Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
direct referencing of objects. For Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations,
he extends the idea of the meaning of a word to include its use in language (PI 43).
PI 43 For a
large
class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word “meaning”
it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the
meaning
of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its
bearer
.
We can interpret this extended definition of meaning to imply a process of inference.
During conversation, both listened to and participated in, a process is going on
where a model of the meaning of words is being constructed through inference.
This is a group activity and one designed to construct something common in the
way language and the world may be perceived; a way that allows communication
to occur. However, these models are only understood by their effectiveness, their
ability to make predictions and their coherence within a group-dynamic situation.
They can never have been 'seen' directly since they only exist within an individual.
This lack of boundaries for concepts is the
family resemblance
effect detected
by Wittgenstein, such that 'games' form a family, and he illustrates this by further
examples in the PI (PI 67). It is this effect that fuzzy sets, probability and belief
networks, were intended to overcome (see also PI 71) without losing the power of
referential assignment. In 2003, a research team in Mexico, in conjunction with
Salford University, started to explore the use of family resemblance with a learning
system in order to approach human performance in categorization (Vadera et al.
2003
). However, despite this insight, they remain firmly fixed in assessing their
results within the classical paradigm and consequently they did not really move our
boundaries of understanding any further.
The tension caused by the dual semantics that pivots on the essential (defining) and
accidental (non-essential) meaning of the signs used in programs has been recognised,
as can be seen by the continued search for new languages, program structuring
and systems design methods (e.g. Java, conceptual modelling and object oriented
programming). The central problem of the human context has also been addressed
through the pursuit of natural language understanding, na
ıve physics (the physics as
described for every day purposes), case-based reasoning (reasoning using examples)
and adaptive interfaces. There is a belief that given sufficient power or moving
beyond the Turing machine would somehow solve the problem. This has not been
demonstrated with such efforts such as many-fold increases in computer power or
parallel mechanisms including neural nets. None of the approaches tried so far have
really succeeded. Many of the pursuits have been constrained by the formal bounds
represented by the Tractatus, and of those people who have tried to break away with
novel approaches none of them have bridged the gap identified here.
¨
9.5
The Real Challenge
An alternative to Wittgenstein's family resemblance is Lakoff's (Lakoff
1986
; Lakoff
and Johnson
1980
) use of prototypes (paradigms) and metaphor instead of reference.
With either route we have a more acceptable approach to human relationships in
