design for a subjective situationism, including conceptual grounds of business information modeling
Pieter Wisse
Please skip to Chapter 6 when you immediately want to pursue the constructive argument. Chapter 5 is largely occupied with criticism.
With the irreducible relationship between sign, object and interpretant, Peirce establishes a ground for semiotics. Do later developments in semiotics add or modify essential concepts? If so, can they be usefully employed for an ontology for information modeling?
Is A Theory of Semiotics (1976) by U. Eco representative for theoretical developments? If so, my conclusion is even negative. The Peircean concept of irreducibility has not survived. Rather, it has been detracted from. Especially the division (also read: reduction) of semiotics into pragmatics, semantics and syntactics has proven influential. C.W. Morris offers the classification that prevails (1946, p 219):
[P]ragmatics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the origin, uses, and effects of signs within the behavior in which they occur; semantics deals with the signification of signs in all modes of signifying; syntactics deals with combinations of signs without regard for their specific significations or their relation to the behavior in which they occur.
It should first of all be noted that Morris departs from pragmatics as viewed by Peirce. For Peirce, if anything, pragmatics and semiotics are perspectives at an equal level. He needs semiotics to explain pragmatism, vice versa. Morris places pragmatics alongside several other disciplines at a level below that of semiotics. It suggests that semiotics can be studied exhaustively through its branches. What really happens is that Peirce’s original emphasis on irreducibility is lost.
Such reduction of semiotics fits a particular scientific climate. Combined with a strong realism, Peirce’s claim for irreducibility undeniably implies subjectivity, idealism, etcetera. For a positivist science, that is all unacceptable. So, secondly, what Morris basically does, is suggest disciplines that can be practiced according to the positivist requirements of his time. The particular problem for later developments of semiotics has been that the uniqueness of every sign user is not taken as a ground. It is a problem because semiotic phenomena that are uniquely attributable to an individual sign user cannot simply be denied. But without the proper grounds, explanations of phenomena come out twisted. Chapter 5 confirms this about Eco’s semiotic theory. Subjective situationism, with its perspective of a restored irreducibility, cannot gain from such theories but, instead, affords criticism.
A remark on positivism is still in order. It is understood as an absolute doctrine on the proper practice of science. However, I prefer to consider it relative to certain grounds. It is therefore always a particular ontology which subsequently permits positivist science. Subjective situationism does not at all contradict positivism, but establishes more varied grounds for it to be practiced. And that is precisely how it promotes relevance in conceptual information modeling.
Chapter 6 resumes constructive design of an ontology that is well-equipped with variety for information modeling.
2002, web edition 2005 © Pieter Wisse
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