design for a subjective situationism, including conceptual grounds of business information modeling
Pieter Wisse
What Peircean semiotics contributes is not just the triadic relationship between sign, object and interpretant. The key insight of Peirce, applying a systems view, is to regard their relationship as irreducible. It follows that his concept of semiotics also entails ontology. And epistemology. Or, the other way around, ontology is epistemology is semiotics.
The semiotic hexad (see Chapter 2) is of course equally irreducible. For it retains Peirce’s original elements, but now as a triad of dimensions. Thus, the convergence of ontology, epistemology and semiotics remains. Chapter 4 presents an articulation in addition to the step from triad to hexad. An intermediate element is included for each dimension. The result is an ennead, i.e., a system of nine irreducibly related elements arranged along three dimensions.
The extension to a semiotic ennead results from copying the formal arrangement of concepts that underlies the metapattern, an approach to conceptual information modeling I designed earlier (Wisse, 2001). An overall metapattern-based model consists of related nodes. Every specific node, or signature, connects a specific context to a specific intext. That is, in fact, all it does, but it is crucial. The introduction of elements whose only service is relational is precisely why the step from hexad to ennead is important.
So, a signature mediates. The consequence for information modeling is pervasive. What is modeled are not whole, independent objects. Instead, situationally relevant behaviors of an object are distinguished. Because the meta-pattern lets signatures be laterally connected, too, what a model reflects about a traditional whole object is traceable through the relevant set of connected signatures. This is subjective situationism’s solution for reconciling the concepts of identity and difference, i.e., for disambiguating multiplicity. This reconciliation is brought about by the three strictly relational elements of signature, focus and object. Their paradoxical nature, i.e., relationship and element combined, removes paradoxes elsewhere.
A context stands for a situation. A signature stands for an object in a particular situation. And the intext hinges through the signature on the context. As such, it stands for a particular situational behavior of the object.
I completed the design of the metapattern before setting out on this treatise. In hindsight, the metapattern already supplies a formal articulation of concepts along two of the three semiotic/ontological/epistemological dimensions. The elements along the real dimension are situation, object and behavior. Along the information dimension, or sign dimension, the corresponding elements are context, signature and intext. Restoring straightforward relationships, for arriving at the ennead a third element has been added to the ideal dimension which now consists of background interpretant, focus and foreground interpretant.
With three instead of two elements along a dimension, the opportunities for shifting conceptual roles (see Prelude 3) have increased. Shifting from one dimension to another is also possible. It happens when a sign is studied as an object in its own right. Or an interpretant as an object, etcetera.
By explaining the metapattern, Chapter 4 makes a twofold contribution to the design of subjective situationism. First, the metapattern is integrated with the hexad resulting in the semiotic ennead. Second, especially the metapattern allows models to reflect multiple situational behavior of objects. It is therefore used to develop concepts, and present them, in the remainder of the treatise.
Ontological design is resumed in Chapter 6. Chapter 5 is a critical intermission; it can be skipped without risk of losing track of the constructive argument of the treatise.
2002, web edition 2005 © Pieter Wisse
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