Representationalism: Philosophical Foundations of Language in Knowledge Organization and Information Retrieval

This paper aims at gaining a deep understanding of representationalism in knowledge organization and information retrieval analyzing foundations of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.

The method used is logical inference. The approach is theoretical and argumentative. Accordingly, its feature and nature is speculative.

Representationalism is the indirect realism rooted in seventeenth-century Cartesianism, in Locke and Hume's eighteenth-century empiricism, and in Kant's idealism. Language in this early period of modern philosophy, had no material existence and was fully used to regulate ideas. Since its main consideration is the subjectivity, it is not necessary to enhance the status of language that acts as an intermediary connecting subject with object and that expresses the meanings of the object; since early modern philosophy does not concern itself with the issue of intersubjectivity and the relationship between “I” and “the other,” it is not necessary to pay heed to the function of language that serves as a bridge among subjects or consciousnesses (let alone among cultures). The emphasis of representationalism in the philosophy of mind is that ideas and perceptions are superior to language, and language is the only representation of thoughts. In the philosophy of language, representationalism means that language is like a mirror representing concepts, and meaning is fixed according to this representationalist view of language as well.

Representation is an accepted principle in the field of knowledge organization and information retrieval. Accordingly, the issue of representation is addressed according to representationalist approaches. In order to understand representationalism in this field and its connection with language and meaning, it is necessary to pay attention to this theory and its prepositions in philosophy. Our study showed that the theory of representationalism was indicative and supportive of a marginal rather than a central view of language. Accordingly, changing the representationalist approach to language in information science, can help our field to improve its semantic information retrieval systems. We seek to retrieve relevant and meaning-based information. To present in detail the theory of representationalism in relation to language and meaning in these areas requires further study. Here, we only showed the presuppositions, origins, and leaders of the theory in philosophy of mind and language.