Conclusion

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter aims to conclude the book by providing a high-level interpretation of measurement and its characterizing features. We first develop a semiotic perspective on the information gained via measurement, specifically, how, in any measurement process, syntactic information (i.e., data, in the form of indication values) grounds semantic information (in the form of measurement results), which in turn grounds pragmatic information (in the form of measurement results together with the contextual information that enables decision making). We then briefly retread the path followed in this book, describing how we began with a minimal set of necessary conditions for measurement and then progressively explored issues critical to the development of complementary sufficient conditions, related in particular to the ontology and epistemology of measured properties, the nature of scales, measurability, and measured values, and the roles of empirical and informational processes in measurement. This culminates in a general model of a measurement process that emphasizes the importance of evaluating the quality of the information produced by measurement in terms of object-relatedness (“objectivity”) and subject-independence (“intersubjectivity”). We conclude with an argument that, despite differences in subject matter and application, any measurement process can be characterized as an empirical and informational process that is designed on purpose, whose input is an empirical property of an object, and that produces explicitly justifiable information in the form of values of that property.