 |
Entailment, Data as Agency and Autocatalyzed Alternates
Joel Slayton
Philosophies of the physical, biological, computer, social sciences and
the arts have collectively lacerated traditional conceptions of content,
deconstructing its nature into the stored, sorted, distributed, and
acted upon. Reasoning for this approach is obvious; content,
information and data can be understood synergistically, but considered
segregated functionally. Distinguishing the signifier and signified in
this manner requires a semantic strategy that ensures data to be
scrutinized separately through methods of computation and measurement.
This structuralist perspective does not suffice to describe a model in
which "meaning" can be explicated as a self-deterministic function, which
is not directly the result of inferencing and sign interpretation, but
rather, the result of a self-organizing dynamic of data itself.
Datum, the fundamental agency of data enabling language-like behavior,
can be observed in fluid depiction structures, such as a network, which
involve complex entailment patterns. An entailment pattern is a set of
rules pertaining to the emergence of self-organization within an
information processing system, a notion useful in characterizing the
autocatalytic and evolutionary nature of the datum. Entailment guides
processes, resulting in filtering, association, referencing and
substitution, particularly in non-linear systems in which uncertainty
plays a significant role. These rules of entailment are necessarily
constrained algorithmically (ex; if, then, and, or, else, list) and
therefore infer only a computational disposition. The twist, of course,
being that the datum is also self-referential, its purpose to function
linguistically as an interface to other datum.
This linguistic of the datum is stratified in complex layers of
entailment and therefore operates outside of a purely semantic model of
meaning. It would seem that datum are not the output of procedures
always poised between referents, but rather, are fundamental dispositions
of language -like capacity. This suggests that denotation of the datum
is possible only by virtue of self-stimulation. Conceived in this way,
the autocatalytic datum as agency implies that datum act as their own
interface. Perhaps it is this characteristic that enables datum to
pattern with other datum, to combine (or un-combine) into more (or less)
complex propositional relationships. If true, this conveyance of the
datum would seem to preserve datum identity (action) across
transpositions, that is, from one system to the next. This ontogenic
behavior clearly demonstrated in 16 Sessions.
A reasoned supposition is that datum are necessarily predisposed to
particular autocatalytic configurations and are therefore necessarily
delimited to specific behaviors. This perspective, even if true, does
not account for all potential linguistic like actions spawned by datum.
It is more likely that datum continuously emerge new capacities by
forming aggregate attributes that are idiosyncratic and serve to
further purpose the linguistic nature of the specific agency. This
complexity permits datum to be transposed across systems with the
appearance of coherency, while defying specific signification.
Datum interact in seemingly endless manners, one of which is the
autocatalyzed identity of the alternate, a mimicked substitution of the
datum which ripples throughout the linguistic domain of the network
space. Alternates, like datum, are capable of self-determination and
denotation of meaning through patterned action. Unlike datum, the
alternates contort patterning into mirrored equilibrium of data
structures, which in turn, self-organize into replicant-like linguistic
performances. Alternates enable algorithmic treatment of datum across
borders, a clear distinction to a theory of signification. Alternates
enable the datum to simulate their own functionality. It is this
characteristic of dissimulation that creates the illusion of coherency
across information structures, processes, meanings and applications.
This dissimulation encourages algorithmic transposition.
The hyperlogical destiny of the Datum and its mirror, the Alternate, is
an appearance of differentiation where none actually exist, a
differentiation reduced to the continuities of coherence. It is the
mirror of the alternate that results in the deception that the network
cannot enact its own theme. What is interesting is that it may be
quite the opposite.