all into a hexad and subsequently into an ennead. I had already established, well, to be honest, just for myself, that Metapattern provides for requisite variety in conceptual modeling. But when it is so-called requisite, there should be ‘other’ varieties it agrees with as such. Or? What Peirce’s triad-plus-ground doesn’t yet suggest, is now covered by the semiotic ennead, i.e. full correspondence of varieties between Peirce’s originally assumed triadic elements (developed into the three enneadic dimensions/moments).
in: note 71.9
I find Peirce already more practical for the … purpose of conceptual modeling, as he makes sign explicit as an intermediary element. And, of course, it is precisely this element we must now come to grips with at an unprecedented scale through networked digital technologies. Therefore, it is Peirce’s […] basic idea that I have extended for supplying Metapattern with proper axioms. [… E]ven when he himself did not follow it up, he made what I recognize […] as a crucial suggestion, and I gladly honor him for it.
in: note 71.20