IR and the Dialectic of Meaning

The aim of this paper is to provide some elucidation of the tensions inherent in the problem of meaning and use this to inform both theoretical and pragmatic issues in IR. The difficulties of theory in IR are discussed and a new model of meaning as a dialectic is introduced. This model consists of two dialectics: objective versus subjective and individual versus shared. It is shown that this model assists IR in revealing some of the difficulties in its theoretical assumptions and thus provides a clearer focus for improvements in practice. 1 Theories of Meaning The general aim of any theory is to provide a way of understanding the nature of a particular phenomenon and as a result to have a tool for explaining and predicting its behaviour. In developing a theory of meaning then, the first step must be to examine what kind of thing meaning is. This process raises many questions including: what is the relationship between a word and its meaning; what happens when we understand the meaning of a word; how can we tell that other people use words in the same way; why is meaning sometimes ambiguous. It is a complex problem and even the most superficial study of meaning reveals that it involves a wide range of different factors. Many philosophers and linguists have developed ideas as to how language works but there is no clear consensus on the nature of the problem [1-5]. I argue that one way to gain insight into the problem of meaning is to understand it as a series of relationships which exist under tension. These relationships consist of the following sets of oppositions: the individual and the world; the individual and other individuals. Theories about language, or disciplines such as IR which often work in language with no explicit theory, will have assumptions both about the nature of the constituents of these relationships and the form these relationships take. It is not possible to work without theory and claims that IR is just a question of engineering are just as dependent on a particular theoretical perspective as the most advanced logical models. Given the difficulty of the problem of meaning, I argue, following Wittgenstein, that the best approach is to work towards a series of eludications about how language actually works, rather than to try and build a monolithic theory and then force language to inhabit it. IR requires an understanding of how meaning happens in the particular process of information seeking and in the next section I expand on why I think this process can be made clearer by using a model of meaning as a dialectic. 2 Meaning as Dialectic A dialectic is a relationship of opposites in tension, the elements of the opposition often require each other but they cannot be reconciled together. I argue that meaning is a product of such tensions which cannot be resolved, as we move towards one aspect of meaning (e.g. objectivity) we must necessarily move away from another aspect (e.g. subjectivity). This means that every gain in one aspect results in a corresponding loss in another. In terms of IR, this provides new insight into the inverse relationship between recall and precision and the earliest experiments by Cleverdon [6] which saw indexing systems as tools to either increase specificity or exhausitvity. The problem is balancing the gain against the loss and the appropriate decision here cannot be a general one but must depend on the context of a particular information need. A 'holy grail' solution would mean a resolution of a dialectic which is not possible, rather progress can be made by articulating some of the tensions and showing how a particular location on these dialectics will affect IR. I will now examine two of these tensions explaining the general theoretical problem, its relation to IR and possible implications for practice. IR and the Dialectic of Meaning 21st BCS IRSG Colloquium on IR, Glasgow,1999 2 3 Objective versus Subjective This tension in language arises from the fact that, in order to describe the world, language must have some relationship to objects and this relationship must also make sense to the people that use language. Language is both about the world (objective) and about us (subjective). What is the mechanism behind the fact that words refer to things in the world and to what extent is this process of reference at the centre of meaning. 3.1 Theoretical Problem Objective normally means the perspective that reveals things as they really are and is not influenced by the interests or needs of the subject (the person observing). It is the view that is most about the object and least about the subject. It can also be seen as the perspective which is least influenced by the position of the subject, the philosopher Thomas Nagel, defines objectivity as the view from nowhere [7]. The problem of objectivity also raises the question of how our perceptions unavoidably influence what we observe, this question was raised by Kant in the 18th century and more recently by modern physics. If we could perceive things exactly as they are (the Kantian term is dinge an sich, thing in itself) then the subject would need to disappear as any perception can only be from a particular perspective [8]. If you wish to lose the influence of the perspective then you have to lose the person who perceives. In terms of the problem of meaning this tension between the objective and subjective is central in that language is the medium through which the subject perceives and interacts with the object (things in the world). The quality of this dual nature is complex in that a word's relation to an object can either be seen as some kind of objective or transcendental fact or it can be seen as a product of human usage. The former view is taken by the early work of Wittgenstein [3] and the imperative then is to improve language by tightening up this relationship (devising a language in which each word unambiguously refers to an object). His later work [4] takes the second perspective and suggests that language is best understood by examining how it is used in particular situations, attempts to improve language only result in an inability to see how it actually operates. Whatever perspective is taken on this question it appears to be an empirical fact that a word is both about something in the world and a tool that we use. If a word doesn't relate to the world in some way and is never used by any subject then it can have no meaning. Its meaning is both subjective (some subject somewhere has to use it) and objective (if it only existed in the head of the subject it would be a useless tool for either describing the world or interacting with others). At both extremes of the objective/subjective dialectic meaning starts to break down. In between these extremes meaning can be more or less unique to the subject and about the world in general. In most cases the more it is about the world in general the less useful it will be to an individual subject, we normally want to know what things mean in relation to us. An abstract description of the world, though more accurate in its portrayal of how things actually are, may be less useful.