Experientialist Epistemology and Classification Theory: Embodied and Dimensional Classification

Abstract

What theoretical framework can help in building, maintaining and evaluating networked knowledge organization resources? Specifically, what theoretical framework makes sense of the semantic prowess of ontologies and peer-to-peer systems, and by extension aids in their building, maintenance, and evaluation? I posit that a theoretical work that weds both formal and associative (structural and interpretive) aspects of knowledge organization systems provides that framework. Here I lay out the terms and the intellectual constructs that serve as the foundation for investigative work into experientialist classification theory, a theoretical framework of embodied, infrastructural, and reified knowledge organization. I build on the interpretive work of scholars in information studies, cognitive semantics, sociology, and science studies. With the terms and the framework in place, I then outline classification theory's critiques of classificatory structures. In order to address these critiques with an experientialist approach an experientialist semantics is offered as a design commitment for an example: metadata in peer-to-peer network knowledge organization structures.

Keywords: Classification, Epistemology