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Philosophical Foundations of Information Modeling
Abstract
For the past few decades there have been articles appearing, in the Information Systems research literature, criticizing the field for a lack of theory, no core set of concepts, and no accepted paradigm. [Culnan], [Weber, 1987]. Weber [2003, pg. viii] points out, “After a long period of discernment, we found we could identify only one class of phenomena, for which theories sourced from other disciplines seemed deficient— namely, phenomena associated with building conceptual models and designing databases.” So perhaps the core of Information Systems has something to do with information models or information modeling. This is plausible since data modeling and information modeling are, perhaps, the only intellectual developments that are unique to information systems. Yet the theories in these areas are sketchy at best. But theory doesn’t just appear spontaneously. It must be developed. One of the ways in which this can be done it to take general theories from other areas, apply them to phenomena in Information Systems, and then advance them by making them more specific to Information Systems. This minipaper will introduce four concepts from metaphysics that are highly relevant to information modeling and as such may provide some foundation from a philosophical perspective. These four concepts are (1) the Concept of Identity, (2) the Problem of Universals, (3) Teleology, and 4) Correspondence versus Coherence views of truth.
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