【作者】 王素芬；

【导师】 汤兵勇；

【作者基本信息】 东华大学 ， 控制工程与控制理论， 2007， 博士

【摘要】 在信息系统学科中一方面认为信息是信息系统学科最重要和最基本的概念,对信息本质的理解有意或无意地指导和影响着信息系统的理论研究和实践应用;另一方面在信息系统领域中关于信息、数据和意义存在多样且混乱的概念和术语,而这些混乱又造成了现有关于信息系统研究的孤立不连接的且矛盾的知识混合体。到目前,关于“信息本身难以琢磨的天性以及研究者没有办法在研究工作中处理信息本质”这个问题,信息系统学科范围内尚未给出系统、深刻的答案。所以,对如何理解和处理信息本质的研究和探讨,无论对信息系统学科的理论研究,还是对信息系统的成功实施,都具有特别重要的意义。本论文的研究内容主要有:1.获取了理解和处理信息本质的新视角和关键点。本文吸取信息哲学的研究成果,将“如何连接信息的各种说法”作为获取理解和处理信息本质新视角的出发点,针对信息系统领域中有关信息研究的四条线索,从“信息、数据、意义三者关系”和“信息本质处理方法”两维度出发,分析了各类信息观点所蕴含的基本哲学观点,进一步理解了信息系统领域中有关信息研究所取得的成果和局限,由此提出了理解和处理信息本质新视角和关键点。信息实现机理的理解和处理是理解和处理信息本质的关键,信息实现过程也是精通知识的信息工作者解释意义的过程。2.选择了合理的信息实现机理的理论基础,并从中抽取了信息实现的一般过程。信息实现过程是信息意义解释的过程,而意义的解释属于释义学(Hermeneutics)的研究范畴;信息实现过程也是人与人的交流过程,在这人与人交流的过程中,人们完成了对自己和别人的理解,所以这个交流过程也是理解过程。这样的过程一方面体现了信息、数据、意义三者之间的关系,同时它本身又是通过这三者的联系交互而得以完成。我们承认有独立于接受者的客观信息存在,但又认为“信息为什么能被称为是信息”需要从信息、数据、意义的关系中才能体现出来,也即只有在与人的存在关联中才能体现出来。基于这样的基本认识,再结合信息实现过程的基本特征,选择了合适的释义学思想作为信息实现机理的理论基础;通过对这种释义学思想的详细分析获取了信息实现机理所涉及的一般过程、过程所涉及的元素和阶段,从而形成了信息实现机理的半结构化模型。3.分析了信息意义的基本形态并初步实现了信息意义的形式化表示。如何创生或者解释意义是理解和处理信息本质的关键。如果说意义是通过一特定的解释活动所获得也就是通过信息实现过程而获得,但意义是什么样的?主体间性意义和主体性意义的本质是什么?意义如何表示?这些问题至今没有很好地系统研究。本文认为:如果意义是通过解释获得的,那么意义只有对解释者(我们将其称为精通信息的知识工作者)才有存在的价值。而关于解释者——人的研究是海德格尔《存在与时间》的研究主题,所以本文基于海德格尔关于此在的研究分析信息实现过程中意义的解释者(也即精通信息的知识工作者)的存在结构和本质特征,从中理解主体间性意义和主体性意义的本质,并确认了意义与“数据-信息”勾连的关系,在此基础上选择Galois格和形式化场景初步实现了信息意义的表示。4.进一步讨论了基于数据的信息意义,分析了数据、信息、意义三者之间的不同关系与不同知识概念之间的关系。首先基于形式化场景分析了基于数据的信息意义的四种基本连接形态,分别将其定义为:完全匹配形态、第一类部分匹配形态、第二类部分匹配形态和不完全匹配形态,并获得了这四种连接形态的物理意义,分析了它们在信息意义格中的表现。由于,Dretske认为知识概念与数据对信息内容的提供有紧密的关系。所以,一方面运用Dretske语义信息理论分析了信息意义四种连接形态的信息熵状况;另一方面从它们的信息熵状况分析数据对信息内容的表现力和信息内容被数据的表现状况从而理解不同信息意义连接形态与不同知识概念之间的关系。最后,在分析不同信息意义连接与不同知识概念之间关系时,涉及了不确定的模糊知识,所以进一步用粗糙集理论分析了这四种形态在粗糙集中的表现,从而用信息意义的不同连接形态定义各类不确定性知识,加深了对不确定性知识的理解。5.研究了信息实现过程的形式化建模。信息实现过程的语义层、反思层、本体层都以数据为基础而展开,所以,从数据的特点出发分析了多层信息意义与信息实现过程之间的关系。利用符号学理论分析信息实现过程,认为信息意义就是双面性解释实体,而信息意义具有系统性结构,从而将信息实现过程的多重信息意义和多层信息意义的解释转换为信息理论中的某些问题,进而选择了Barwise和Seligman的渠道理实现了信息实现过程的形式化建模,并进一步从分布式系统角度分析了信息意义、信息意义的四种连接形态、多重信息意义和多层信息意义的形式化表示。6.将“基于释义学的信息实现过程半结构化模型”和“基于信息渠道理论的信息实现过程形式化模型”相结合应用于本体的交互和进化研究。首先通过分析海德格尔的本体论获取了本体与释义之间的关系,认为本体的本质问题就是解释问题;然后分析了知识工程中本体交互和进化现象,进一步说明了无论本体的交互与进化都涉及交流问题,而这种交流是人们通过对数据的信息内容的解读而实现的,因此,认为基于释义学的信息实现机理可作为知识工程的本体进化、获取或实现的理论基础;利用基于释义学的信息实现过程半结构化模型,应用信息渠道理论对基于主体间组合信息内容多对一的本体交互和进化进行了分析,获取了主体间交流的形式化框架和主体间组合信息内容多对一解释过程的建模步骤。最后,通过一实例详细展开了信息实现过程的半结构化模型和形式化模型在知识工程中的应用。本论文的创新点和主要贡献有:第一,通过分析各信息观点的哲学基础,提出:从“信息何被称为信息”出发通过信息、数据、意义三者之间关系的理解,才能真正理解信息的本质和处理信息的本质。特别是,经解释的具体活动和行为而得以创生新意义的,或者可实践创造的信息本质论,是新信息本质理论的关键点,这些都体现在信息的实现过程中,信息实现的过程也是信息意义解释的过程。第二,通过分析信息系统中信息实现过程的基本特征和基本假设,选择利科释义学思想和海德格尔释义学思想相结合的释义学理论作为信息实现过程的哲学基础,抽取了信息实现过程的半结构化模型,突破了释义学理论在信息系统中的应用,也进一步系统化地展现和实现了Mingers的有关信息与意义之间的模拟数字化过程。第三,从海德格尔的此在的分析出发理解信息意义、主体性意义和主体间性意义,完成现有信息本质研究中有关意义的论述,补充和完善了Floridi和Mingers的信息研究。第四,以符号学为中介分析信息实现过程的基本问题,连接了基于释义学的信息实现过程半结构化模型和信息渠道理论间的关系,从而实现了信息实现过程的形式化分析。第五,将信息实现机理作为知识工程的本体进化、获取或实现的理论基础;基于信息实现机理,构建了主体间组合信息内容多对一的解释过程,进一步扩展了本体进化和交互的研究。更多还原

【Abstract】 The notion of ’information’ is probably the most important and the most fundamental one for the discipline of information systems. Whether realising it or not, people’s understanding of this notion guides and affects their theoretic study and application of information systems. However, there appear many inconsistent and often conflicting views and terms for information, data and meaning in the literature Such a situation seems to have resulted in the body of knowledge in this field being an inconsistent and confusing mixture. Thus far, there does not seem a systematic and convincing solution to the problem that the nature of information is elusive and extremely hard to handle. Therefore, any serious investigation into the nature of information would seem highly desirable and important both for theoretic research and practice.The main topics that have been investigated and are to be reported in this thesis are as follows:1. A new and helpful perspective and some crucial elements for understanding and processing information have been developed or identified. We absorb research results in information philosophy and take how to link various approaches to information as a starting point of our work. We analyze the basic philosophical foundations of these approaches in terms of