design for a subjective situationism, including conceptual grounds of business information modeling
Pieter Wisse
Chapter 8 draws the constructive design in this treatise to an end. It completes the explanation of meaning as a social process (started in Chapter 7) from largely psychological characteristics of participating sign users (see Part i).
Taking the ideal dimension of semiosis seriously, a sign engineer by definition projects his interpretants onto the sign. He assembles a cause aimed at achieving a motivationally effected response from the observer. Any response by the original observer would of course immediately place him in the position of an engineer. But as a sign observer, by definition he develops interpretants from the sign.
It is already impossible to establish with certainty that the sign as the engineer believes to have emitted is indeed what the observer holds for the sign in their exchange. Leaving this problem aside, and assuming that at least the sign is common, the difference between cause and effect that underlies the difference between engineer and observer makes for different representational structures. For both the engineer and the observer, the sign stands for what the engineer wants from the observer. The anatomy of meaning according to subjective situationism is captured by the slogan every sign is a request for compliance. As the engineer builds his specific cause from his will, the vital difference is that the observer can only make such an interpretation guided by his own will as background interpretant, too. Every participant’s uniqueness makes the difference.
With different representational structures of the sign outlined for the engineer and the observer, Chapter 8 moves to a short discussion of conditions for compliance. First of all, compliance requires attention oriented at the overall relationship between the persons who, in this particular instance of sign exchange, act as sign engineer and sign observer. Their relative power and trust are therefore important determinants of both compliance and how their relationship develops further under the impetus of the particular sign exchange.
What does all this mean for conceptual information models? They certainly are not value-free blueprints. As signs, they are political instruments (see Chapter 7). An information model is also a request for compliance, just as any reaction to it is, positive, negative, or otherwise.
When such is the nature of conceptual information models, ignorance about it goes at the expense of quality. Some stakeholders gain in the short term, and often for much longer, from upholding the dispassionate character of models. But others lose, which endangers constructive relationships. Professional modelers especially, as they are directly involved with stakeholders and through their involvement become immediate stakeholders themselves, must be aware of the politics underlying their work. Information modeling scientists must include compliance as an important theme in their teaching and research.
The last paragraphs of Chapter 8 have actually already moved from developing an anatomy of meaning to offering recommendations that are based upon it. After Chapter 8, you can skip to Chapter 13 which is the final chapter of this treatise. As an epilogue Chapter 13 is more generally occupied with some of the problems that subjective situationism can solve, and opportunities it can create, with respect to conceptual information modeling.
Chapter 9 through 12 are in a philosophical sense all critical, rather than constructive. They boil down to the conclusion that the language action paradigm popular for information modeling is too limited. It needs to cut its limiting linguistic (read here also: semantic) roots. But first Chapter 8 continues to present an anatomy of meaning erected from radically different grounds.
2002, web edition 2005 © Pieter Wisse
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