semiotics: general definitions 1. Semiotics is concerned with meaning; how representation, in the broad sense (language, images, objects) generates meanings or the processes by which we comprehend or attribute meaning. For visual images, or visual and material culture more generally, semiotics is an inquiry that is wider than the study of symbolism and the use of semiotic analysis challenges co...

Information systems are increasingly subject to philosophical inquiry. It is both a sign of the IS discipline’s maturity and a response to social perplexities. An obvious candidate for a philosophy of information systems is semiotics. A serious obstacle, though, has been the reductionist development in the previous century of semiotics, thereby moving it away from phenomenology. Then, in its tu...

While I agree with the Morris division of semiotics, I am deeply unsatisfied with the way this division is applied in most studies in theoretical cartography. This is why below I would like to propose a new approach to the definition of these three subfields of semiotics in the cartographic context. I am particularly interested in the role pragmatics, currently one of the most dynamically devel...

The aim of this paper is to introduce the theoretical foundations of an approach for intelligent systems development. Derived from semiotics, a classic discipline in human sciences, the theory developed provides a mathematical framework for the concept of knowledge and for knowledge processing. As a result, a new perspective to study and to develop intelligent systems emerges. In part I, we foc...

Despite the fact that most competence-relevant settings are socially relevant settings, the interpersonal effects of achievement goals have been understudied. This is all the more surprising in the case of performance goals, for which self-competence is assessed using an other-referenced standard. In the present research, performance-goals are conceived as a social tool for regulating interpers...