relationships between information, data, and meaning and approaches to the nature of information, which constitute a two-dimension conceptual framework. This helps us further understand the state of the art of this field and arrive at a fundamental insight, namely the process of information realization is also a process that a knowledge worker takes to obtain meaning from what she/he observes through interpretation. The revelation of the mechanism whereby the impact of information is realized appears to the key to understand the nature of information.2. We have chosen appropriate theoretical foundations for investigating this aforementioned mechanism and discovered the general process of information realization. The process of information realization is a process of interpretation, which results in meaning, and such a process belongs firmly to Hermeneutics. Moreover, such a process is also that of communication between people during which people understand one another and themselves. The process of communication is also that of understanding. Understanding between people embodies relationships between information, data and meaning, and at the same time, the latter enables the former. The existence of Information is independent of its receiver, but at the same time the reason why something is taken as information is because it has the potential to inform the receiver in that it would result in the reduction of some uncertainty that is relevant to her/him. And this can only be realized through certain relationships of information to data and meaning. That is, information is fundamentally associated with people. Based on this view, taking into account the basic characteristics of information systems, we choose hermeneutic thinking as the theoretical foundation for our investigation. As a result, a general process including its elements and stages is identified and a semi-structured model developed.3. We have investigated basic forms of the meaning of information. How to obtain meaning through interpretation is the key to understand and process information. If meaning is created through interpretation, which is what we mean by ’information realization’, then how does it happen? What is the nature of inter-subject meaning and subject meaning? We have not found systematic study in the literature on these questions thus far. We observe that meaning is only valuable to the interpreter, whom we call knowledge worker who is skilled in handling information. Interpreters, i.e., people, are of the topic of "Existence and Time" by Heiderger. We draw on Heiderger’s work on ’being’ to investigate the structure and essential characteristics of information realization with which to understand the essence of inter-subjective meaning and subjective meaning, to analyze links between information and data, and finally to use Galois lattice and formal context to visualize the meaning of information.4. We have further discussed the meaning of information that is based on data, and we have analyzed the relationship between data, information and meaning. We analyze four basic relationships between information and dada based by using formal context, namely, fully matched, the first partly matched, the second partly matched and unmatched, and obtain physical signification and their manifestation in meaning lattices. Dretske observes that an essential component for the notion of ’to know’ is information provision. Following Dretske, we analyze information entropy of the four types of meaning. Then using the information entropy obtained, we look at how data convey information content, and how the types of meaning relate to different concepts in knowledge. Finally, we realize that uncertain knowledge is involved in all the above, therefore we further express the four types of meaning (i.e., four types of connections between information and data) by using Rough Set, which deepens our understanding of uncertain knowledge.5. How the information realization process may be modeled formally was investigated. The semantic layer, the reflective layer and the ontological layer of the information realization process are all carried out on the basis of data. Hence relationships between multiple layers of the meaning of information and the information realization process are analyzed in terms of the characteristics of data. We analyze the information realization process by using semiotics, and take the view that the meaning of information be a double interpretative entity and has a systematic structure. How to interpret multiple meaning and multiple layers of meaning of information in an information realization process is transformed into questions that information theory covers, therefore we choose Barwise and Seligma’s channel theory to model information realization process formally, and discuss formal representations of the meaning of information, four types of meaning, multiple meaning and multiple layers of meaning from the perspective of distributed systems.6. The semi-structured model based on Hermeneutics and the formal model based on information channel theory about information realization process were combined and then applied to the problem of ontological interoperability and evolution. By using Heidegger’s ontologism, we obtain the relationship between ontology and Hermeneutics, analyze the phenomenon of ontological interoperability and evolution in knowledge engineering. We observe that the problem of ontological interoperability and evolution is that of communication, and communication is realized through people’s interpretation and attainment of information content from data. Thus the mechanism of information realization based on Hermeneutics is a theoretic foundation for ontological evolution, attainment and realization in knowledge engineering. We use the semi-structured model of information realization process, we apply information channel theory to the analysis of ontological interoperability and evolution, which are based on many-to-one correspondences of information content between human subjects, we obtain a formal framework about communication between human subjects and the modeling steps about an interpretation process of many-to-one correspondences of information content between human subjects. Finally, we describe a case study where the semi-structured model and the formal model of information realization process are applied to knowledge engineering. The main contributions of the thesis:1. By analyzing the philosophical bases of various views of information, we conclude that through understanding relationships between information, data and meaning, we can truly understand the nature of information. Especially, new meanings are created through interpretation activities, behavior or by practice, which are crucial points of this thesis. We demonstrate that the process of information realization is also that of interpretation of the meaning of information.2. By analyzing basic characteristics and assumptions of the process of information realization, we choose Heidegger’s Hermeneutics combined with Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics as the basis and formulate a semi-structural model of information realization. This represents an extention of current application of the hermeneutical theory to information systems. This also systematically elaborates the digitalization process that underlies the transformation from information to meaning as obversed by Mingers.3. We have achieved a better understanding of the meaning of information, subjective meaning and inter-subjective meaning by drawing on Heiderger’s analysis of ’being’. We expand the study of meaning in contemporary studies on the nature of information, which we believe, supplements and improves Floridi’s and Mingers’ studies on information.4. We analyze the fundamentals of the process of information realization by drawing on principles of semiotics, which serves as a link between the aforementioned semi-structural model of information realization and the information channel theory. As a result, we have arrived at a formal analysis of information realization.5. Based on the mechanism for information realization that we have formulated, we have built a ’many to one’ interpretation process for combing information content, which we believe extends current research reported on ontology evolution and interoperability in knowledge engineering.更多还原